I recently took a crash course in electrical pollution.  I crashed, so of course I had to find out why in order to remedy the situation!  What I have learned and experienced have convinced me that electrical pollution is a major cause of our health problems.

Electrical pollution, invisible, silent, odorless, tasteless, is the perfect pollutant.  We have not evolved any methods of sensing its presence.  A few people, like me, have become "electrically sensitive" and are able to know when we are being exposed due to immediate symptoms that we experience, but most people, even if exposed to levels and wave lengths that are literally killing them, remain unaware.  Even when they do experience palpable sensations, the cause simply does not occur to them. 

Everyone living in areas of the world with electricity is being negatively affected.  It is only a question of degree.  (Dr. Neil Cherry, Evidence that Electromagnetic Radiation is Genotoxic: the implications for the epidemiology of cancer and cardiac, neurological and reproductive effects.  His presentation to New Zealand Parliament in May 2000, European Parliament in June, 2000.  Look for link at ww.electricalpollution.com/  Dr. Cherry’s work is monumental.)

Electricity is termed “dirty” or polluted when the normal 60 cycle sine wave carries with it various high frequencies, which damage electronics and living beings.  Industry and large corporations spend billions to protect their electronic equipment from this, but nobody is looking out for humans.

The present pollution is created as electricity passes through anything electronic, which “chops up” the sine wave and then dumps these high frequencies into the current as it is passed on.  This RF (radio frequency) energy causes neurological, cardiac, respiratory, ophthalmological, dermatological and other conditions ranging in severity from headaches, fatigue and ADD to pneumonia, psychosis and strokes.   (“No Place To Hide” Volume 3, Number 1, April 2001, “Special Issue on Russian and Ukrainian Research” by Arthur Firstenberg.  Article can be obtained at (718) 434-4499 or see at www.electricalpollution.com/)   Childhood leukemia is markedly higher in areas with electrical pollution.   (Savitz, D.A. et al. 1988. Case Control Study of CHILDHOOD CANCER and Residential Exposure to 60(c)Hz Magnetic Fields. American Journal of Epidemiology 128(1):21(c)38.) 

In “the old days” before electronics, electrical power was polluted at the source, by brushes in the generators.  A monumental epidemiological study using childhood leukemia as a marker found an absolutely correlating  increase in this disease in areas of the USA, Africa and Europe as they sequentially became electrified.  (Samuel Milham & E.M. Ossiander, Historical evidence that residential electrification caused the emergence of childhood leukemia peak, Medical Hypotheses, vol. 56, #3, 2001, pp. 290-295)   Generators now produce clean power but modern pollution levels are much higher due to electronics.

For every electron that leaves a substation, one must return.  As electricity polluted with high frequencies likes to spread out in what is called the skin effect, the presently inadequate utility wiring system causes 70% of the return current to flow  across the surface of the earth.  Most people think the earth soaks up electricity like a sponge.  It does not.  Electricity just flows over the surface, like water over a brick.  This ground current is attracted to, and enters your home on, water pipes, gas mains and phone lines, greatly increasing the amount of high-frequency exposure you already have from your own electrical service.  Various metal structures in your home, from wiring and lamp cords to fins in electric baseboards and the metal springs in your bed actually broadcast these harmful frequencies right through your body 24 hours a day, whether or not any electrical appliances in your house are turned on.   In many places attempts to ground bring in more current than they take out!

You may have read that strong EMF is created by your refrigerator, hair dryer, etcetera.  This is true, but the electronics in your house are really quite a small part of the picture as electricity is already extremely RF-polluted when it enters your home, from everybody "upstream."  It is not commonly known even by those who write on this subject, nor by many who do professional remediation, that the RF is the main culprit. 

Doctors are as unaware of this situation as everyone else, so the best way to determine whether someone's health problems are related to RF is to lower the RF levels and see what happens.  In schools and homes where RF remediation has been done, many kids with Attention Deficit Disorder suddenly don't have it any more, and teachers with mysterious maladies that kept them from working a full work week now don't miss a day.  Many chronic headaches and complaints of chronic tiredness melt away.  (Melrose Chronicle, Melrose, WI, U.S.A. 2/26/03)  Kids who had such severe asthma they needed nebulizer treatments no longer do.  Many diabetics find that their need for insulin drops dramatically or even ends when they avoid RF, and conversely that it increases when they are exposed.  (My friend and mentor Dave Stetzer’s blood sugar skyrockets within minutes when he is exposed to RF, which seems to be the sole causative factor.  To date, the blood sugar of every person he has tested is affected within minutes.) 

