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Danger Of Strong Electromagnetic Fields
blueworld writes "U.S. Department of Energy researchers have discovered a possible cause for reported illness around high voltage power lines. They found that rats' bodies produced high levels of ozone when exposed to strong electrical fields. Electrically grounded water produced the same result when exposed to the fields. Apparently, the water in our bodies may be responsible for the health risks of high voltage power lines."
it mentions that negative-ion generators produce ozone, but this hasn't been so for at least 10 years in which time the production of air filters has advanced to a level where a commercial generator only makes 10pAV ozone per cubic meter, which is so little it has zero effect on the environment.
Nothing like a little begging the question fallacy to get your day started. (Hint: there is no demonstrated evidence that being anywhere near a high power line is harmful at all. Witness the astounding lack of corpses of all varieties along the millions of miles of high power lines crossing the United States.)
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Its saying we are being cooked in exactly the same way a microwave oven cooks food. By vibrating the water molecules all over the place thereby generating heat...
Kinda scarey if its true...
Still, the study identifies another potential health risk. So, what are some ways that we can reduce the potential damage? Some sort of sheilding on power lines? Are there any materials that can cheaply stop this type of radiation and it's effects?
A diet high in anti-oxidants is one easy way to at least limit the damage... (Free radicals caused by the decomposition of 03 as it attacks are responsible for much of the damage. Anti-oxidants can help prevent this).
The funniest thing is that the ad links at the bottom of the article (at least when I read it, maybe they rotate those) were selling air ionizers... not sure if the makers of those things want to actually be associated with a somewhat negative article... <g>
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
It's clueless, actually.
Dihydrogen Monoxide: It really is the invisible killer.
The jump to link this observed creation of ozone with the popularly held belief that power lines adversely affect health is erroneous.
In the original study which created the popular myth that power lines cause illness, the authors correctly found a correlation between living in the proximity of power lines and leukemia rates but never found causation. After much debate it was revealed years later that traffic density has an even greater correlation with the observed leukemia rates and provides a well understood and now obvious causation -- pollution. It just happens that power lines exist in areas of greater traffic density. Unfortunately, the general public was never copied on the second corrected paper and to this day believe that power lines have adverse health effects, when they instead should be worried about pollution from traffic.
Although the article states that the creation of ozone around power lines could be a health risk, the quantity of ozone created for various transmission structures is never quantified and nor compared with ambient urban polution. Thus at worst it is yet another vehicle for the propagation of a scientific urban legend or at best a warning to shut of indoor air ionizers whose output of ozone can lead to concentrations in excess those present of ambient pollution levels.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
Let's all gather rats and put them under high voltage power lines and that pesky hole in the ozone layer will soon be but a memory!
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
There is very little interaction between chemical processes and power lines that are 20 meters away. That's because of Planck's constant: 6.626068 x 10-34 m2 kg/s. When you multiply normal events by a number that has a decimal point and 34 zeroes, the result is tiny.
Notice this paragraph in the article: "Goheen also cautioned that the rats had to be placed much closer to the electrical device than would be the case for most people and their ion air generators."
Someone who was able to show that there was, in fact, a strong interaction would immediately win a Nobel Prize, because he or she would have discovered a new kind of interaction between electromagnetic energy and chemical processes.
Because there is a specific health risk. The risk near a power line is NOT an URBAN LEGEND
I speak from doing a bunch of research on this problem, after finding out that Electromagnetic radiation was one of the seven possible causes for the cancer that I survived.
The electromagnetic field (EMF) is not harmful IN AND OF ITSELF. In conjunction with how the body works, some people are subject to some of it's effects. To whit: An EMF field will cause already existing cancer cells to grow faster than normal. Of itself, this is not fatal, as you have to have the cells in the body to start with.
Some schools think that the body causes cancer cells to grow all the time. The body's immune system then kills off the bad cells while leaving the good ones alone. In the presence of an EMF field, the body has to work harder, and once it loses the battle, the cancer will grow out of control.
As I found out, the transition out of such a field to the hospital for a week made me feel better, and when I re-entered the field for a while, I felt worse. The best decision that we apparently made for that time was to permanently remove me from the field, though we didn't know it was even there at the time (in hindsite, we recognized the source of the EMF)
Screw this! I'm getting away from my monitor until my ozone depletes.
