So here's a thing

[westie101]

One of my duties involves visiting customer's who are concerned about Electrical & Magnetic Fields (http://www.emfs.info/).

Requests for a survey are few and far between (as they are not in the news a lot(?)) and I actually have two at the moment, a bit of a problem until today as the test instruments were away for calibration!

Now in all the surveys I have done the highest readings have always been near household appliances! In fact in one house the parents had taken to sleeping downstairs away from an LV line, right above a tumble dryer in the basement that gave the highest reading in the house.

Just wondered what general thoughts were on this subject?

 

[RF Lighting]

Usually nutters who know nothing about electrickery isn't it?

 

[ricicle]

Wasn't it 'proved' ? that the HV lines operating at 275/400kV would hold all the 'bad' particles in the air in suspension around them so anyone living nearby was susceptible to breathing them in

 

[JohnW2]

Wasn't it 'proved' ? that the HV lines operating at 275/400kV would hold all the 'bad' particles in the air in suspension around them so anyone living nearby was susceptible to breathing them in

Quite possibly

It's interesting how often it transpires that those who get seriously excited about this sort of perceived risk are heavy smokers, inveterate boozers or spend all their spare time jumping out of planes or climbing mountains. The concept of 'relative risks' clearly isn't taught very well in our schools!

Westie, once you've done your measurements (and hopefully 'reassured' them) maybe you have a duty to warn them that they are at some risk of their house being struck by a meteorite?

Kind Regards, John.

 

[westie101]

Ah I'm not allowed to comment on the measurements, I can tell the customer what they are, take them where the customer wants but all we do is provide information. It is up to them to decide if they perceive a risk!!

 

[Paul-man]

Funny you should say that- it was in the news yesterday!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14887428

Apparently 5% of Americans believe they suffer from hypersensitivity to electricalmagnetic fields!

 

[JohnW2]

Apparently 5% of Americans believe they suffer from hypersensitivity to electricalmagnetic fields!

I guess that proves that such fields are harmless, then

Kind Regards, John.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

FGS - all they need to do is wear a tin-foil hat!

Everyone knows that. They have the added benefit too of blocking government mind-control rays.

 

[JohnW2]

Ah I'm not allowed to comment on the measurements, I can tell the customer what they are, take them where the customer wants but all we do is provide information. It is up to them to decide if they perceive a risk!!

Do you literally just give them the numbers, or do you also give them some reference information to aid them in interpretation? The numbers alone would certainly mean nothing to me (and I probably know a bit more about such things than does the average man-in-the-street)!

Kind Regards, John.

 

[JohnW2]

FGS - all they need to do is wear a tin-foil hat!

Bonded or floating?

Kind Regards, John.

 

[Taylortwocities]

Here's a fine example of a 'bonded' metal hat

 

[bernardgreen]

In fact in one house the parents had taken to sleeping downstairs away from an LV line, right above a tumble dryer in the basement that gave the highest reading in the house.

Which measurements are taken ? The "radiations" from a LV line carrying current will be different in nature to the "radiations" from internal wiring to a machine that is not taking current. The LV line will produce complex magnetic and voltage fields while non current carrying wiring will probably produce only voltage fields. It is possible the magnetic fields affected the parents while they were insensitive to the voltage fields.

That said the human brain is very probably affected by these fields and some people may be extra-ordinarily sensitive / receptive to particular types of radiated energy.

One instance I was aware of was a hospital doctor who appeared to know when his pager was being called even if it was switched off. The only explanation is that his subconscious brain was receiving the radio paging transmissions and recognising the two specific tones sent to trigger his pager.

Some people seem to be moving to pick up a telephone before it actually rings.

There was a world war II project to investigate the possiblity of people with sensitive brains being trained to "hear" radio transmissions in their brains. Later in the 1970's there was a mention of a similar project by a research organisation.

 

[westie101]

Do you literally just give them the numbers, or do you also give them some reference information to aid them in interpretation

After customers enquire our customer services folk send them a huge information pack and web addresses to search on.
I visit, get the readings and pass them on for cutomer services to write to the custmer with them.

Which measurements are taken

Voltage and magnitic field strengths.
The voltage field increases with the line voltage, but is blocked by the structure of a house so any affect from outside lines is only magnetic, Similarly the magnetic field is current dependant and is not blocked so in most cases is the only one that is actually worth measuring.
I recently saw an advert for paint that will block EMFs, looks like a nice scam as magneitic fields need large amounts of expensive metal shielding to block them!

To give some idea of magnetic fields, the office is usuallu around .02 micro Tesla, yet my LCD computer screen is in the .05 - .07 micro Tesla range. Very low figures as anything below .4 is deemed not a problem (this s the limit set by the various government bodies (I've never taken a reading above that figure)

 

[cajar]

That said the human brain is very probably affected by these fields and some people may be extra-ordinarily sensitive / receptive to particular types of radiated energy.

One instance I was aware of was a hospital doctor who appeared to know when his pager was being called even if it was switched off. The only explanation is that his subconscious brain was receiving the radio paging transmissions and recognising the two specific tones sent to trigger his pager.

Some people seem to be moving to pick up a telephone before it actually rings.

There was a world war II project to investigate the possiblity of people with sensitive brains being trained to "hear" radio transmissions in their brains. Later in the 1970's there was a mention of a similar project by a research organisation.

I'm really surprised to see you taken in by this sort of national enquirer stuff, Bernard. Had you down as a far more evidence based, reality focused kind of guy.

These sorts of claims have been investigated in the past in good faith, and one comment from the scientist writing the report on one of the experiments says it all really "we conducted the tests to ascertain whether the subject could tell if a mobile phone placed within one of 10 boxes was switched on or not. Her success rate was comparable with chance, but was affected greatly if the subject was pre-informed which box contained the working mobile phone."

 

[JohnW2]

I'm really surprised to see you taken in by this sort of national enquirer stuff, Bernard. Had you down as a far more evidence based, reality focused kind of guy.

I have to agree with you. A lot of serious objective research has been undertaken into the sort of alleged phenomena to which Bernard refers and, to the best of my knowledge, none have ever succeeded in producing evidence that such phenomena are real.

Having said that, brain cells are sensitive to very small electrical stimuli, so it is not theoretically impossible that voltages induced by sufficiently large electromagnetic fields could be perceived, or even have 'effects' on brain function. A lot of research is currently going on in that field, not the least in the search for methods whereby such technologies as 'artificial sight' could communicate with the human brain in a 'wireless' fashion (since current research methods involve surgically-implanted 'wiring'). I therefore don't think that we should dismiss phenomena such as Bernard described out of hand, but we certainly should stick with an evidence-based approach, and hence not to believe in any such things unless/until some evidence comes into existance.

Kind Regards, John.