Electrosensitivity

Rod Reid who runs the support group ElectroSensitivity-UK, has collected case histories from many sufferers, some of whom are forced to live in isolation, on a restricted diet, without modern comforts, such as electricity or heating, because they have developed multiple chemical sensitivity in addition to their electrosensitivity (also referred to as electro-hypersensitivity or EHS).

If early warning signs are not heeded, some EHS sufferers can go on to develop allergies to almost everything in their environment, and in extreme cases this can include any source of light.

So what are the early warning symptoms?
In 2002, a group of German doctors made a plea for stricter safety limits on mobile telecommunications technology, which included a list of symptoms based on their clinical observations of patients exposed to EMR in their daily life. In this document, known as the Freiburger Appeal, they state that, “One can no longer evade these pulsed microwaves. They heighten the risk of already-present chemical/ physical influences, stress the body’s immune system, and can bring the body’s still-functioning regulatory mechanisms to a halt,” causing:

1. Learning concentration and behavioural disorders (e.g ADD)

2. Extreme fluctuations in blood pressure, ever harder to influence with medications

3. Heart rhythm disorders

4. Heart attacks and strokes among an increasingly younger population

5. Brain-degenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s) and epilepsy

6. Cancerous afflictions: leukaemia, brain tumours

Moreover, we have observed an ever-increasing occurrence of various disorders, often misdiagnosed in patients as psychosomatic:

1. Headaches, migraines

2. Inner agitation

3. Chronic exhaustion

4. Sleeplessness, daytime sleepiness

5. Tinnitus

6. Susceptibility to infection

7. Nervous and connective tissue pains, for which the usual causes do not explain even the most conspicuous symptoms

Not everyone who is exposed is affected to the same degree, or manifests the same symptoms. As a Homeopath used to treating the individual and not the disease I do not find this surprising, but this is often given as a reason for the reluctance in the UK to acknowledge that EHS exists, so the real cause goes untreated and the patient may be persuaded that their illness is psychosomatic.

Recently a new provocation study, to look at whether or not people reported symptoms when exposed to mobile phone mast frequencies situated within the Psychology Department at Essex University. We need to ask why research funds were found for a psychological appraisal, when biophysicists in this country find it so hard to fund research into the bio-chemical and bio-energetic effects of different frequencies on the human body.

Some people who volunteered for the Essex study were rejected on the grounds that they were too sick, and others were cautious in volunteering for fear that any exposure would make them sicker, so it is difficult to see how the results from this study will move the debate forward.

In 2005 the Health Protection Agency (HPA) issued a statement recognizing that some people experience ‘hypersensitivity’, but did not acknowledge that they were being affected by EMR. Only in Sweden and Germany are there retreats designed for people needing to recover from EHS.

In Sweden, EHS has been a recognized disease since 2002, and there is government sponsored support for those who need to live and work in EMR free environments to stay healthy. Olle Johansson, Professor of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute, and an expert on the effects of EMFs, was quoted as saying that he estimates “around three percent of the UK population will display hypersensitivity with maybe ten percent to 15% affected in some other way”. (The Guardian, April 10, 2004).

Two years on, and the experts are still trying to draw attention to the need to exercise the precautionary principle with regard to health and safety, as the electrosmog around us grows ever denser.

Source: Read the entire article, The Risks to Health from EMR