Anyone know where I can get some clouroflourocarbons for lunch?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Yes, is it the water's fault. Not the radiation, no, the water.
So, if I cut my jugular vein, why do I die? Is it because of the knifet? No, it is because my heart pumps the blood out of me. The heart is to blame.
Hm?
Oooh... Anti-oxidants...
I believe I still have a copy of the article at home (I'm at work now). I had to make a special trip to the UCF library to read and copy the article when I first saw a reference to it. I'll look for it this evening.
The danger level is achieving 1 Telsa in the body. Now power lines may not reach that level (the EMF strength is reduced as the square of the distance after all), but things like electrical power meter boxes DO reach that kind of strength for a radius of 2-3 feet, and I was sleeping in such a field (there were 16 boxes on the other side of the wall. Based upon measurements of a single box in our house by the electric company, those boxes may have been producing as much as 25 Telsa at the point of my head, and less down the length of my body. That's thru a stone wall from the other side too.)
If you check out the listed causes of Lymphoma, you will find that EMF fields are listed as one of the 7 possible causes, though further research is tending in another direction.
When one spends 6 months fighting cancer and taking chemo, you do check out the possible causes VERY carefully so as to avoid a repitition.
Yet another reason to replace all the water in my body with scotch!
/.!
Thank you
So soon people forget the Saccharin f
...
7 00.html
This finding immediately triggered the threat of the so-called "Delaney Clause," a congressionally mandated provision that requires the Food and Drug Administration to ban--literally "at the drop of a rat"--any synthetic food chemical shown to cause cancer when ingested by laboratory animals.
Saccharin's reputation was further tarnished, however, in 1981, when the National Toxicology Program, referring again to the Canadian rat study, elected to put saccharin in its "cancer causing" list-- formally declaring it an "anticipated human carcinogen."
There was no scientific basis for such a classification of saccharin as a human cancer hazard.
Taken from: http://www.acsh.org/press/editorials/saccharin051
The pseudo science of it was that the rats were give enough saccharin to make a 55 gallon drum of soda...
On topic, I have an ozone/ion air cleaner and it does a great job doing what I want it to do... keeping the house smelling clean.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
No, I don't. Could you explain it to me?
What bothered me most about this article was not its suggestion that EMFs may be in part responsible for certain cancers. What bothered me was learning this research team failed to publish the results of an experiment which yeilded exactly opposite results from what they expected. Wouldn't this negative result have been just as valuable to the scientific community, even though it was not what was anticipated?
It makes one wonder how often this happens? How much more would we know if negative results weren't suppressed?
Nowhere in the text did it say who did that study and whether it had review of any sort. They continued this silliness... First Dumb question: How large were the rats and how much space did they take up in cage with the ionized air? Ok, I know it wasn't that much space, but don't ignore the effect.
Second dumb question: they're writing a research paper about three rats? Did they mention controls?
Third dumb question: How do KiloVolts relate to Ozone production? Shouldn't current also be a part of this?
Ok, Now I have to ask the question I've been asking for a long time while reading so much research of this sort: Who reviews this stuff? Why do we let these jokers get away with publishing such irrelevant twaddle in the guise of honest research? I've seen better high school science fair projects. These folks ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
>I do hope that you can provide a citation to this article which claims causation between EMF and cancer, because I am only aware of studies claiming correlation between the two.
Mistyped the 25 Telsa. More like 2.5 Telsa is probable, though the apartment complex in question is not ameniable to the electric company measuring the spot in question (afraid of a lawsuit I guess). Based upon an electric company measurement, a electric meter box will general a 1 telsa field thru a stone wall (on the other side of the wall of a cinder block wall). If, in a very small space, you have 16 such meters, you get much more that 1 Telsa. My head was sleeping inches away from that way for a period of about 6 months.
The article I quoted, and the statement I made above quite clearly stated that the EMF field is not the CAUSE of the cancer, but quite clearly is involved in it growing within the body. To quote the statement I made above, "It causes the cancer cells to grow faster". Nowhere did I say it caused cancer cells to be formed.
I mentioned that Lymphoma is suspected of being caused by EMF, but that is only a statistical link, and new research provides a more likely candidate.
If you don't read what I wrote carefully, how can I trust your research?
Oh, and the article that I originally found was some sort of scienctific journel. I had to go to the university library because the regular public library didn't carry the journel in question.
So the Iraqis cutting down power lines were right!
