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Does power corrupt?

by MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT

from Tuesday's Globe and Mail, posted 28/03/06



Kevin Byrne is a man in the prime of his life who feared he had an old 
man's problems. Last summer, he was devastated by chronic back pain and 
thought his hips were about to give out.

"I'm thinking, gee, I'm 47 years old and I'm going to need hip 
replacements already," he said.

The hip pain was the beginning of a strange personal odyssey for Mr. 
Byrne, a technical writer who lives in Newcastle, a bedroom community 
east of Toronto. He is now convinced his ailment wasn't a sign of 
premature aging, but an allergy to one of modern society's ubiquitous 
substances: electricity.



No one knows how many people are sensitive to electricity. Scientific 
debate is intense over whether the condition exists or is a figment of 
people's imagination. Some estimates place the number afflicted at a 
handful out of every million. Others view it as more common but still a 
tad unusual, perhaps a few individuals out of every thousand.

Mr. Byrne counts himself among those unlucky few. He began researching 
the topic when a neighbour expressed the belief that electricity was 
dangerous. In an act of desperation brought on by constant pain, he did 
something he initially thought was off-the-wall. He spent $1,000 on 
filters that, much like surge protectors on a computer, clean up 
fluctuations and surges in the electricity flowing in the wires around 
his home.

"When you're in a lot of pain, you'll do just about anything. So I was 
sort of grasping at non-medical straws," he said. "I didn't think they 
would work, to tell you the truth. I thought I was probably wasting my 
money."

But within a couple of days, after months of pain for which his doctor 
could find no cause, he started feeling fine again. "I said to my wife, 
'This has got to be the placebo effect,' " he said, referring to the 
well-known medical phenomenon of patients reporting that they are cured 
of illnesses after being given a sugar pill doctors suggest will help 
them.

Mr. Byrne also noticed another odd health effect after he cleaned up 
his power, convincing him that electricity was at the root of his 
problems. Both he and his wife suddenly began to sleep more soundly and 
his dreams became "incredibly real and very vivid."

Stories such as Mr. Byrne's are not isolated tales. In fact, they're 
becoming increasingly common, rising in lockstep with homes filled to 
the brim with electronic gadgets and the proliferation of wireless 
technologies.

Symptoms of electrical sensitivity include the joint pain Mr. Byrne 
experienced, but also a bewildering array of other common problems most 
everyone feels at one time or another, such as fatigue, headaches, poor 
sleep quality with frequent wakefulness, ringing in the ears, 
depression, difficulty remembering things, and skin rashes. The list of 
symptoms has created speculation that some cases of sick building 
syndrome, where people working in buildings complain of nausea and 
headaches, might be due to electrical sensitivities.

Madga Havas, an associate professor at the Environmental Studies 
Department of Trent University who is an expert on the health claims 
about electricity, says she receives "almost a call a day" from people 
who say electricity is making them ill and they can't find help in the 
medical system. "It's not just from Canada. It's usually from the 
States as well," she says.

She thinks the condition is more widespread than commonly thought, and 
speculates that for some people, exposure to electricity causes 
physiological stress, producing symptoms of tiredness, difficulty 
concentrating and poor sleep.

The possibility of such a widespread health impact from electricity is 
greeted with skepticism in the electricity industry, where such an 
effect would have wide-ranging consequences.

"We don't have support to suggest that there is electrosensitivity in 
members of the population," says Jack Sahl, a manager of safety and 
environmental issues at Southern California Edison, a large U.S. 
electricity provider.

The industry position has been bolstered by studies showing that most 
of those who say they have allergies to electricity are unable 
consistently to detect the presence of electric currents in laboratory 
experiments.

Medical authorities and scientific researchers have consequently been 
baffled over these wide-ranging claims of ill health, not only in 
Canada and the United States but in Britain and other European 
countries. In Sweden, the electrically sensitive are so numerous they 
have established their own self-help and lobby group.

Those with the condition bristle at suggestions their symptoms are 
imaginary. "This is not psychosomatic at all. . . . We're not 
delusional," says Susan Stankavich, who lives near Albany, N.Y., and 
says her problems developed after a large cellphone tower was erected 
near her home. She's had debilitating headaches, among other symptoms, 
and can barely tolerate being under fluorescent lights.

Reacting to this rising tide of claims of a new illness, the World 
Health Organization issued a fact sheet in December on the allergies, 
which it dubbed "electromagnetic hypersensitivity" and likened it to 
multiple chemical sensitivities.

The WHO says the "symptoms are certainly real" and "can be a disabling 
problem for the affected individual."



Reports about sensitivity to electricity began with the introduction of 
computers, predating the recent spread of Wi-Fi and cellphone towers, 
which release a related but more powerful type of electromagnetic 
energy than that produced around electric wires.

There have been long-running concerns about the possible health effects 
of electricity because it is a source of both electric and magnetic 
fields, invisible lines of force that surround all power lines and any 
power-consuming device, from the lowly kitchen toaster to a computer. 
Electric fields are always present near power wires and appliances, 
even when devices are turned off, but magnetic fields are generated 
only when devices are on.

The nerves in living things work on electrical impulses. So do other 
biological processes, such as the voltages in hearts detected using 
electrocardiographs. This has given rise to worries that man-made 
electricity fields, to which humans were never exposed before the 
modern era, might be biologically active, just like chemical pollutants.