Animals are equally affected.  Cows give up to 10 more pounds of milk per day on the days when the RF in their environment is low  (Donald Hillman et al, Relationship of Electric Power Quality to Milk Production of Dairy Herds, Shocking News, 9/11/02 Also avail. at wwww.electricalpollution.com), and 20 pounds more if power quality is remediated and remains clean. (Conversation with power quality expert Dave Stetzer.)  If your dog sits on the roof of his dog house, this may be why!

My own story illustrates both the effects of RF exposure and the challenges of dealing with them in a meaningful way.  We live in rural Wisconsin, U.S.A. in a Winnie-the-Pooh three-acre beech and maple woods surrounded by farm fields and more woods.   Deer and an occasional wild turkey wander through the yard and organic garden and the loudest noise is made by crows.  Not a place where you’d expect to find dangerous environmental pollution, so that was not a suspect when I began to have "spells."   Although I have always had low blood pressure, I began experiencing spells of a sudden and sharp rise in blood pressure with skyrocketing pulse rate and frightening cardiac arrhythmia.  I was taken to the ER by ambulance twice, but by the time I got there pronounced normal.   $18,000 worth of medical tests found nothing to account for these and other bizarre symptoms, so doctors finally pronounced that I was having "panic attacks" and prescribed beta blockers, which force the heart into a regular 72 beats a minute and turn you into a zombie, in my experience.  I refused them. Insomnia increased to the point where I was sleeping, in broken bits, from 3-5 hours a night.  I felt as if I was made out of paper.  Sometimesl just breathing and walking were very taxing.  My anxiety level was extreme, my adrenals were exhausted and my thyroid needed help from hormone replacement.  Already slender, I became a shadow.  I wasn't sure I was going to survive.

I had read a bit about EMF a few years before, and it occurred to me to try some experiments, such as sleeping in different places in the house.  I noticed immediate symptoms if I went near a TV, a telephone, a car fan, the water pipes in our house....  (Later I would discover I  had become “electrically sensitive,” a sort of walking EMF meter, affected by dimmer switches, electric heating systems, computers in banks and post offices, the chair at the dentist’s office, .... )

At least now I had a clue.  I was very fortunate to be put in touch with power quality engineer Dave Stetzer, who graciously taught me about power quality and what I needed to do to clean up my immediate environment and save my life.  We did experiments and took readings with a variety of meters and gizmos, indoors and out.  We put in shielded phone lines, moved water pipes, replaced the first 4 feet of our water pipe with PVC (Helps 50%.  RF still comes in via the water itself.), gutted old electric baseboards that though disconnected were broadcasting RF over large areas including our bedroom.  We installed RF filters, took out dimmer switches and fluorescent lights, sold the aquarium, got me a speaker phone and a laptop computer I use on battery only, and I avoid the high-field parts of the yard. 

With each of these steps results were immediate and dramatic. The cardiac symptoms ceased. I was able to sleep.  My anxiety level dropped.  My recovery has been steady and I am now much better.   Only, however, to the extent to which I am able to avoid RF!   I remain electrically sensitive to date, and my activities are severely circumscribed.  I am almost entirely a stay-at-home.  Even here, the RF is not totally unavoidable when the power is on.  I am better on days when I spend a lot of time away from the house in areas free of ground current, and in warm weather when we can turn the main off at night.   

This article is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  Toxic electricity is a chronic, severe stress, affecting virtually everyone, that only increases as the pollution proliferates.   I offer the following points and ideas for your further consideration.

• I know health practitioners who wonder why many of their clients, in spite of doing "all the right things" still have such serious problems.  No one has thought to check what RF they are living in.

• I used to give Polarity sessions to a woman who lived across the street from a hefty electric cable.  No matter what I did, nothing happened!  It was so bizarre, as if something was canceling out the energy.  Finally I became aware and took meter readings.  Her apartment had EMF high enough to cause childhood leukemia.   What was that doing to her?  To me?  To the Polarity sessions?

