Re: article from the Vancouver Sun

> Glenn said:
> "They had a large article in the Vancouver Sun Newspaper about ES, and
> she responded with a letter to the editor, and that is how I
> contacted her.  I'm still trying to find the article to read myself."
>
> I am pasting the article on below. Comments added in brackets are
mine.
Shivani
-------

Electricity that is dirty

Vancouver Sun Tuesday, March 8, 2005 Page: B2 Section:
Westcoast News Byline: Karen Gram Column
[Comments in brackets added by Shivani Arjuna. [hidden email]]

Vancouverite Milt Bowling can practically see the the high frequency power
flowing out of the walls of people's homes and schools. To him, it's as
tangible as smoke, and just as harmful. Bowling isn't some sort of seer, hejust
knows something many of the rest of us don't. He knows that the city's electrical
distribution lines are inadequate to handle the incredibly high levels of
radio frequency electromagnetic energy produced by the technology we use. As a
result, he says, the electricity flows freely in the walls, floors and ceilings
of our homes and offices, travelling through anything that conducts, including
our water pipes and our bodies. There is about 225 per cent more power coming
out of our televisions, computers, dimmer switches, fluorescent lights and
other technologies in the homes, than went in through the wires. About 70 per
cent of it is uncontained. If it looked like smoke, residents would live ina
dense cloud all day, every day.

It's what Bowling and others call dirty electricity, electrical pollution, or
harmonics and it is a form of a larger phenomenon of electromagnetic
radiation that comes from the cellular antennas that give us wireless power. "It's a
problem everywhere," says William Dunford, associate professor of electrical
engineering at the University of B.C. who, though unfamiliar with health
problems caused by the harmonics adds the phenomenon has been known to start fires in
buildings.

Home electricity works sort of like our water system, with incoming and
out-going lines. Clean electricity, at a low frequency of 60 hertz on an
alternating current (AC) is like clean water. It enters the home and gets polluted with
human use. Then, like sewage, dirty electricity, with frequencies 400 timesas
high as came in leaves the home. But unlike sewage, which is all contained in
pipes, much of the electricity isn't. It is supposed to return to the
substation to complete the circuit on the neutral wires, but the neutral wires are
not up to the job. "Imagine if 70 per cent of our sewage seeped out of the pipes
into the environment," Bowling says.

On a chart, the clean, 60 Hertz power looks like a smooth wave. The dirty
electricity looks like jagged peaks, surging to very high frequencies. Computers
are extremely susceptible to those surges. "A computer plugged into a power
bar is protected from power surges," Bowling says. "But we don't have a surge
protector for our bodies." Dunford, an expert in power conversions, argues that
using an AC system on overhead wires exacerbates the problem. "If you go the
route of wanting better AC power, it is very expensive. DC is quite a bit
cheaper."

Power Quality Assurance, an industry magazine, reported that harmonic
distortions, or dirty power, can cause wiring, motors and transformers to overheat
and can reduce equipment lifespan by more than 30 per cent. But, until recently,
dirty electricity was not considered a health issue because the levels were
not high enough to generate heat. Canada's safety code six states that the high
frequency power is safe unless it can heat the body one degree celsius within
six minutes. The dirty electricity is not heat generating. However, a growing
field of research is finding evidence that it isn't as benign as previously
thought. It has been found to substantially worsen the health of many people
and animals, including dairy cows, which produce much less milk when exposed,
and people with multiple sclerosis, diabetes, attention deficit disorder,
tinnitus, asthma and other ailments.

Bowling, learned about dirty electricity through his efforts to stop the
installation of nine microwave towers on the roof of his son's school. Bowling
began researching how electromagnetic radiation would affect the students' health
and didn't like what he learned. While the issue is controversial, with many
scientists saying there is no evidence electromagnetic radiation causes harm,
Bowling successfully spearheaded a campaign to prevent the installation. In
February, he scored a second victory when the Vancouver school board voted to
forbid the installation of such cellular antennas on any school property or
within 305 metres (1000 feet) of a school, based on the argument that thereis no
conclusive evidence that the installation of cellular antenna on or adjacent
to schools is safe. His research took him to a conference on the topic where he
met an environmental scientist from Trent University, in Peterborough who was
conducting experiments using high frequency filters to see what would happen
if the dirty electricity was removed from an environment.

Magda Havas, had spent several years examining the effects of electromagnetic
radiation in the Toronto area. After her results were published, she received
a call from a parent in Toronto who said her daughter suffered from
electrical sensitivity. The girl had just switched schools and was becomingsick every
afternoon. The mother had read research out of Wisconsin involving dairy cows
and about a filter that could neutralize the dirty power. She had convinced
the school to install them. Would Havas be interested in conducting an
experiment there? "I actually didn't think the filters would work," says Havas, who had
heard a little about the dairy cows in Wisconsin but was skeptical of the
efficacy of the filters. "I did the study fully expecting not to get any results.
But I was absolutely amazed."

