Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Is "electrosmog" hurting our health?

I read this article yesterday, and I thought it was very interesting. The main point:

Chronic exposure to even low-level radiation (like that from cell phones), the scientists concluded, can cause a variety of cancers, impair immunity, and contribute to Alzheimer's disease and dementia, heart disease, and many other ailments. "We now have a critical mass of evidence, and it gets stronger every day," says David Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany and coauthor of the public-health chapters of the Bioinitiative report.

They include not just cell phones but all the appliances and electrically-powered gadgets that are so pervasive in modern life.

Another interesting passage:

That research commenced at a time when energy-efficient devices — the major generators of transients — were beginning to saturate North American homes and clutter up power lines. A telltale sign of an energy-efficient device is the ballast, or transformer, that you see near the end of a power cord on a laptop computer, printer, or cell phone charger (although not all devices have them). When plugged in, it's warm to the touch, an indication that it's tamping down current and throwing off transient pollution. Two of the worst creators of transient radiation: light dimmer switches and compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). Transients are created when current is repeatedly interrupted. A CFL, for instance, saves energy by turning itself on and off repeatedly, as many as 100,000 times per second.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The power station used to pop like Frankenstein's lab next to my house growing up. There was a huge electrical tower in yard next door.

If electricity is harmful, I would expect I am already doomed.

JCarp

Anonymous said...

What a disaster, it would be ,if it were visible....been thinking about that for years .....friar