Slashdot Mirror
English DJ Claims Wi-Fi Allergy
path0$ writes "British Ex-DJ Steve Miller claims that his Wi-Fi allergy is making his life one big misery
, forcing him to live in an iron-clad home far from any neighbors. According to the article, more and more people are suffering from an allergy like his. The only positive side to this is that at least Miller didn't think of suing anybody yet, like these people did,
who claim to suffer from the same condition and were mentioned in a Slashdot article in 2008."
Most people with decent hearing find TV aisles uncomfortable - it's either too many random TVs putting out the same audio minutely out of synch, or the high-pitched squeal that comes from any CRT being multiplied by a couple dozen. The EMF signals are hardly the most irritating thing that a TV can put out.
Personally, I'll start taking it seriously when at least one so-called sufferer can reliably report the appearance or disappearance of his symptoms in coordination with a randomly cycled emf source in a credible, double-blind experiment.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
A properly scientific proof of this would most likely qualify him for the JREF challenge. If he can physically detect relatively minor electromagnetic radiation on these frequencies, he could win himself a million dollars. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html
Quite right. People who claim to be "allergic" to modern technology invariably fail to prove it in properly designed double-blind scientific tests. In extreme cases, you find people who claim to be allergic to anything "artificial", be it synthetic fibers, plastics, electronic equipment, automobiles, or any one of a thousand other modern conveniences. Their complaints are real, but the root cause is psychological, not physical.
Some EHS (electro-hypersensitivity) sufferers go so far as to line their rooms and clothing with aluminum foil to supposedly "shield" themselves. In the most extreme cases, they move out into the country and adopt a 19th century lifestyle to completely divorce themselves from the modern world. Of course, they're still being exposed to EM radiation even in remote areas, as AM and shortwave radio transmissions span the globe, not to mention the EM radiation emitted by the sun. But once they believe they are safe from EM radiation, their symptoms abate.
Some of the RFID units operate at extremely low frequencies - down in the kilohertz range. The lowest I've seen is in the 130-140 kHz range though.
These units usually use a LARGE coil as an antenna. There's a good chance the coil changes shape slightly with the duty cycle of the signal (lower than the carrier frequency) - this probably results in some audible energy coming from the security system coils. It may be such a low volume or at a frequency just outside of the normal human hearing range so that it can be "felt but not consciously heard". (This is a similar phenomenon to the well-known "GSM bleeps" - You can't hear 900 MHz or 1900 MHz RF, but you CAN hear when something in the environment rectifies it and low pass filters the signal envelope, because the GSM TDMA frame repeats at around 440 Hz.)
Similarly, CRT TVs often have horizontal refresh rates in the 15-16 kHz range, right in the upper end of the human hearing range. If the transformers in these TVs malfunctions slightly, they'll vibrate at this frequency. Really cheap/defective/failing monitors and TVs will make enough noise at hsync to be heard. I remember we used to have a monitor we had to junk because you couldn't use it for more than 20 minutes without developing a headache - it started squealing softly at hsync frequency.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm embarrassed to say that I've experienced this. I was horrified to learn that they were installing a cell tower on top of an apartment building I was living in at the time. The day it was supposed to go online, I could "feel" it; I started getting dizzy and nauseous going up in the elevator. A few weeks later, I learned that there was a delay and they hadn't even powered the thing up until a week later. Fortunately, finding this out "cured" me of what was essentially a phobia and I haven't had a problem since.
It's not the CRT that makes the noise, it's the flyback transformer, which is being driven by the horizontal sweep oscillator, which is oscillating 15750Hz.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This submission was posted by sampenzus which means it's just more idle crap polluting the front page.
In 2005, a systematic review looked at the results of 31 experiments testing the role of electromagnetic fields in causing ES. Each of these experiments exposed people who reported electromagnetic hypersensitivity to genuine and sham electromagnetic fields under single- or double-blind conditions.[1] The review concluded that:
"The symptoms described by 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to electromagnetic fields can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' is unrelated to the presence of electromagnetic fields, although more research into this phenomenon is required."
Seven studies were found which did report an association, while 24 could not find any association with electromagnetic fields. However, of the seven positive studies, two could not be replicated even by the original authors, three had serious methodological shortcomings, and the final two presented contradictory results. Since then, several more double-blind experiments have been published, each of which has suggested that people who report electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to detect the presence of electromagnetic fields and are as likely to report ill health following a sham exposure, as they are following exposure to genuine electromagnetic fields.