electrical pollution

It occurs to me that it will save a lot of time if I post an article
about electrical pollution, as opposed to us having so many separate questions
to deal with because not everyone has the same background information on the
subject.

Electrical Pollution: What is it doing to you and yours?

   Electrical pollution is a major cause of health problems in the modern
world.  Electrical pollution, invisible, silent, odorless, tasteless, is the
perfect pollutant, as 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 the symptoms that we experience.  Most
people, even when exposed to levels and wave lengths that are literally killing
them, never notice a thing.
   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 www.electricalpollution.com/  Monumental.)
   Combine this with the fact that the electric utility companieshave chosen
the path of coverup rather than remediation, and are supported in this by
their state Public Service Commissions, and you begin to get an inkling of the
situation.  As one PSC official said in private conversation, "This will make
the tobacco industry coverup look like a gnat on a cow's ass."
   Let's start at the beginning.  What is electrical pollution and what
causes it?   If you look at the waveform of "clean" 60 cycle electricity on an
oscilloscope, you see a normal sine wave.  An ongoing series of gentle, very
symmetrical wave forms: a hill, a valley, a hill, a valley... appear on the
screen.  We pay for and assume we are getting this clean 60 cycle electricity
delivered to our homes, workplaces, schools, etcetera.  However, electronic gizmos
such as computers that use direct current dump high frequency harmonics back
into the circuits when they convert the AC to DC. Also, several very common
things such as fluorescent lights, dimmer switches and variable speed motors
distort the 60 Hz wave and create high frequency curents. As this occurs in
homes, offices, factories, schools, etcetera, along the way, the power getsmore
and more polluted as it goes along. (Each piece of electrical equipment that
uses electricity non linearly in this fashion should have its own filter built
into it at the factory.  Europe has much higher standards in this regard than
we.  American computer manufactures have to put an inexpensive RF filter in
the computers they export to Europe.)    
    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.
   It is possible to flick a switch on an oscilloscope that takesthe regular
"clean" 60 cycle out of the picture.  Theoretically, when you plug into your
household current and do this, you should now see nothing on the screen.  No
wave form.  But you will.  You will see, depending on how polluted your power
is, ugly jagged lines that jerk up and down and very likely pretty much fill
the entire window. This is electrical pollution, radio frequencies (RF) that are
extremely harmful to sensitive electronics and living beings.  Industry and
large corporations spend billions to protect their electronic equipment from
this, but nobody is looking out for humans.  To the contrary, we are assured by
the utilities and the agencies that supposedly regulate them, who know it is
not true, that there is not a thing to be concerned about.
   Perhaps you have heard of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and that it is
good to avoid them.  You may have read that strong EMFs are created by  your
refrigerator, hair dryer, etcetera.  This is true, but what is not commonly known
even by those who write on this subject is that the RF accompanying our
incoming power from the utility is the real culprit.  (Electric-utility-sponsored
"studies" use clean electricity.)
   Therefore, the electronics in your house are really a very small part of
the picture.  Your electricity is already extremely polluted when it enters
your home, from everybody "upstream,"  and it is mainly this RF pollution that is
really affecting you.  If you are hooked up to electrical service, high
frequency "toxins" can flow through your house, through YOU, 24 hours. a day
whether or not you yourself have anything in the house turned on.
    In fact, even if you turn off your power main, RFs can make their way
into your home via your water pipes and phone lines.  From there, theymove
through and on the linear metal items in your house, such as electrical wiring,
telephone wiring, water pipes, metal ductwork, etcetera and may even spreadout
across objects one usually thinks of as nonconductive, such as woodwork and
furniture.   
   If our water faucet spit out our neighbor's feces and toilet paper  when
we turned it on, we'd be outraged.  But this intangible polluted electricity is
causing us as much harm as that would.   Symptoms of RF (radio wave) sickness
include a wide range of 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” 
Editor Arthur Firstenberg lists proven RF symptoms. Can be obtained at (718)
434-4499 or see at www.electricalpollution.com/)   Childhood leukemia, a good
indicator, is markedly higher in areas with electrical pollution from ground
current.  (N. Wertheimer, D. Savitz &E. Leeper  Childhood cancer In relation to
indicators of magnetic fields from ground current sources, Bioelectromagnetics,
Vol. 16, pp. 86-96, 1995))
   Doctors are as ignorant of this situation as everyone else, sothe 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 where RF remediation has been
done, many kids with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) suddenly don't have it
any more, and teachers with mysterious maladies that kept them from workinga
full work week now don't miss a day.  Many chronic headaches and complaints of
chronic tiredness melted away.  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. (Electrical pollution takes its toll on
school, Ken Luchterhand, Melrose Chronicle,Thursday, February 12, 2004 Also see:
http://www.nfam.org/2003winternewsletter_electromagnetic_2.html) Power
quality electrician Dave Stetzer, my friend and mentor, finds that his blood sugar
skyrockets within minutes when he is exposed to RF, which for him has proven
to be the sole causative factor.  To date, the blood sugar of every person he
has tested is affected within minutes.)
Cows give about 10 more lbs. of milk a 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)  They give 20 lbs. a day more when ina
permanently clean electrical environment. (Conversation with power quality expert
Dave Stetzer of Blair, WI)   I myself have needed less thyroid hormone as my
electrical environment has been improved, yet notably more on days with more RF
exposure. [Since I wrote this my thyroid has recovered and I have been ableto
discontinue hormone use, after spending some time away from home in a
yet-cleaner electrical environment that allowed more healing than possible at home.]
   My own story makes a good illustration of both the effects andthe
challenges of dealing with them in a meaningful way.  We live in a Wisconsin
Winnie-the-Pooh three-acre beech and maple woods surrounded by farms and woodland.  It’
s not a place where you’d expect to find dangerous environmental pollution,
so that was not suspected when I began to have "spells."  Although I had always
had low blood pressure, I began experiencing terrifying spells of a sudden
and sharp rise in blood pressure with skyrocketing pulse rate and wild cardiac
arrhythmia.  I was taken to the ER by ambulance twice, but by the timeI got
there was pronounced normal. 
   $18,000 worth of medical tests, including an electrocardiogramand a MRI
of my brain, found nothing to account for these and other bizarre symptoms. 
Bewildered doctors finally pronounced that I was “ just having panic attacks" 
They prescribed beta blockers, which block normal stimulation of many bodily
systems including the heart, but these rendered me so zombielike that I refused
them.  Insomnia increased to the point where I was sleeping, in brokenbits,
from 3-5 hours a night.  I felt as if I was made out of paper.  Just breathing
and walking felt taxing.  My anxiety level was extreme, my adrenals were
exhausted and my thyroid needed help from hormone replacement.  Already slender, I
became a shadow. My husband had to care for me, and I wasn't sure I was going
to survive.
