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California's "Wireless-Free" Zone
pangur writes: "In Wired, there's the story about how Arthur Firstenberg changed Mendocino, CA into a 'wireless-free zone' as a safehaven for those deemed 'electrically sensitive'. His critics claim that he is driving away any chance of a significant economy."
I would certainly be the first to admit that all these waves that we've been sending out and bouncing around for about the last hundred odd years could be harmful. Hell, I'm not even sure that it would surprise me. But I know there are great benefits to wireless networking (not to mention electricity), and good luck getting entirely away from signals and waves. Go to some third world underdeveloped country if you must, cause I don't think you're going to find it here.
Also, the very important point that what if some others in Mendicino like thier radio waves. I would certainly not want to see this guy's problem inflicted on everyone else in this community.
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
The following can provoke symptoms:
Laptop computers using their mains adapters Computer monitors (VDTs, VDUs) Televisions Mobile phones Fluorescent lights Pylons, substations Electric fields due to house wiring Electrical 'noise' in trains, buses and cars Battery-operated appliances Telephones, answering machines and faxes Refrigerators, freezers, electric cookers, vacuum cleaners etc. Fire alarms and burglar alarms Underground electric cables Hearing-aid induction loops
If the "electrically sensitive" people can't be near any of those, they might as well become Amish...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
Here is a good synopsis.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
As a physician, I feel qualified to answer this. The reason you are not allowed to use cell phones on the cardiac floor is because of interference with the cardiac telemetry monitors, not with pacemakers. Yes, *strong* magnetic fields and microwave radiation can interfere with pacemakers, but the cell phones are banned simply so the nurses at the other end of the hall don't see "funny things" on the monitors that are supposed to be showing the 3 or 12-lead EKG output from the patients.
People in mendo are really easily swayed by hysterical rantings, especially if they're involved with conspiracies and anti-"The Man". Much the way /. is about Microsoft. Crackpot theories are a pretty big market there.
At the university I attended the department of telecommunications (!) did a very simple experiment in this field: They found 20 people who (according to themselves) were very plagued by electrical sensitivity - in particular high-voltage power lines. They were then put - one bye one - into a grounded magnetically shielded room where the only source of electrical or magnetic fields was a high-voltage power line running below the ceiling. Then the power (1 kV 50 Hz) was turned randomly on and off, and the participants were then to give a sign through a window when they "felt" the power coming on - after all they were supposed to be sensitive to this. However the study found no correllation between the power going on and off and the signs that the subjects gave. Not even for one single subject. The study concluded that the only problem for these people was a too lively imagination.
-._''_.-
If one were really serious (ly-screwed-up IMHO) about this, one could construct their home as a Faraday cage. Just lay chicken wire around the entire frame (through the double-paned windows and attached to the steel doors' frame, and use conductive weatherproofing in the door jambs) and connect it all together (solder/weld/twist all points of all corners together) into one giant grounded box. All RF with wavelengths less than about one-tenth the gap of the chicken wire will be blocked (the same principle is used for the window on your microwave oven, it's also why you can see through some satellite dishes). If you want this home to have power, you'll want to hook the breaker panel to a large iron-core transformer which will act as a low-pass filter. A similar low-pass filter can be used for the phone line.
Such a home would be unable to recieve TV or radio, DSL or power-line networking would never pass through, cellphones and government-planted transmitter bugs would be dead inside, and you wouldn't have to worry much about lightning strikes either. Of course it would be cheaper to move out into the boonies.
Pure bliss huh?
*groan*
The eletromagnetic spectrum is so misunderstood.
There is a reason our eyes see the wavelengths they do. Visible light is just the right wavelength to elevate electrons to and induce chemical reactions w/out doing any damage.
Anything shorter (UV, xray) breaks bonds. Anything longer (microwave) lacks the energy to do any more than wiggle the molecule around, generating a bit of heat.
If these people stand in front of a fireplace and enjoy basking in its radiative heat, they are getting nailed by electromagnetic emissions of a much higher frequency (and intensity) than any cel phone/tower could produce.
It's probably front end overload of your reciever. If a signal is strong enough, you will hear it on every frequency.
There isn't much you can do. Try sticking a ferrite on any power cords attached to the reciever, and any other non-antenna cables.
As an unlicensed user of the radio spectrum, you pretty much have to accept any interference generated by any other part 15 device. It's possible his phone is malfunctioning, but it's more likely your reciever is just overwhelmed by it's signal.
You might want to ask him if he can relocate the base station part of it, or you can relocate the base station part of your equipment. That might help.
You could also just put metal screen inside all your walls, celing, and floor, that will solve all future interference problems for good.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Another Wired article linked on that page, Wireless Harmless, More or Less?, talks about research doing just what you have suggested. I didn't search around for the references to the research, but here is what the article said:
A double-blind test, properly run, should be able to eliminate any psychosomatic effects which would bias the testing of "electronic sensitives".
Sapere aude!