What about those machines where they put your head into a very strong magnetic field?
Apparently people feel very strange while exposed, and many describe feeling "in the presence of god".
Are these machines a health risk?
this is great!
now we can build a giant machine to fix the hole in the ozone!
wait, they did that in the second Highlander movie and it caused other problems.
maybe not.
This study is so bad, it's not even funny.
First, it attempts to justify something which has not been shown to be true, namely that living near HV power lines is harmful. Every properly-conducted study that studied rates of disease has come out inconclusive.
Second, this experiment studied effects of CORONA DISCHARGES (translation: HUGE SPARKS). If HV power lines produce corona discharges, they need to be immediately repaired. They do not do that normally.
Please keep these two facts in mind when considering anything else those "researchers" had found. Looks to me like we are looking at some amateurish attempt at doing research.
If ozone is the problem and it is generated by the electric field, then most of the studies done so far are irrelevant because they never measured electric field strengths. This will be rather difficult to study, as the lungs are most susceptible to ozone, and contributions to lung problems from smoking and air pollution will have to be subtracted. Smoking correlates with poverty level, and poverty level and the proximity of major roadways correlate well with each other and with the placement of high-voltage lines. It's going to be a huge statistical mess.
Note that I'm not worried enough to step away from the computer....
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Where's the semantic web when you need it?
Well what can you do to prvent this from happening because we need power and you can just get rid of it. I f you have read my journal you know how I feel about people in general, so once again this supports my theory of why humans should be killed off because these problems would not exist if we didn't and the longer we exist the more natural resources will be used up and therefore we are digging our own graves. So what we should be doing is saying bye bye to electricity, cause if we don't we wil be saying by to the earth, thats just opinion.
MonkeysKickAss
But what I totally miss here is a reaction mechanism or any other explanation. The usual link between HV and ozone comes from oxygen in air being ionized and then forming ozone.
However, I have never heard of such phenomenon occurring in (liquid) water - nor can I (being a M Sc. in chemistry) think of any probable (or even improbable) explanation. Perhaps any of the readers here can provide some insight?
The article is from IEEE Spectrum, Dec 1994, page 14. The quote about making cancer cells grow faster is on page 18. As I said earlier, it DOES NOT say that EMF CAUSES cancer, mearly that it makes it grow faster.
As for the numbers, I was doing that from memory, but the report from the electric company was in with the same file when I found it. The IEEE article suggests problems from 1Ut on up. At the meter box on the other side of the wall, approx 5G up to 46.4G was measured (note, not mg, which is used elsewhere on the document for lesser items).
My numbers were relative to each other but my units were off, as I had not looked at any of this for years. The basic facts remain. EMF IS a health hazard.
I don't expect you to take my word for the contents of the article, even if I scanned it and put it up here, since you don't seem the type to trust anyone, so you can look it up yourself.
Ah, dihydrogen monoxide...
They found that rats' bodies produced high levels of ozone when exposed to strong electrical fields.
I'm sure they emitted more than ozone when they first came in contact with the strong electrical fields. :-)
There are some possibly interesting points in the article, but it is definitely a bit short on details of the testing. Given the suggestion that ozone production occurred in a cage that had earthed(aka grounded) water in the bottom, I'd be very interested in seeing some carefully tested samples of the ozone level around power lines under a number of different conditions, including over water(both salt and fresh).
Of course, there would need to be a careful check to make sure that the problem was due to the power line and not some other extraneous factor such as an expressway, industry or something similar.
Re the comments about kV versus power -- the question is whether the problem is an electrostatic field or an electromagnetic field -- the electrostatic would depend on voltage where the electromagnetic depends on power, IIRC.
My current feeling is that these various studies that are somewhat short on hard science are simply a rationale for the NIMBY argument.
Solution: remove water from body. Voila!
Some have noted the incongruous ionizer ad on the page with the article. Others made statements regarding their own (apparently harmless) ionizer, or other relevant facts that seem to refute a basic point in the article. Well, they don't.
There is an optimum level of hyperoxides in the mammilian system. Too much and you get toxic damage and cell death. Too little and you get infections. This is the chemical portion of your immune system. You have an endocrine process for keeping it at the proper level. Your cells produce superoxide dismutase to rid themselves of excess hyperoxides (primarily hydrogen peroxide, H2O2). Things that suppress superoxide dismutase riase the amount of superoxides in your body and help fight infections. Up to a point.