   I had previously read a bit about EMF, and it occurred to me to try some
experiments, such as sleeping in different places in the house.  (Our bedroom
later proved to be an extremely toxic electrical environment.) 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
Dave Stetzer, a power quality engineer deeply committed to making known both
the facts about electrical pollution and the coverup involved.  Dave generously
spent a lot of time on the phone teaching 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, indoors and out.   (Love
the one that has electrodes you tape on yourself, that goes ZZZZ! when you
touch things that put current through you, such as the metal parts of our stove
and refrigerator, some cabinets, the shower drain and bathroom water faucets,
and the water itself!)
    We put in shielded phone lines, moved water pipes, made the first few
feet of incoming water pipe nonconductive (Some RF still jumps onto the pipes
from house wiring.).  We gutted old electric baseboards that though disconnected
were broadcasting RF over large areas including our bedroom, and got all metal
out of and away from the bed.  We installed RF filters, removed dimmer
switches and fluorescent lights, sold the aquarium, got me a speaker phone and a
laptop computer I use on battery only....
   With each of these steps results were immediate and dramatic. The cardiac
symptoms ceased altogether, I was able to sleep, and my anxiety level
dropped.  My recovery has been steady and I am much better.   Only, however, to the
extent to which I am able to avoid RF.  I was exposed to extreme levels of
electrical pollution for many months, and remain electrically sensitive to date,
with quite-circumscribed activities.  Even at home, RF is not totally
unavoidable when the power is on.  I am markedly better on days spent away from the
house in areas free of ground current, and in warm weather when the main can be
off at night.
   Parts of our yard also have current levels that make them bad places to
hang out, which brings me to another part of the story. For every single
electron that leaves the substation, an electron must return to the substation.  The
utilities’ wiring system is capable of carrying the outgoing power,but most
need a major overhaul in order to be capable of carrying the current returning
to the substations.  With every year, as more and more current is used, and
more of the loads are electronic, the utility transmission system can return
less and less of the current to the substations via the existing conductors.  The
situation is exacerbated by the fact that the high frequencies in polluted
electricity do not like to be crammed back into a wire.  They spread out in what
is called "the skin effect."
   To deal appropriately with the present loads and the present levels of
pollution, E.P.R.I. (Electrical Power Research Institute, the advising bodyfor
American electrical utilities) says that utility companies should be using a
five wire system including an isolated neutral.  How are all those little
electrons presently getting home to the substation?  Across the surface of the
ground, through your home, through you.  Most people think the earth soaks up
electricity like a sponge.  It does not.  Electricity flows across the surface,
like water over a brick, or deeper in the earth.  Up to 70 -80% of thereturn
current these days is flowing back to the substations over and and through the
ground, terra firma. 
   How have the PSCs responded to this situation?  The PSC in our state (WI)
has given the utilities the nod to ground each electric pole giving the return
currents free access to travel across the ground and through your home.   If
an industry tried to use channels through people’s private propertyto
transport their pollution, what an uproar there would be.  Right?  Apparently not.
   These ground currents are called “stray voltage” by the utilities and
PSCs of WI, MI and MN, and defined by them as only affecting livestock.  Thus,
even if a human being dies due to ground current, the utility is legally
protected. 
   The affects on livestock are horrendous, as they have four uninsulated
feet on the often-damp ground or barn floor, and their feet are further apart
then those of humans so they take in more current.  Many cattle sufferterribly
before dying.  Autopsy of some of these poor animals reveals that theywere
essentially microwaved from the inside out.  The utility companies have highly
trained lawyers who often convince the uninformed jury that the farmer cared for
his cattle improperly or had faulty electrical equipment that “leaked”
current onto the ground and barn floor. (Even the cattle of Amish farmers who have
no electrical service can suffer, from ground currents that happen to pass
through their barnyard on their way back to a substation.)
   There are, then, two main dimensions to the electrical portionof the
present situation.  One is that the wiring system is in no way capableof carrying
the return currents, which then run in places that harm us.  The otheris
that the power quality is terrible in the first place.  If either dimension were
addressed, the situation would improve dramatically.
   So why not address it?  Excellent question.  The answer is "political." 
The Public Service Commission of each state is supposed to oversee the
utilities and look out for the well being of consumers.  But the PSCs seem to be
serving the utilities, not the public. 
   The power quality at our home had variants that were 11,000% beyond what
is allowable by state code.  Yet the PSC said it was fine. In one short phone
call,  their representative told me three “prevarications” so outrageous I was
utterly flabbergasted at his audacity.  The utility company itself, when we
requested a power quality test, ran a test that was designed not to look atthe
variants in question. (Which the PSC then winked at.)  This is like going out
at noon with a blindfold on, then coming in and saying that you looked all
over but didn't see the Sun, so it is not there today.
   But WHY are they doing all this?  Why won't they just fixit?
   The E.P.R.I. document summing up their five wire system recommendation to
the electric utilities is “available to the public,” but costs $20,000 a
copy, to ensure that you and I never read it.  (That is not a misprint.  It will
cost you $20,000 to read that booklet.)  My electrical mentor Dave read it,
though, so when he was the expert witness for the State of Michigan recently when
Michigan sued a large utility for running current on the ground, he had
subpoenaed the speech that one of the authors of that document made to a national
meeting of the electrical utilities shortly after helping write the document. 
This man, the chief electrical engineer of WI Electric, on the team that wrote
the document advising that all USA utilities go to the five wire system, did
not pass along that advisement to the utilities he addressed.  Instead, he
said "Stall as long as possible.  Prepare for litigation."
   Individuals who try to fight this setup by educating and helping others
are threatened.  Mysterious things happen to them, their jobs and finances. 
Newspapers that dare to publish elucidating articles are purchased by the utility
companies.  Investigative journalists are fired.  Lawyers about to represent
clients suffering from electrical pollution suddenly drop the cases and go to
work for the electric company....
   A gigantic coverup is in place.  Why are they doing this?  For the same
reason that the tobacco industry maintained a coverup for so long,  because
there is going to be hell to pay when the public finds out what electrical
pollution has done to them.
   Toxic electricity is a chronic, severe stress affecting virtually
everyone, that only increases as the pollution proliferates.  It is difficult for us
to determine just what it might be doing to us, because for most of us it is
always there.    Individuals who have cleaned up their immediate environments,
however, are now reporting dramatic improvement in a wide range of conditions
and symptoms, usually of conditions that they had never thought of as related
to electrical pollution.  If you want to know what it is doing to you,you need
bring the level of it down enough to find out.
  