This better get modded as Informative......Is this guy aware of large sections of Pennslyvania where no electricity is used? I also know of several places in Indiana that have a large Amish community. Seriously if he is worried about his electo-medical condition why doesn't he move to a remote part of Montana. Errr wait all of Montana is remote.
Okay, I can't resist.
> Microwaves are intentional radiation and are used to TRANSMIT power, not always to simply carry a signal.
Microwaves are EM waves with a certain wavelength, not "intentional radiation" as you've stated. The largest generator of microwave radiation around is the Sun. Microwaves that are generated outside of microwave ovens are used almost exclusively for communications (which is not to say they aren't harmful, but not for the reason you state). Microwaves in ovens are EM waves with the specific wavelength that best transmits energy to water molecules. The microwaves used in tower transmitters is not. Also, microwave transmitters put out microwave beams that don't attenuate very much. It's why they're used; the signal can be thrown farther than a simple broadcast like radio waves because the beam stays cohesive, so most of your power goes down the transmit path, whereas with radio, most of the power goes everywhere but the receiving antenna. It's also why you need line-of-sight to use microwave communications.
The simple fact is that exposure to microwaves in the outside world is not increased to any real degree by the use of microwave transmitters. The exposure you get from standing in range of a microwave tower is smaller by powers of ten than the amount you're getting from the sunlight.
Of course, all of this discussion is offtopic to the original article, as they're not talking about exposure to microwave radiation. The original article is about someone working to eliminate broadcast transmitters to reduce public exposure to radio waves. The whole "electrically sensitive" thing seems to be a misnomer for sensitivity to induced magnetic fields, and I'm not sure why it's part of the discussion, but then sensibility never figured highly in these matters.
Virg
P.S. The law to which you refer has to do with preventing local governments from passing laws that would have excessive externalities. The main reasoning is the threat from a midwest community to prohibit satellite owners from sending down satellite transmissions within its confines. This would have precluded any satellite transmissions to anywhere in North America, as most satellites use a footprint of that size to transmit. And before you get all bent about how that exposes you to radiation, keep in mind that you need a concentrator (a dish) just to get enough signal to detect.
Mendocino, the entire country, is an object lesson for every Californian. Humbolt the city, and the rest of the country, was once staunchly conservative with a thriving economy in lumber. Than Cal State Humbolt set up shop. Thousands of students with empty heads showed up. Ivory tower professors showed up to fill their heads with ivory tower thoughts. Then the students started voting. Humbolt became a liberal mecca. The cancer spread throughout the county. Now Humbolt's economy is based on lawsuits and welfare checks.
Don't let this happen to your community. It happened to Santa Cruz. It happened to La Jolla. It happened even to Berkeley and Palo Alto, both conservative havens in the liberal bay area...until the voting age was lowered to toddlerhood. It's going to happen to Merced with the new UC. The only place this hasn't happened is when the university is in a big city. The old saying goes "if you're not liberal at 18 you have no heart, if you're not conservative at 68 you have no brain." Well, move a major university to a small town and you suddenly get more heart than brains.
I'm sure the guy in this story has his heart in the right place, but he certainly has no brain!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Yes exactly my point. Some of the marine radar setups are based on the same technology that caused all those state troopers to go sterile. Now on a sailboat 30 feet up the mast these pose no threat but on the roof a Nissan truck it's about 2 feet from the guys head. I'm not big on power boats but I think the rule of thumb is to put them on a tower at least 6 feet high.
There already exists a "Radio Free Zone" in the United States that is far more free of stray electromagnetic fields than Mendocino could ever hope to be. It is a very large area around the Greenbank Radio Telescope facility (and some military facilities) in West Virginia called the National Radio Quiet Zone.
s at /nrqz.html
If these kooks really want to be "free" from the EM spectrum then they should stop trying to take over the politics of Mendocino and force the locals to give up their technology so these "sensitives" can all move there. Instead they should just move to the 13,000 square miles of land already covered by the National Radio Quiet Zone. That way the people of Mendocino can enjoy their wireless technology and cell phones and the "sensitives" can live as sheltered an existence as they could ever hope to have.
http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/faculty/haynes/a
Does this use of inductive coils somehow reduce the available power at the other end of the wire, or is it just using "waste" energy and not affecting anything?
The inductive coils certainly will deplete the power from the power lines. In fact, those high voltage power lines are not even attached to anything directly at the near end, but run through a transformer, which uses two coils of wire to induce a lower voltage after the transformer.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
To translate for the irony deprived ... Dow Corning have now gone out of the silicon breast business because the expense of paying for their customers health bills and there is a demonstrably higher incidence of childhood leukemeas in children living near high power lines.
HOWEVER, this does not prove that microwaves are dangerous ... they might only possibly be dangerous.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
What you entirely neglect to consider are the dangers inherent to your proposed therapy. Why, millions of people may have already died from dihydrogen monoxide poisoning!!
More information can be found at http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?