The few facts written here are summarized from other parts of the site. There are many thousands of studies such as the ones cited on various pages here.
Electric fields are attracted to conductive objects, including people, and cause current flow in the body, upsetting its natural electric signal systems and ion balance.
In 1996 the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) published a study (see references) which noted that "exposure to EMFs has been linked to increased risk of diseases, including cancers such as childhood leukemia". EMR has also been found to increase the risks of miscarriage, adverse pregnancy outcomes, cataracts, sterility, Alzheimer's disease, chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue, multiple sclerosis and heart disease (Blake Levitt, Electromagnetic Fields - A Consumers Guide, Chapter 10)
EMR can also suppress the production of melatonin, a crucial neurohormone which protects DNA against damage caused by free radicals, regulates the endocrine organs and stimulates the immune system.
Health Canada claims that only EMR exposures that heat human tissue are dangerous. Basically their policy on EMR exposure is (if it isn't cooking you, it can't hurt you). This is directly analgous to saying if the arsenic in your water isn't causing immediate convulsions, it isn't harming you. In fact, as many people know, arsenic kill you immediately --- OR it can cause horrible damage to the human body at extremely low levels over a decade or two - up to a slow and terribly painful death. Thermal exposures created by extremely powerful EMR are possible in situations like using a cellular phone and are extremely serious, but the non-thermal, longer-term, low-level EMR exposures which promote cancer growth are being ignored.
Consequently Health Canada uses only thermal guidelines such as those created by the US military and industry after World War II. However studies and expert opinions are telling us that cancer is caused by non-thermal exposures to EMR. We are getting cancer from exposure levels thousands of times less than what it takes to heat tissue. We are unwittingly immersed in EMR at these levels daily. Safety Code Six are thermal guidelines for EMR. They pertain to the heating of tissue. Our health officials trick us into believing that extremely high EMR exposures are safe by referring to their thermal guidelines when what are dealing with in fact are non-thermal effects.
A growing number of people have become clinically electrically hypersensitive, due to overexposure to EMR. These people do not tolerate common levels of EMR, in much the same way as others have developed multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) following chemical overexposure. It should also be noted that EMR can work in synergy with toxic chemicals, creating more potent bio-effects than would each agent separately.
This situation reminds me of the Titanic. The owners of that illustrious ship insisted the Titanic was unsinkable. They kept insisting the Titanic could not sink even days after she had settled on the floor of the North Atlantic. They had constructed a reality in which the Titanic could not sink. Any evidence to the contrary was outside the parameters of their reasoning and therefore could not exist.
Equally, our Health officials are convinced that low level exposures to EMR cannot promote cancer and they refuse to be influenced by the facts. Although desperately needed, there are no national guidelines for the non-thermal health effects of EMR. What we can do right now is for each person to protect themselves as much as possible, in their home and in the workplace.