The WHO has been looking at electrical sensitivity as one aspect of a 
larger investigation into the health effects of the cocktail of 
electromagnetic fields enveloping people in modern societies via 
everything from power lines to cellphones. It says that exposure to 
electromagnetic fields represents "one of the most common and fastest 
growing environmental influences, about which there is anxiety and 
speculation spreading."

Until now, most of the medical researchers looking at electricity and 
health have searched for links to cancer, rather than the 
fatigue-related symptoms the electrically sensitive claim.

The cancer research has linked childhood leukemia to power-line 
magnetic fields. About 5 per cent of the U.S. population is regularly 
exposed to fields of the strength associated with leukemia in children, 
a percentage that is probably similar in Canada. For adult leukemia and 
brain tumours, some studies have found links to electricity, as they 
have with Lou Gehrig's disease, but the research is less conclusive 
than that for childhood leukemia.

Richard Stevens, an epidemiologist at the University of Connecticut 
Health Center, has been studying electricity for nearly two decades, 
and first advanced the hypothesis that the use of electricity is a 
factor behind the rise in some cancer rates in developed countries. He 
says there is strong evidence linking the use of night lighting to 
cancer because exposure to light at night disrupts people's production 
of the hormone melatonin.

But he's unsure what impact the fields around electric wiring and 
devices might be having. Some studies have found that magnetic fields 
suppress melatonin in animals, something that might explain the 
allergy-like symptoms, but this effect hasn't been observed in humans. 
"Whether or not magnetic fields have any effect at all, I do not know," 
Dr. Stevens says.

The allergy-like symptoms are a far different medical condition than 
the cancers Dr. Stevens studies, and some researchers are speculating 
that a possible culprit is the recent deterioration in the quality of 
electricity flowing in power wires.

Power quality is a well-known problem in the utility business, caused 
by the proliferation of computers, lighting dimmer switches, energy 
efficient bulbs, and other modern electronic gadgets. These new devices 
cause a more complicated use pattern for electricity than old-fashioned 
items such as incandescent bulbs, producing negative feedback involving 
high-frequency peaks, harmonics and other noise on electric wiring.

The way to picture the quality effect is to imagine that electricity is 
like water flowing in a pipe. An incandescent bulb uses electricity 
steadily, just like an open tap allows a constant flow into the sink. 
Computers and other modern devices use power in variable amounts, 
similar to turning the tap on and off, or any setting in between, 
causing water pipes to clang.

This deterioration in power quality has been going on for years and 
would have likely escaped public notice, except that when home 
computers became popular in the 1990s they would frequently crash or 
malfunction because of it.

The change in power quality means more variable electromagnetic fields, 
and possibly more biologically active ones, are associated with 
electricity than there used to be. This is a possible explanation for 
the rise in electrosensitivity complaints in the view of Denis Henshaw, 
a professor at the University of Bristol in Britain, who is an 
international authority on the health effects of power transmission 
lines.



He says that if electricity were flowing in a constant way, most 
people's bodies would likely adapt, but with all the interference from 
modern devices, the resulting fields are too variable for people to get 
used to. "We just don't get to adapt to these because they don't have 
any special pattern to them," he said. "There is no proof of this, it's 
just an opinion."

In Canada, Dr. Havas has been investigating whether the deterioration 
in power quality has led to sensitivity. To this end, she's been 
installing filters that clean up the interference on electrical wires 
to see if people notice.

In 2003, she installed filters in a Toronto private school where a 
student was electrically sensitive for a six-week test, three weeks 
with the devices and three weeks without them. Half of the teachers who 
responded to her questionnaire said they felt health improvements, such 
as being able to concentrate better and feeling less tired, when the 
filters were in place. Even more unusual, the teachers, who were not 
told what the research was about, reported that 60 per cent of their 
classes showed improvements in student behaviour when the filters were 
installed.

Based on this finding, Dr. Havas estimates that perhaps half of the 
population may have some sensitivity to electricity.

In another test, she installed filters in the homes of people with 
multiple sclerosis, a disease that might be reactive to electricity 
because it is associated with poor sheathing on nerves. Brad Blumbergs, 
29, says his MS improved so much last year that he could walk without 
shaking and could even run again. "It allows me to retire my cane," he 
said. "It hasn't cured me, but my symptoms are a percentage of what 
they used to be," Mr. Blumbergs said.

Dr. Havas has presented some of these findings at scientific 
conferences on electrosensitivity, but the work hasn't appeared in the 
gold standard of research, the peer-reviewed scientific journals that 
would confer more legitimacy on the results.

The utility industry's Mr. Sahl is skeptical about efforts to improve 
power quality, which generally cost about $1,000 to handle one home, 

and calls them a "waste of money."

He agrees that the action may make some people feel better, but only 
because they're affected by the power of suggestion and not by the 
power of electricity. "I hate to be blunt about it, but there is this 
well-established effect in science and we've studied it over and over 
and it's called the placebo effect."

That doesn't ring true to Mr. Byrne. He says his sensitivity might have 
been prompted by his decision last year to conserve energy by replacing 
much of his home's simple incandescent lighting with high-efficiency 
compact fluorescent bulbs, some brands of which cause the power-quality 
problem.

He's become so convinced that electricity can make people sick that 
he's set up a website, offering tips to fellow sufferers on how to 
alleviate their symptoms, such as urging them to throw out their dimmer 
switches and limiting exposures to electronic gadgets. When it comes to 
electricity, Mr. Byrne says, "I think people should automatically begin 
changing their lifestyles."

 


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