   I offer the following points and ideas for your further consideration.
   - The belief that only ionizing (heating) radiation can harm living
organisms has absolutely been proven wrong, yet persists as the basis for “official”
exposure guidelines.   
- Both current induced into the body and current conducted into the
body enter the body more easily the higher the frequency. Also, the higher the
frequency of radiation, the less the body is aware of it. This is a
terrible combination, allowing great damage to occur without our being aware of it
at all. Yet official dogma insists that unless heat or a shock are created,
there is nothing to worry about.
   - Living organisms are sensitive electromagnetic systems running 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, to prevent actual shocks.  Remember that the frequency of the
field or current is the key factor!)
   - It appears that under this stress, people develop different conditions
due to their own inherent weakest links, so to speak.  One gets 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 are varied, different "windows" are created,
with varying effects upon living organisms.  US military research shows that
particular wavelengths cause different symptoms.  (The military know the wave
length that causes depression, the wave length that causes rage.  The
wavelength that incites crowds to riot....)
   - Each individual is a unique receiving antenna.  For instance, one's
height affects which wavelengths he/she receives most easily.  (Research shows
ants realign the way they hold their antenna and bodies when they are exposed to
EMF.)   Weight and fat/water content play roles, as do metals in the body.
     - Time of day seems to make a difference, perhaps because different
systems of the body are more active at different times.
   - The Earth's field fluctuates with time of day.  Sensitivity to the mi
nute fluxes in the Earth’s natural magnetic field is the most important component
of our circadian rhythms.   (Levitt, ibid., 118-120)
   -   Earth itself has a very strong field, however weevolved with that,
and it is DC.
   - Our natural body currents are DC, not AC.  AC is very damaging to living
systems, inducing currents within them which DC does not.
   - We are particularly sensitive to EMFs during sleep.  The effects of
spending eight hours asleep in a toxic electrical field are very serious.
   - If in addition such an area is on a geopathic energy line, cancer is
very likely.   (Before electrical service was available, researchshowed 92%
correspondence between cancer and sleeping on such lines.)   
   - 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.)
   -  The polarity of cells is disrupted by EMFs 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.  Tissues experiencing electroporation can be  assessed by impedance
measurements, MRI, or SPECT.
   - Melatonin production is decreased by exposure to EMFs. 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.
   - 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 itto
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.
   - Dr. Robert 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.
   - Dr. 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, theEarth'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. 
   - There is no such thing as “stray voltage.”  Dogs stray, electricity
does not.  "Stray voltage" is a term defined by the electric utilitiesas only
running through and affecting animals, not humans.  Therefore, "stray voltage
commissions" never have to consider complaints of human injury.  [Clear?]
   - 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. 
Learn more at www.microwavenews.com/            
   - Regarding effects of eating microwaved food, see article at
www.mercola.com/article/microwave/hazards.htm  (One interesting effectis that 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.  It
can also make one more susceptible to “population control” radiations.)
   - Some dowsers (who appear to use the magnetite in their foreheads while
dowsing, as animals do for locating.) say that the ground currents are
traveling on the Earth's magnetic grid lines.
   - Another dreadfully fascinating topic is the military use of electricity
and microwaves.  Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons technology used in the
Gulf War is apparently responsible for a good deal of the damage to veterans
resulting in Gulf War Syndrome.  The symptoms are almost exactly thoseof RF
toxicity.  The GWEN, HAARP and ELF 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 are "promptly debilitating."
   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.
   After you have discovered what electrical pollution has been doing to you
and those you care for, and begun remediation, please go on to educate others
and become an activist.  There is not an industry in this country withmore
political clout than the electric utilities.  They will change their ways only
when forced to.  We must bring that force to bear.

