The Electrophobes
Posted by Motherboard on Tuesday, Jul 14, 2009
We explore the controversial subject of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, the umbrella term for a host of weird medical conditions supposedly brought on by an allergy to the electric fields emitted by all the electronic gadgets and dealers we surround ourselves with. A lot of doctors think that it’s bullshit, but a lot of EHS sufferers think that they’re bullshit. We think… well, we’re really not sure what we think.
Several countries around the world have done research into this condition but so far only Sweden actually recognizes it as disability (though to be fair they’ve also got heavy-metal addiction on their books). Symptoms can be somewhat nebulous and that seems to be what puts off the majority of medical doctors. For the majority of sufferers they range from chronic headaches to fatigue to vomiting to pins and needles.
But for some people their reaction is far more severe and they are forced to take extreme measures in order to remove electromagnetic radiation from their lives—reverting to hermit-like existences in the countryside, far away from technology and only venturing out in protective clothing.
Sarah Dacre had to flee from her fancy city life to the British countryside to try and escape from electricity. In London she’d had to paper her house in tinfoil lined wallpaper and could only leave under the safety of metal lined clothes and fine metal-weaved beekeeper-style hat and veil. In the countryside the symptoms of her acute EHS are still disrupting her life style, but it is the “lesser or two evils.”
The WHO and a number of other public health organizations don’t support Sarah’s claims and have concluded that there is no significant evidence that exposure to electromagnetic fields can cause any of the symptoms associated with EHS.
However, we talked to Dr Andrew Goldsworthy, a former lecturer in biology at one of Britain’s top universities and now scientific advisor to Electrosensitives UK, a charity established to support EHS sufferers. He believes that severe conditions such as diabetes, obesity and even cancer can all be attributed to electromagnetic radiation and sees the lack of research done in this area as being very convenient for the huge multibillion dollar industries who profit from our daily bombardment by electric gizmo-rays.
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