Now, are anti-oxidants good for you? Only if you don't take too much, otherwise you weaken your immune system. Are hyperoxides (ozone, H202) good for you? Only up to a point, otherwise you fry your cells with oxidative stress. Then again, in some cases this isn't a bad thing. Cancer, which is cell reproduction and metabolism run wild, lives on anaerobic processes. Excess oxygen, particularly as hyperoxides, can kill it.
All of this is based on the work of Otto Warburg. He won the Nobel in medicine twice for this stuff. Its usefullness as well as its theoretical implications (which bear directly on the lack of understanding as to why this experiment would be significant if it holds up) are pretty much ignored these days, and that's a damn shame.
We're mostly equally ignorant of the finer implications of water in biological systems, ushc as the role of polymerized water at cell membranes. Two of the most important factors in life and we're terribly ignorant about both, making work such as this article fairly impossible for us to understand.
Not to be too down on the slashdotters in particular, it's pretty obvious if the researchers knew of Warburg's work, they were ignoring it. The government usually does. They'd prefer people not be too aware that air or water treated by exposure to UV rays can prevent or cure some illnesses. Up to a point. But up to that point, that's some other medicines people wouldn't have to buy.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
dihydrogen monoxide is dangerous!
I did some research on this years ago when I noticed a kindergarten right next to a major power substation. I ended up having a guy with a gauss-meter take readings from the place - and they were through the roof in all except 10 square meters of the place! Now - I'm not sure if electromagnetic fields are dangerous or not - and it's the sort of thing which could take 40 years to determine - like smoking! (I'm a smoker!) But it seems elementary to me, that small, growing human brains shouldn't be subjected to 6 hours a day of high levels of radiation! Further research shows that the highest levels of radiation in the home are often put out by cheap-ass clock-radios - and their fields extend 2 meters! So, a vast majority of people are sleeping with their brians inside a large elctromagnetic field. I'm only slightly paranoid, so I chucked out the clock radio, and replaced it with a straight timing device (output = effectively zero) and it turns on a stereo and a coffee maker in the a.m. :)
Someday I might be thankful for that decision - but maybe not too.
Don't think I'd ever buy a house close to power lines or a substation.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
That buzzing you hear when you stand near those big high-voltage towers is the coronal discharge eminating from the wires..it's obvious that when you are standing near these big power lines that you are in an electric field and that we are not evolved to handle these eviroments...it's probably better to keep as far away from these power transmissions systems as possible. I remember that 20 odd years ago some people theorized that the 60Hz (50Hz in europe) frequency affected internal cellular signaling systems (ion channels) in animal cells..it's common sense to avoid being exposed to uneeded electromagnetic fields of any sort. Example: being lazy and opening a microwave when it's running, sure, the door switch will eventually work (it may not), but that initial dose you get will cause early cateracts in your eyes...
I hope nobody is reading this and going "wow, strong electrical currents aren't good for the body". I know there have been studies and reports before on people living under powerlines and such and the ill effects it has on the body.
We tend to forget that the body is a collection of systems and messing with any of these systems can have a positive or negative effect. It's an mechanical system so applying too much pressure in the wrong area can break that part (stress the muscles, tear ligaments, break at a joint, etc). It's a chemical system and dumping too much (or having too little) of chemicals (drugs, minerals, etc) can wreak havoc on that system. It has an electrical system and only stands to reason that exposing it to large amounts of electromagnetic ratiation (or even direct electrical stimuli) will have some sort of effect on us. I think as people we tend to forget just how complex the body is.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The answer to the hole in the ozone layer is to install high-tension power lines in Antartica and tape millions of rats to the lines?
When you move a wire perpendicular to a magnetic field then it generates current in the wire. So your zipper would be a voltage source if you ran by a large magnetic field. This means your peter gets a zap - very dangerous.
Eat at Joe's.
The article cites the danger level as 1 U T where the u is a fancy symbolic one - probably your micro telsa.
The article quite clearly states that a field of 1 UT is enough to cause cancer cells to grow faster. For some people this is a health problem. For example, anyone that has any existing cancer cells.
You seem to have gotten fixed upon the EMF field CAUSING cancer, which is NEVER what I said.
Put HV on a somewhat pointy thing, in the mist, and the world is your lightning ball. The current is relatively small, however - climb up and grab on, as the raccoons do, for some HUGE SPARKS.