The filters, developed by computing science and electrical engineering
professor emeritus Dr. Martin Graham, of the University of California-Berkeley, and
Dave Stetzer, a power quality expert from Wisconsin, are called the Graham
Stetzer filters. Up to 20 are needed in a home to filter out the dirty power. The
study involved three weeks with the filters in every classroom from K-12 and
three weeks without them. The teachers did not know their purpose, but in
daily surveys they reported an average of 55 per cent improvement in their levels
of energy and well-being. They had fewer headaches, fewer body aches and felt
they were accomplishing more in the classroom. The only negative was a report
of more flu-like symptoms, which could simply have been caused by the flu
season. The teachers also reported improvements in students' behavior, including
better attentiveness and less aggression. She found most significant results in
the elementary classrooms, causing her to theorize that younger children are
more sensitive to the dirty power than older children. "This is consistent
with the effects of chemical contaminants," she says, adding babies and young
children whose brains are just developing are most susceptible to chemical
pollution.

Since conducting that experiment, Havas has dedicated much of her time to
additional tests measuring the levels of dirty electricity in many settings. "I
haven't been in any building that doesn't have dirty electricity," she says,
adding even her own home had levels higher than recommended. According to
studies conducted in the Republic of Kazakhstan, which is surprisingly ahead of the
industrial world in studying this phenomenon, levels higher than 50 GS units
are unsafe. The Kazakhstani scientists based this on studies using chicken eggs
exposed to varying levels. They found abnormalities in fetuses at levels 50
units and higher. Havas's home showed levels ranging from 300 GS units to 800.
And after conducting trials with people living with MS, Havas believes levels
should be below 30. "This is so earth shattering," Havas says.

Bowling installed filters in his two-bedroom condo, reducing his levels to
from 400 to below 30 and found he could suddenly sleep through the night,
something he had been unable to do for years. After seeing the results of the
filters himself and seeing the results of Havas's trials, he agreed to sellthem in
the Vancouver area.

But if dirty power is so hazardous, why do so many of us live and work in
electrically polluted areas without suffering any consequences? Havas says two
conditions much exist before a person would experience the ill effects. The
first is the existence of dirty power. There is no shortage of that. The second is
a sensitivity to it. "Not everyone responds to it," she says, adding a study
in Sweden where people self-diagnosed a sensitivity, two to three per cent of
the population said they experience problems when exposed to environments with
dirty power. But Havas estimates the real number of people with electrical
sensitivity to varying degrees, is closer to 30 per cent of the population,but
that they attribute it to other factors such as stress, or psychological
problems. With no funding for her research, Havas has no inbred bias to her
research, but lack of funding has also meant she has not been able conduct double
blind studies. Still, when the filters were installed in the homes of people with
MS or diabetes, about 60 per cent of them experienced considerable physical
improvement, she says.

One of her subjects was Brad Blumbergs, 28, who was diagnosed with
progressive MS when he was 25. When Havas met him, he could not walk without a cane or
railings. Since his diagnosis, he had lost 30 pounds and looked, said Havas,
like a drug addict. Havas installed 14 filters in his home and within threedays
he reported walking unaided. Two weeks later, Havas returned to videotape
Blumbergs and was shocked at his improvements. When she arrived, he was
shovelling snow from the driveway. He could walk forwards and backwards anddid a
little dance for the camera. "You can't even tell he has MS," she says, adding she
has seen similar results from others with M.S.

Although she has not tested her hypothesis, Havas theorizes that the dirty
power affects them so strongly because the sheath around certain nerves in
people with MS have been destroyed. The sheath is like the insulating coating on
electrical wires. When the sheath is destroyed, the nerve cells come in direct
contact with the body fluids. "So any kind of electrical signal will affectthe
unprotected nerve." Havas likened this to a lamp that has had holes cut into
its cord. If the cord is then placed in salty water, similar to the body's
fluids and the lamp turned on, the electricity leaks out into the water. "With
MS, the electricity is leaking out into surrounding tissue in the brain and
spinal cord and its causing signals to get mixed up."

Havas found equally dramatic results when she tested the effects of the
filter on people with types I and II diabetes and with people who are pre-diabetic.
One 80 year old woman with type I diabetes who required insulin injections
twice a day had very high fasting plasma glucose levels averaging 9.4 millimoles
per litre. One week after installing the filters at her son's insistence, her
levels dropped to 6.4 mmoles/L. "That is huge," says Havas. The amount of
insulin she required also dropped significantly. "What was really fascinating
with her," says Havas, "is that whenever she spent a day at the shopping mall or
the casino, her blood sugar levels shot up. "You can imagine how dirty a
casino would be with all the slot machines," she added.