• Under this stress, it seems that people develop different conditions due to their own inherent weakest links, so to speak, one getting diabetes while another develops Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. 

• The particular wavelengths one is exposed to are relevant, as is the strength of the field.  As these two vary, different "windows" are created, with varying effects.  US military research shows that particular wavelengths cause different symptoms.   (Charles Polk & Elliot Pastow, Handbook of Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields, 2nd ed. 1996) (The military knows the specific wave lengths to cause depression or rage or incite crowds to riot.)  Also, each individual is a unique receiving antenna.  For instance, one' s height affects which wavelengths one receives most easily. ( Polk, ibid. chapter 9)  Weight and fat/water content play roles, as do metals in the body.  ( C. Polk & J.H. Song,  Electric fields induced by LF magnetic fields in inhomogenous biological structures... Bioelectromagnetics vol. 11, 235-249, 1990)

• I and many others experience much more affect from broad area RF when lying down than when standing.  This is not so strange, as research shows ants realign the way they hold their antenna and bodies when they are exposed to EMF.  (B. Blake Levitt, Electromagnetic Fields, Harcourt Brace, 1995)  Not only is our "antenna” tilted at a different angle why we are horizontal, but we also have greater electrical potential the further apart our "poles" are.  This is one reason livestock suffer so much.

• Another factor is that the loads on the electric lines are different at different times of day and different days of the week.  The RF at your house will also vary depending on what the people “upstream” from you are using current for.

• The belief that only ionizing (heating) radiation can harm living organisms has been absolutely disproven, yet persists as the basis for “official” exposure guidelines.

• The current induced in the body is a product of field strength and frequency.  A field oscillating at 180 Hz induces three times the current in you as a 60-cycle field does.  In such a field, every cell in the body will experience a shift in polarity 180 times a second!

• Living organisms are sensitive electromagnetic systems that run on millivolts.  Vanishingly small charges far below the threshold of awareness affect them.  (Exposure guidelines set by utility-supported "experts" are still based on voltage.  Remember that the frequency of the field or current is the key factor!)

• Our natural body currents are DC.   Earth itself has a very strong DC field with which we evolved.    AC is damaging to living systems, inducing currents within them which DC does not.

• The Earth's field fluctuates with time of day.   Different organ systems of the body are more energized at different times of day.   In fact, sensitivity to the minute fluxes in the Earth’s natural magnetic field is the most important component of our circadian rhythms.   (Levitt, ibid., 118-120)    How are these affected by EMF?

• If the electrical pollution is riding on the Earth’s natural electromagnetic grid lines, what are the ramifications?

• We are particularly sensitive to EMF during sleep, the time when various healing activities take place in the body.  (It is interesting that the front-to-back polarity of our brains reverses during this time,) (Levitt, ibid. 133)  The effects of spending eight hours asleep in toxic electrical field are very serious. 

• The polarity of cells is disrupted by EMF and currents, with profound effects.  Healthy cells have: polarized walls with positive charge outside, negative inside; few and small pores in cell walls; calcium ions mostly outside cells; ability to communicate with other cells via molecules; ability to attract attaching information-bearing molecules.  Their ability to choose what to allow in and out depends on electrical charges on ions like calcium, sodium, proteins, sugars, hormones, etcetera, as well as pore size and cell wall polarity.  Cells affected by EMF and currents: lose polarity; have calcium ions equally inside and out; lose ability to manufacture enzymes; have cell walls with more and larger pores; allowing waste molecules to penetrate the cell.  If the field or current is of long duration, the cells die.  This is called electroporation. (J.C. Weaver, Molecular basis for cell membrane electroporation, Annals of the New York Academy of  Sciences, Vol. 720, pp. 141-152, 1994.  Several more references listed in CURE booklet.)

• Melatonin production is decreased by exposure to EMF.  Though most known as the hormone necessary for good sleep, melatonin has such numerous functions that health is not possible when it is insufficient.  Besides regulating our internal clock, it affects gonadal hormones, moods and behavior and the immune system and exerts direct effects on the growth of cancers in the breast, prostate and colon.  1(R.P. Liburdy et al, ELF magnetic fields, breast cancer and melatonin, Journal of Pineal Research,vol. 14, p. 89, 1993)

• Safety standards are based on exposures considered safe for the average adult male, however children are more affected by EMF than adults.  The greater the cell division rate, the more chances for something to go wrong, and the growth processes themselves are affected by EMF, babies in utero being most affected.    Field-created defects are permanent and are passed on to succeeding generations, for instance the inheritance of brain-tumor tendency in children of men with high occupational exposures.  ( Dr. S Nordstrum, "Effects of paternal EMF exposure on offspring,  Bioelectromagnetics, vol. 4, pp. 91-101, 1983)  "There may also be frequency-specific windows for different organ systems, meaning that certain exposures may be particularly detrimental at fixed times during fetal growth."  (Levitt, ibid.)

