Electrical Noise Causing Physiological Stress?

el johnno writes "The Globe and Mail is reporting on possible physiological problems caused by so-called 'dirty electricity.' Poor power quality caused by electrical feedback and harmonics from consumer electronics are cited as a possible cause of various 'physiological stress' problems. While previous research in this area looked for connections between EM fields and cancer, some research is now looking into possible connections to fatigue, headaches, depression, and other symptoms. From the article: 'If electricity were flowing in a constant way, most people's bodies would likely adapt, but with all the interference from modern devices, the resulting fields are too variable for people to get used to.'"

Comments

Re:Electric fields cause fiscal irresponsibility

[arivanov]

Quite likely.

If this was true anyone working in a UPS environment would be a sick nutter. Just take an oscilloscope and see the crap some "branded" dual conversion models spit out.

Re:Same with WiFi and cell phones

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Our RF exposure is only marginally greater when close to devices such as WiFi hotspots because of the immense amount of background EMI from TV and Radio broadcasts, satellites, CB and business radios, power transformers and a million other things.

Not least of which is the Sun; Earth's number one source of electromagnetic waves in every frequency. What's important here is that unlike solar radiation, which is largely random noise, man made EM radiation is generally ordered and harmonic. Overwhelmingly, most RF signals come from time harmonic sources.

Our brains and bodies are chaotic systems. Ordered signals are bad for them. Apparently epilepsy is a sudden bought of order in the brain. It's entirely possible that some people, or in deed all people to a degree, are sensitive to any resonances in their body with time harmonic signals.

Engineers sometimes scoff that EM radiation is at such a low level that it cannot harm anyone. But engineers very often make the mistake of not accounting for resonance

Re:Subsonics/Supersonics

[hankwang]

Its the magnetic coils controlling the flyback that induce minute occilations in themselves and surrounding metal that cause it I believe.

Then the question is: what is the difference in a construction between a computer CRT and a television CRT that causes the former to be relatively silent? I always assumed that it is the deflector coils that are driven at the hsync frequency. Those coils are big and actually driven at that kind of frequency.

So to dissolve this dispute, I just did an experiment. With a good microphone, I recorded my TV set and then I looked at the waveform in Audacity. I counted 79+/-0.2 oscillations over 5051 microseconds, which gives an acoustic frequency of 15640 +/- 40 Hz for this PAL television. The PAL standard is 625 lines at 50 Hz, factor 2 interleaved, so the hsync frequency is 625*50/2 = 15625 Hz. This is within the margin of error equal to the observed acoustic frequency, which provides strong support for the hypothesis of the horizontal deflection coils causing the high-pitched tone.

For comparison, NTSC is 525 lines at 60/2 Hz, which gives 15750 Hz.

Note that I used an electret microphone which is not sensitive to the magnetic field emitted by the deflection coils.

No it isn't

[GuloGulo]

"It is more than obvious now that we there is a serious problem with some people having a suceptability to certian frequencies and that those frequencies may not be the same for everyone affected."

So, since it's more than obvious (huh? What is "more" than obvious?) you should have no trouble providing the peer reviewed research.

The fact that you've assumed something is more than obvious, despite a dearth of supporting research, calls your motives into question.

"The fact that experiments may not show true correlation for specific frequencies does not disprove the problems."

Really? I thought that's exactly what they showed. Silly me.

How can we take you seriously when you dismiss the research you don't like and drawn a conclusion you do like (based on NO research) all in the same post.

Basic problems with this concept: intensity

[Ancient_Hacker]

There's a lot of problems with this hypothesis:

1. If it were true you'd expect stronger fields to make a bigger effect than miniscule ones.
2. Therefore driving past a 500,000 watt radio or TV transmitting antenna should cause much much much greater symptoms than a 0.0000001 watt emissions from "dirty power". No such effect.
3. People that are exposed to high EM fields, such as airport workers, tower light replacers, cell site testers, plasma physicists, industrial RF welders, TV technicians, walkie-talkie testers, they should all be really sick. Like 100,000 time ssicker than the average Joe or Jane Doe. They're not.
4. At the neurological level, the voltage spikes from your nerves are 1,000's of times a bigger EM field than anything from outside your body. It's hard to imagine how a signal that's much weaker than your nerve impulses can have a noticeable effect.
5. EM fields includes light, particularly sunlight. Sunlight hits you with almost 1,000 watts per square meter, many powers of ten greater than any other EM field, and most people think sunlight feels *good*, not bad.

Too many basic objections to this idea. Move on.