Havas says Canada allows very high levels of high frequency radiation, but
other countries such as Russia, China, and the Eastern bloc countries insist on
lower levels. In Sweden, electrical sensitivity is a recognized health
condition and people suffering from it can claim disability insurance. LastOctober,
the World Health Organization held a conference on the issue in Prague at
which Havas spoke. She told delegates that her results were dramatic and warrant
further investigation. "If they are representative of what is happening
worldwide, then dirty electricity is adversely affecting the lives of millions of
people," she concluded.

But people sensitive to dirty power needn't retreat to a dark corner of the
forest where they can live like hermits without electricity. "The technology
is available and economically feasible," she says adding it shouldn't be upto
individuals to buy and install filters. That's a stop-gap, she says. Dunford
agrees. "Yes you can filter these things, but you should simply redesign the
system," he says, adding individuals could switch to a direct current system
(DC), like that of a fuel cell battery or solar panels. [However, converters
needed in solar systems create the high-frequency pollution, so using solardoes
not mean no electrical pollution. - Shivani] "For me, the solution is to use
DC. Then you don't get the problem at all." If that doesn't happen, Dunford
says, then the utilities should insist that manufacturers of high tech equipment
install filters on their products before they go to market, just as they doin
Europe.

B.C. Hydro spokesman Stephen Bruyneel said the issue is one for the
manufacturers of the products, not the utilities. [The American utilities' scientific
advisory body, E.P.R.I., researched the issue of electrical pollution, then
printed a book advising the utilities to change their wiring system to solve the
problem. Presently, more than 70% of the current returning to the substations
is doing so via the ground, because the wiring is so outdated for today's
loads. Unfortunately, E.P.R.I. is made up of utility representatives. You
will have to pay $25,000 for a copy of that publication. They are dedicated to
covering up the problem, not remediating it. One of the authors of the
publication said in court that she was unfamiliar with it. Another, addressing a
gathering of national utility representatives, advised them to “stall as long
as possible. Prepare for litigation.” -Shivani] Perhaps say Havasand
Dunford, but like the catalytic converter of vehicles, manufacturers may not do it
voluntarily. "But it just has to be done," she says.

FILTERING OUT THE DIRTY ELECTRICITY: The Graham Stetzer filter is really just
a capacitor that shorts-out or neutralizes the radio waves from 4 KH to 100
KH of energy while still allowing the 60 Hertz power to flow through. It costs
about $1,000-$1,500 to install enough filters to be effective in a home.  
[The filters cost $30 each. The “average” home requires 20. That is $600.  
-Shivani] For more information refer to www.stetzerelectric.com or contact
the Canadian distributor Pure Power Solutions at 1-705-654-3790 (phone and fax)
or [hidden email].

Illustration: * Colour Photo: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun / Milt Bowling stopp
ed the installation of nine microwave towers on the roof of his son's school.
* Colour Photo: Glenn Baglo,Vancouver Sun / Milt Bowling meters levels of
dirty electricity at Sir James Douglas elementary school. He says the
high-frequency power is just as tangible as smoke, and just as harmful.    



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hey, Shivani, I would appreciate more info that you announced you have to be
shared with us! But please let's make it as rational as possible.
For example, the sentence of below (from the article you forwarded) doesn't
seem to be even near truth...

"There is about 225 per cent more power coming
out of our televisions, computers, dimmer switches, fluorescent lights and
other technologies in the homes, than went in through the wires. "

Incidentally, I have myself been trying these days to get more rational info
from Graham Stetzer's but I am still far from the answer...
My point is that we are all the time "bathing" in various man made EMFs, and
just a very, very small part originates from dirty electricity. Anybody
equipped with even simple RF / ELF maters can prove so. The various meters
would show almost the same with and without Graham Stetzer filters.
Indeed, together with the filters you really can by some their specific
meters, that do show the difference, but that meters monitor the situation
WITHIN THE WIRES. The effect outside the wires is almost immeasurable!! (We
don't live in the wires, do we, so why should we be so much concerned with
the development within the wires??!!)
Shivani, if you don't believe me the above, please ask the GS people!
The only potentially negotiable issue is whether that very small and very
specific part of spectrum (that GS filters do remove) - is for some
mysterious reason extremely biologically important. I can potentially talk
about it, but only after the previous has been agreed upon... Unfortunately,
all that I have been able to see about GS filters seems to be hiding the
fact I am here emphasizing...

Drasko