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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.
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
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.
Where on earth did you live that you were subjected to an EMF field of 25 Tesla?! A typical MRI machine only generates a magnetic field of about 1 Tesla (see, for example, this link), and high magnetic field laboratories only achieve magnetic fields on the order of 10 Tesla with specially designed electromagnets powered by very high currents with lots of cooling (see, for example, this link) and only within small (maybe a cubic foot) volumes. 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.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
I thought about it, and realized it applies to point sources, while a power line is a linear source following an inverse law, at least when one is closer to the line than the line is long.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
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).
A 1T field will cause a hammer to stick to it almost a meter away, and walking near it with metal-toed boots will make you feel lighter. It will also erase credit cards, etc. 2.5T is an absolutely massive magnetic field. You can generally only get it with superconducting magnets, because you need a completely throbbing amount of current in a toroid.
I highly think your numbers are really really wrong. By that argument, a compass would still point towards an electric meter box from well more than 10 feet away! (If it's just the static field from a net current, it'd be an absolutely huge distance away : 2 miles! The static field from a net current drops as 1/D, not 1/D^3).
It should also be noted that magnetic induction is vector, not scalar: it doesn't add simply. Likely if you had several in a room, you could get any combination of all of the fields, including zero.
I would believe 2.5 mT, not 2.5 T. Even that's still a huge field. 1 A, at 1 meter, will give you about 1 milligauss. At 1 foot, then, it'd be *3* milligauss, or so. Maybe 9 if it's a bunch of conductors. Say 10 milligauss.
You'd then have to have 1 million amperes of current to generate 1 T.
Check those numbers again.
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
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
Microwave Fallicy #1:
Water vibrations heat the food.
This is true as much as saying that Jews were killed in WWII. It is not wrong, but it is faaaar from complete.
Fact is any molecule with polarity (including H2O) will be subject to molecular vibration. The nature of the vibration is the molecule moving in alignment with the magnetic feild. In essence, I make a wave in a pool, and the water molecules move as I directed. This makes the molecules rub together, creating friction.
2.4 Ghz has nothing to do with the ressonance frequency of water, which is what you claim by claiming that water molecules heat the food. I can melt metal in a microwave, and the metal has no water in it. But it is made of molecules that have polalrity. It takes several hours, but you can get it to 1000C where most everything melts.
Fallicy #2:
You can't put metal in a microwave.
This is an over simplification again. A lot of those disposible pasta cups come with metal rings and you nuke that too. The rule comes about because shape is vially important. Between two points, (like on a fork) you can get an arc to form, which would create a fire if in the presense of a flammable material. So the general rule is don't put it in because it s too hard to explain the science to a layman.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
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.