“Electric and magnetic fields, or EMF, are emitted from electrical devices or anything that uses electricity. Earth currents are low electrical currents found in soil. Natural activity deep within the earth causes some of these currents along with above ground electrical energy to produce low magnitude electrical currents. Transients and high frequency noise or signals come from the wiring of buildings, and from the use of common electrical devices found in homes and offices. The noise is created when electrical current is transmitted and interrupted.
“In these characterizations of electrical pollution, high frequency signals pollute regular electrical currents traveling in wires and currents through the earth. To better understand the background for the causes of electrical pollution, it is helpful to learn the basics of how the electrical current works.
“Regular “clean” power enters homes, buildings, and offices at 60 Hz. The increased use of electrical power overloads electrical grid base, which distributes the power. Power is “dirty” or polluted when it contains the high frequency signals flowing through overloaded wires, and not just clean 60 Hz power.
“The pollution of electricity is often compared to how water is polluted. At the source, water is clean. It is what comes with the water and pollutants along its path to the recipient that makes the water harmful to humans. However, like water pollution in many ways, electrical pollution is complex and often difficult to understand for the common consumer. The causes are varied and sometimes cannot be identified with certainty. However, the bulk of overloaded electricity bases can be attributed to the reliance on electrical appliances in today’s environment.
“In the 1950’s, the National Electrical Safety Code required a neutral wire to return wire to utilities. In this code it was forbidden to use the earth as a neutral return. This was a worsening problem in rural, farm areas where the currents were being returned to the soil affecting the feeding of animals. Later, the Public Service Commission allowed utilities to use grounding rods to serve as neutral wires for return. This was done instead of increasing the size of the neutral rods. Installing ground rods is a less costly solution than making the neutral rods larger in size. The grounding rods serve as an alternate and additional pathway for the energy to return to the substation instead of to the earth.
“Those concerned about electrical pollution say the size of neutral wires to make sure energy is returned to its source needs to be much larger. The current regulated size of the neutrals is not large enough to handle the load due to the greater use of electricity. The currents that are not properly directed are emitted into the environment or into homes or offices where electrical devices are widely relied upon by consumers. Neutral wires are not often sized for the modern electrical load. Power that is misdirected into the earth or home environments contains a much higher frequency that the 60 Hz classification making it “dirty” or unclean.
“Dr. Robert O. Becker, author of Cross Currents and the Body Electric stated that “I have no doubt in my mind that at the present time that the greatest polluting element in the earth’s environment is the proliferation of electromagnetic fields. I consider that to be far greater on a global scale that warming”.
“The high frequency currents most commonly created by computers and other electronic devices are circulated by various wires and systems, emitting the high frequency currents into home or office environments. Many cases have been documented where decreasing the amount of “dirty” electricity has lessened the effects of health problems and complications. Some of those health problems being attributed to electrical pollution include fibromyalgia, attention deficit disorder, asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, and asthma. There are also cases that detail that electrical pollution aggravates other preexisting conditions like multiple sclerosis and migraine headaches.(2)
“The diseases of civilization or lifestyle diseases include cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes and are thought to be caused by changes in diet, exercise habits, and lifestyle which occur as countries industrialize. I think that the critical variable which causes the radical changes in mortality accompanying industrialization is electrification. Beginning in 1979, with the work of Wertheimer and Leeper, there has been increasing evidence that some facet of electromagnetic field exposure is associated epidemiologically with an increased incidence of leukemia, certain other cancers and non-cancers like Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and suicide. With the exception of a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum from infra red through visible light, ultraviolet light and cosmic rays, the rest of the spectrum is man-made and foreign to human evolutionary experience. I suggest that from the time that Thomas Edison started his direct current electrical distribution system in the 1880s in New York City until now, when most of the world is electrified, the electricity carried high frequency voltage transients which caused and continue to cause what are considered to be the normal diseases of civilization. Even today, many of these diseases are absent or have very low incidence in places without electricity.
“When Edison and Tesla opened the Pandora’s box of electrification in the 1880s, the US vital registration system was primitive at best, and infectious disease death rates were falling rapidly. City residents had higher mortality rates and shorter life expectancy than rural residents. Rural white males in 1900 had an expectation of life at birth of over 10 years longer than urban residents.
“Although the authors of the 1930 US vital statistics report noted a 58.2% cancer mortality excess in urban areas, it raised no red flags. The census bureau residential electrification data was obviously not linked to the mortality data. Epidemiologists in that era were still concerned with the communicable diseases. Court Brown and Doll reported the appearance of the child- hood leukemia age peak in 1961, forty years after the US vital statistics mortality data on which it was based was available. I reported a cluster of childhood leukemia a decade after it occurred, only because I looked for it. Real time or periodic analysis of national or regional vital statistics data is still only rarely done in the US.
“The real surprise in this data set is that cardiovascular disease, diabetes and suicide, as well as cancer seem to be strongly related to level of residential electrification. A community-based epidemiologic study of urban rural differences in coronary heart disease and its risk factors was carried out in the mid 1980s in New Delhi, India and in a rural area 50 km away. The prevalence of coronary heart disease was three times higher in the urban residents, despite the fact that the rural residents smoked more and had higher total caloric and saturated fat intakes. Most cardiovascular disease risk factors were two to three times more common in the urban residents. Rural electrification projects are still being carried out in parts of the rural area which was studied.
“It seems unbelievable that mortality differences of this magnitude could go unexplained for over 70 years after they were first reported and 40 years after they were noticed. I think that in the early part of the 20th century nobody was looking for answers. By the time EMF epidemiology got started in 1979 the entire population was exposed to EMFs. Cohort studies were therefore using EMF-exposed population statistics to compute expected values, and case-control studies were comparing more exposed cases to less exposed controls. The mortality from lung cancer in two pack a day smokers is over 20 times that of non-smokers but only three times that of one pack a day smokers. After 1956, the EMF equivalent of a non-smoker ceased to exist in the US. An exception to this is the Amish who live without electricity. Like rural US residents in the 1940s, Amish males in the 1970s had very low cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality rates.
“If this hypothesis and findings outlined here are even partially true, the explosive recent increase in radiofrequency radiation, and high frequency voltage transients sources, especially in urban areas from cell phones and towers, terrestrial antennas, wi-fi and wi-max systems, broadband internet over power lines, and personal electronic equipment, suggests that like the 20th century EMF epidemic, we may already have a 21st century epidemic of morbidity and mortality underway caused by electromagnetic fields. The good news is that many of these diseases may be preventable by environmental manipulation, if society chooses to.(1)
Sam Milmam’s Dirty Electricity Website: