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Seeds for Change Wellness
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Electrical Pollution- What is it doing to you and yours?
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, and 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 the symptoms we experience. Most people,
even when exposed to levels and wavelengths 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.
Combine this with the fact that the electric utility companies have chosen the path of cover-up
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 cover-up 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, everywhere. 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 currents.
As this occurs in homes, offices, factories, schools, etcetera, along the way, the power gets more
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 do. 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 takes the 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, and all electrical
appliances. 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, they move through and on the linear metal items in
your house, such as electrical wiring, telephone wiring, water pipes, metal ductwork, and might
even spread out 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. Read it 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, 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 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
working a full work week now don't miss a day. Many chronic headaches and complaints of
chronic fatigue 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]
Dave Stetzer’s, my friend and mentor, 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 www.electricalpollution.com] They give 20 lbs. a day more
when in a 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 able to 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 and the 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 time I got there was pronounced normal.
$18,000 worth of medical tests, including an electrocardiogram and 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 zombie-like that
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. 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,
or 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, you name it.)
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 cover-up 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. (I loved the one
that has electrodes you tape to 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 even 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 body for 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. Most electricity flows across the surface, like water over a brick. Up to 70 -80% of the
return current these days is flowing back to the substations over and through the ground.
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
property to 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 suffer terribly before dying. Autopsy of some of these poor animals reveals
that they were 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 portion of the present situation. One is that
the wiring system is in no way capable of carrying the return currents, which then run through
places that harm us. The other is 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 at the
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 fix it?
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 the system by educating and helping others are threatened.
Mysterious things happen to them, and to their jobs and finances. Newspapers that dare to
publish elucidating articles are bought up 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 cover-up is in place. Why are they doing this? For the same reason that the tobacco
industry maintained a cover-up 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, and 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 to 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
knows the wavelength that causes depression, the wavelength that causes rage, and 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 minute fluxes in the Earth’s natural
magnetic field is the most important component of our circadian rhythms. [Levitt, Electromagnetic
Fields, 118-120] Earth itself has a very strong field, however we evolved 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, research showed 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, etc., 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 as its wavelength, 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.
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, 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.
There is no such thing as stray voltage. Dogs stray, electricity does not. "Stray voltage" is a term
defined by the electric utilities as only running through and affecting animals, not humans.
Therefore, stray voltage commissions never have to consider complaints of human injury.
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 the article at www.mercola.
com/article/microwave/hazards.htm (One interesting effect is 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.) Another article is Hidden Hazards of Microwave Cooking.
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 those of RF toxicity. The GWEN, HAARP and ELF ground wave transmissions are
another silent and imperceptible exposure for Americans. (I live in Wisconsin, home base to ELF.
My body tells me they play with it on Friday nights.) "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 are few
industries in this country with more political clout than the electric utilities. They will change their
ways only when forced to. We must bring that force to bear.
RESOURCES:
A good web site is www.electricalpollution.com. You can read about the RF filters there, as well,
or at Dave's own site, www.stetzerelectric.com. Click on "power quality." Dave's concise and
powerful deposition in the Michigan case is there as well. 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 book 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.
Please get in touch with the author for much more information than could be included here,
including numerous household remediation techniques.
Author: Shivani Arjuna, 2003 Sarjuna@aol.com Phone: 920-994-4082
Source: Wellness Directory of Minnesota
Electrical pollution is a major cause of health problems in the modern world. Electrical pollution,
invisible, silent, odorless, and 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 the symptoms we experience. Most people,
even when exposed to levels and wavelengths 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.
Combine this with the fact that the electric utility companies have chosen the path of cover-up
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 cover-up 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, everywhere. 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 currents.
As this occurs in homes, offices, factories, schools, etcetera, along the way, the power gets more
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 do. 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 takes the 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, and all electrical
appliances. 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, they move through and on the linear metal items in
your house, such as electrical wiring, telephone wiring, water pipes, metal ductwork, and might
even spread out 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. Read it 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, 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 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
working a full work week now don't miss a day. Many chronic headaches and complaints of
chronic fatigue 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]
Dave Stetzer’s, my friend and mentor, 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 www.electricalpollution.com] They give 20 lbs. a day more
when in a 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 able to 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 and the 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 time I got there was pronounced normal.
$18,000 worth of medical tests, including an electrocardiogram and 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 zombie-like that
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. 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,
or 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, you name it.)
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 cover-up 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. (I loved the one
that has electrodes you tape to 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 even 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 body for 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. Most electricity flows across the surface, like water over a brick. Up to 70 -80% of the
return current these days is flowing back to the substations over and through the ground.
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
property to 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 suffer terribly before dying. Autopsy of some of these poor animals reveals
that they were 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 portion of the present situation. One is that
the wiring system is in no way capable of carrying the return currents, which then run through
places that harm us. The other is 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 at the
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 fix it?
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 the system by educating and helping others are threatened.
Mysterious things happen to them, and to their jobs and finances. Newspapers that dare to
publish elucidating articles are bought up 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 cover-up is in place. Why are they doing this? For the same reason that the tobacco
industry maintained a cover-up 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, and 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 to 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
knows the wavelength that causes depression, the wavelength that causes rage, and 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 minute fluxes in the Earth’s natural
magnetic field is the most important component of our circadian rhythms. [Levitt, Electromagnetic
Fields, 118-120] Earth itself has a very strong field, however we evolved 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, research showed 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, etc., 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 as its wavelength, 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.
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, 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.
There is no such thing as stray voltage. Dogs stray, electricity does not. "Stray voltage" is a term
defined by the electric utilities as only running through and affecting animals, not humans.
Therefore, stray voltage commissions never have to consider complaints of human injury.
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 the article at www.mercola.
com/article/microwave/hazards.htm (One interesting effect is 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.) Another article is Hidden Hazards of Microwave Cooking.
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 those of RF toxicity. The GWEN, HAARP and ELF ground wave transmissions are
another silent and imperceptible exposure for Americans. (I live in Wisconsin, home base to ELF.
My body tells me they play with it on Friday nights.) "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 are few
industries in this country with more political clout than the electric utilities. They will change their
ways only when forced to. We must bring that force to bear.
RESOURCES:
A good web site is www.electricalpollution.com. You can read about the RF filters there, as well,
or at Dave's own site, www.stetzerelectric.com. Click on "power quality." Dave's concise and
powerful deposition in the Michigan case is there as well. 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 book 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.
Please get in touch with the author for much more information than could be included here,
including numerous household remediation techniques.
Author: Shivani Arjuna, 2003 Sarjuna@aol.com Phone: 920-994-4082
Source: Wellness Directory of Minnesota