RESOURCES:
   Please get in touch with the author for much more information than could
be included here, including an e-booklet, Making It Better, describing in
detail household remediation techniques.
   A good introductory web site is www.electricalpollution.com.  You can
purchase the RF filters from Dave Stetzer's own site, <www.stetzerelectric.com>.   
Dave's concise and powerful deposition in the Michigan case is there as well
as several excellent research articles.   Also see http://emfacts.com/,
www.ortho.lsumc.edu/Faculty/Marino/Powerline  and www.emfguru.org.
   B. Blake Levitt's book ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS is a treasure chest of
information, including much not elsewhere readily available on the effects of EMFs
on animals and plant life.  Dr. Robert O. Becker's books CROSS CURRENTS, is a
"must read."  Call C.U.R.E at 715-564-3362 for an information-dense booklet
with 200 references. ( I suggest a $5 donation.) Out of print but still
available is Lucinda Grant’s HANDBOOK OF ELECTRICAL SENSITIVITY.
[Levitt, Becker and Grant were unaware of the high frequencies riding the
60/50 cycle at the time their books were written.]

copyright 2003
Shivani Arjuna
[hidden email]
920-994-4082



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

> It occurs to me that it will save a lot of time if I post an
> article about electrical pollution,

As stated on the "eSens" home page, general articles/discussions
about the dangers of electromagnetic radiation are off-topic.
There are plenty of other groups devoted to this topic, and
eSens does not need to be yet another such group.

This group is for people with electrical sensitivity to
help improve their situation and get their life back.

Thanks,

Marc