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"Wi-Fi Refugees" Shelter in West Virginia Mountains
The 13,000 sq mile U.S. Radio Quiet Zone is an area in West Virginia where all wireless transmissions are banned because of the large number of radio telescopes located there. (This official page shows a map of the Zone; an old Wired article is fascinating reading.) These high-tech telescopes have attracted unlikely neighbors, people who claim to have Wi-Fi allergies. In recent years, scores of people have moved to the area to escape the "damage" that electromagnetic fields can cause them. From the article: "Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication. 'It's a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner,' she says. 'You become a technological leper because you can't be around people. It's not that you would be contagious to them — it's what they're carrying that is harmful to you.'"
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity :
The majority of provocation trials to date have found that self-described sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to distinguish between exposure to real and fake electromagnetic fields,[2][3] and it is not recognized as a medical condition by the medical or scientific communities.[4]
[2] Rubin, James; J Das Munshi J, Simon Wessely (March–April 2005). "Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: a systematic review of provocation studies". Psychosomatic Medicine 67 (2): 224–32. doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000155664.13300.64. PMID 15784787.
[3] Röösli M (June 2008). "Radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure and non-specific symptoms of ill health: a systematic review". Environ. Res. 107 (2): 277–87. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2008.02.003. PMID 18359015.
[4] http://www.cdc.gov/search.do?q=%22Electromagnetic+hypersensitivity%22+&btnG.x=20&btnG.y=5&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&ud=1&site=default_collection
The first link in TFA is all about an additional approval process required for transmitters in the region so that they do not adversely affect the Radio Telescopes. The second link says basically the same thing.
.. we miss you.
Come back Taco
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Actually, having grown up there in West by god Virginia, I can tell you that the Greenbank radio observatory area is very lovely and populated with very smart people doing very good work.
The Hillbillies that you are talking about are more from Bluefield.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
I'm pretty sure we have no idea what wifi, cellphones, etc. are doing to us.
Yes we do. We've studied it do death. At the absolute worst it might cause a tiny, tiny bit of increase in certain cancers and / or cause some local radiative effects near the antenna. It probably doesn't cause anything above the noise floor of people dying from the Usual Suspects. In other words, if you're worried about that cell phone, put down the damned cigarette first. And buckle your seat belt.
It's like how mercury was first treated... we all just think it's fine and laugh at anyone who says otherwise because we don't experience the problem or haven't seen it with our own eyes. But, we really have no idea.
Actually, Mercury was readily identified as an industrial poison soon after it became widely used (Mad as a Hatter).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
In the case of televisions, we know that many humans can hear the 16-18KHz scan frequency they emit. And you're not hearing the electron beam itself; you are hearing tiny, electromagnetically-induced vibrations in the oscillator circuitry.
Probably a similar explanation for the RFID scanners. An oscillating circuit can induce physical vibrations at some harmonic of its base frequency, if some component of the device just happens to be resonant at that harmonic.
My point is, your experiences are easier explained as auditory coincidences than as RF sensitivity.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Spoken like someone who knows nothing of the south. Lemme guess, you come from California, right?
No, WV is NOT part of the Bible Belt. It's not even part of the South. In fact, it split away from regular Virginia during the Civil War because that part of the state agreed with the Unionists, while the other part of the state became the capital of the Confederacy.
The "Bible Belt" is really the Deep South, which is MS, AL, GA, etc. The people of WV probably have a lot more in common with the people of western PA and eastern KY than anyone in the Deep South.
Probably this story from last January.
Heard the same story, only it was a ham radio. It's likely apocryphal in any case, though it would not surprise me to learn there's an actual event obscured by the retelling.
Regardless, the GP has the right idea. I've heard of blind tests of "EM sensitivity" done in the past, with results that unambiguously showed a purely psychosomatic condition - that is to say, the subjects felt sick when they believed they were being exposed, regardless of their actual exposure, and felt fine when they believed they were "safe". But to the patient, this is always going to be met with denial. "Can you believe that doctor thought it was all in my head! Where the hell did he learn medicine? I don't like being called crazy, I'm going to go to my homeopath for advice from now on!"
Partly this is the fault of our culture labelling all mental health issues under the broad brush of "s/he's crazy". Nobody wants to admit that there could be anything wrong with their head, ergo all psychosomatic illnesses are attributed to external causes, sensible or otherwise. The prevalence of quacks and snake oil salesmen ready to cash in on the latest hysterical bandwagon only makes the problem worse.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Be careful. Some allergies, like food allergies or poison ivy, get WORSE with each exposure. Some people just have itchy throat from nuts until one day they stop breathing after eating some.