• Resonance occurs when an aspect of a force, such its wave length, matches a characteristic of an object receiving the force.  This allows the power inherent in the force to be maximally transferred to the object, causing it to vibrate.  (The crystal goblet when the opera singer hits high C, for instance.)  Within the object, the resonance is self-perpetuating!  You and I are objects being thus affected.  Similarly, trees resonate extremely well to microwaves, leading to deforestation, particularly in mountainous regions where the microwaves bounce off the angles of the slopes. (Wolfgang Voldtrodt, Electromagnetic Pollution of the Environment, Environment and Health: A Holistic Approach, ch. 8.  Avebury Press, 1989)

• Dr. Robert Becker theorizes that healers can sense a disease site in a person's body through radiating an electromagnetic field from their hands which induces EM resonance in the patient, the return signal then being felt by the healer.  A resonant action occurs between the fields given off by the healer and the intrinsic electrical-control systems within the patient's body.  "While these currents have a vanishingly small flow, they would nonetheless produce local DC magnetic fields within the tissues.  These fields, in combination with a frequency given off by the healer, could result in resonance with other charged particles."    As the theory rests on complex resonance, the Earth's magnetic field must be involved.  Therefore, Dr. Becker reasons that healers will have greater diagnostic and healing ability during times of quiet geomagnetic field conditions and those abilities will be adversely affected by magnetic storms and locations in which man-made magnetic fields or extra low frequency (ELF) fields are present. (Becker, Cross Currents, 240-241) An important issue for Polarity therapists to consider and research!

• Cyclotron resonance enables very low-strength EM fields, acting in concert with the Earth’s  steady-state magnetic field, to produce major biological effects by concentrating the energy in the applied field upon specific particles, such as the biologically important ions of sodium, calcium, potassium, and lithium.”  This resonance is produced by frequencies between 1 and 100 hertz.  European electricity is 50 hertz and N. American is 60 hertz!  Yet safety standards have been based on power, not frequency.  (Becker, ibid. 235)

• Dr. Becker believes "That humans interact so fundamentally with the earth's magnetic fields...may be the most important biological discovery of the 20th century."  It may also be a hidden variable in all research.

• The effect of microwaves is also vital to understand.   One point to be aware of is that microwave exposure breaks down the blood/brain barrier.  (Bertril R. Persson, Blood-brain barrier permeability in rats exposed to EM fields used in wireless communication, Wireless Networks, Vol. 3 #5, pp. 455-561, 1997. Also learn more at www.microwavenews.com/ ) Regarding effects of eating microwaved food, see article at www.mercola.com/article/microwave/hazards.htm   For example, habitual eating of such food causes long term permanent brain damage by "shorting out" electrical impulses in the brain due to depolarization of the brain tissue.  Microwaving food also destroys nutrients and creates carcinogens.

• Dreadfully fascinating is the military use of electricity and microwaves.  Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons technology used in the Gulf War may be responsible for a good deal of the damage to veterans resulting in Gulf War Syndrome.   The symptoms are almost exactly those of RF toxicity.   The GWEN and HARP ground wave transmissions are another silent and imperceptible exposure for Americans.  "GWEN is a superb system, in combination with cyclotron resonance, for producing behavioral alterations in the civilian population."  The military has also developed high-power pulsed microwave weapons that penetrate all bodily systems.  These couple with the central nervous system and yield "prompt debilitation."   (Becker, ibid. 303-304) 

• The human body is a highly sensitive electromagnetic energy system.  We need to learn as much as possible about how this system is affected by external electric fields entering the body! 

• Presently, no one is looking out for individuals regarding EMF.  Both military and utility establishments exercise their undemocratic freedom in ways very harmful to the citizenry.  We must educate ourselves and take protective measures on our own.