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: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.