I bought this house and you know I'm boss
Ain't no h'aint gonna run me off
Known fact: Electrical equipment operating in air may produce ozone if there are electrical discharges. Most Slashdotters have probably smelled ozone in the vicinity of electrical arcs. (This may also be accompanied by the release of magic smoke.)
Known fact: Ozone is toxic at high concentrations. It is an irritant to the lungs, and it has been identified as a serious ground level pollutant in many cities.
Known fact: Those negative ion air fresheners contain high voltage components exposed to the ambient air. The negative ions they generate are electrostatically 'sticky' and can be quite good at pulling particulates out of the air. In operation, most also generate some quantity of ozone as an unwanted side product.
This experiment placed rats in close proximity to an electrical source at high potential relative to ground, purportedly similar to what might be found in one of those ion generators. Something (presumably corona discharge) generated ozone in its vicinity. In the cage, a toxic (or at least greater-than-acceptable) level of ozone accumulated.
The only feature of note is that the ozone accumulation only occurred when rats or a pan of grounded water were present. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that of course these things increased the ozone generation rate. They provided a path to ground, and they increased the humidity (and consequently the conductivity) of the air in the cage, which should lead to a more intense corona discharge.
Does this translate to a danger from outdoor power transmission lines? Well, it's tenuous at best. First, the outdoors is a very well-ventilated space; any ozone that was created would not accumulated. Most homes aren't too bad, either--even if they're well sealed, they've got a pretty substantial air volume to dilute ozone produced around you.
The researchers looked at very extreme conditions: referring to their abstract, they placed the rats 1 cm from a 10 kV source. Power line electric fields of that magnitude are never seen in a residence. The authors note in their paper that the electric fields they used were an order of magnitude or more greater than those seen even for individuals standing directly beneath a transmission line. The authors also acknowledge that recent studies have tended to support the notion that moderate electromagnetic fields pose little or no risk. If someone went out and measured the ozone levels in homes near power lines, then I might find the power line theory more convincing.
~Idarubicin
I'm not sure how much of this thread is intended for humor or trolling, but... you seem to imply that Electric fields are independent from Magnetic fields, which is incorrect.
Electric fields are intimately related to Magnetic fields: a changing electric field creates a magnetic field. In other words, Magnetic fields are produced by charges in motion.
Hence, an "alternating electric field" would create an alternating magnetic field... which might explain the "M" in EMF (depending upon your intended expansion of the acronym).
Of course, analyzing the effects of EM on humans requires consideration of its structure (amplitude, frequency, duration, etc.), so the fact that one is "strong" and "brief", while the other is "weak" and "continuous" is (empirically) a reasonable basis upon which to hypothesize that the human effects of one might not apply to the other.
As for the potential "mechanisms involved" in any "adverse biological effects", without empirical evidence, it cannot simply be deduced that they are "bound to be entirely different". In fact, both being EM in nature, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that they will share at least some effects on the human body (though to varying degrees dictated by their individual EM structures).
I had a physics prof in university who had what seemed to be a really good explanation for why cancer could be higher near the power lines. He used it in one of our classes.
Basically, the closer you are to a power source, the higher the voltage coming out of the wall sockets in your home. It's not always exactly 110 Volts (here in North America), because it varies quite a bit, depending how far downstream you are.
Add this fact to the known fact the television CRT emissions can cause cancer, and you can see that the emissions from the TV would be stronger and more lethal closer to a power source. Here is an indirect cause that sounds reasonable to me. It's something that should be investigated, at least.
Of course it's the water in our bodies (of which 80% of our bodies are made up of)...it could never be the high power lines themselves, could it?!?! Isn't that like saying, it wasn't the bullet that shot him that killed him, it was the his tissues that tore apart that killed him.
I seem to recall reading that the people "affected" by power lines tended to live on the downwind side, leading to speculation that the HV corona effects (well-documented) might charge fine dust particles and make them more likely to precipitate out, clump up, or otherwise have greater effects in the immediate vicinity than they would otherwise. There are plenty of studies showing that e.g. PM10 particles are dangerous to people, so anything which makes them hit folks near an HV powerline more than people further away would be a mode of harm which has nothing to do with the direct influence of the EM field.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Yeah, but what crazy loon would go commando with zippers? and what if you're a girl?
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.