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Electro-Hyper Sensitivity (EHS)
December 8th, 2009As the research for the film progressed, we ran into a concept called electro-hyper sensitivity or EHS. As Rigmor puts it in the film, it is like an allergy to electro-magnetic fields (EMF).
Just like any other allergy, there are degrees of sensitivity to the cause, and some people get headaches or a rash, while others have been hospitalized, and also like other allergies, there are different causes. Some are affected more by computer screens, some by cell phones, some only by cell towers. Basically there is no hard-fast rule that defines electro-hypersensitives except their sensitivity to electric fields.
One man we were supposed to interview in Sweden called Per Segerback has an acute case of EHS. So acute in fact that he was forced to leave his job and live in a hut in the middle of the woods without electricity…ironically he was a head engineer for Ericsson before leaving his job.
But Per is so sensitive that there would have been a problem conducting an interview inside the cottage as it is quite small, meaning the lights and camera would be quite close to him; all of which emit various degrees of EMF. Per told me that in his experience older cameras emit less than modern ones, and shooting the film on HD, we couldn’t get more modern. We considered renting an older camera locally in Sweden, but we felt the cost in terms of quality would be too great, in addition to which there was no guarantee it would work.
We racked out brains trying to think of a solution when it dawned on us…we would film him on film, Super 8 mm to be exact, but we would take the HD equipment with us on the off chance we could film the interview outdoors (it was the end of February in Sweden, and it had been a mild winter.) Unfortunately the day before we were about to board the plane for Sweden, Per called me and told me he was too ill to conduct the interview, and that he was having problems with his kidneys.
On a side note, Rigmor, who we did use an HD camera with lost some speech ability and got a pain in the eye closest to the camera towards the end of the interview, but she insisted we continue, which we did.
8 Responses to “Electro-Hyper Sensitivity (EHS)”
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Looks good what you are doing to get the reality ‘out there’, congratulations. A minority only thank goodness are hyper-sensitive like Per, many are less so but still in serious difficulty.
I have been so frustrated by the concealment around this issue in dealing with over 500 UK electrosensitives since I started support work for this unrecognised health reaction in 2003.
When founding and managing the charity ‘Electrosensitivity-UK’ I found at first people were ashamed and hid their extra-sensitive EMF reactions as they were mocked. With some publicity we improved their situation but it is a dreadful situation to be in,feeling rotten, disbelieved, isolated, depressed and it is even life-wrecking.
I provide support by phone for free on 01353 775329 and at es-support@hotmail.com being fed up with restrictions on how to talk about it and making poor people pay. Get in touch,
Rod Read M.Phil(Cantab) Dip.Couns. Cert.Ed aka ESGuru
This is great information. I never thought of it as being like an allergy. I can’t wait to see the movie.
I am now electro-hypersensitive after seven years of being able to feel the technology and
I have moved many times. In 2008 I had to leave my family and my country, England, forever (unless the technologies are dismantled or changed to a safer system – and there is one, I am informed but it will cost more).
Professor Olle Johansson, a world leading ES/EHS expert, describes EHS as “a functional impairment due to environmental triggers” and it most surely is.
I have spoken to hundreds of ES/EHS people in the UK and although we all react differently we all experience functional impairment of some sort – even several instances! See also:
http://www.es-uk.info or call (UK) 0845 643 9748
ES/EHS is not recognised in the UK despite the
estimate of 1.6 million and rising in the UK by
the Radiation Research Trust in 2008, but we are all here. People are noticing us and asking questions. We tell them to research these technologies powered by pulsed microwave radiation for themselves so that they can make
an informed decision, pointing them first
to http://www.bioinitiative.org
The non-sensitive may be more at risk than the ES/EHS because they do not get the pain and debilitating symptoms to warn them that something might be wrong.
Independent scientists have stated that children and animal life are more vulnerable so parents and animal lovers really should check this out.
The ES/EHS do have a hard time with some people,
some media outlets and most officialdom but many have been strengthened by these experiences and have risen above it, because they know the truth and why they are discredited and put down.
We know that we are the empowered ones because we have the knowledge and because we are probably healthier than most people despite our condition.
Most importantly we care about others who are not aware that these technologies are untested (except on the people who are using them now).
Their best interests are just as important as our own to many of us.
A Cautionary Tale on Wireless from a Silicon Valley Exec
I’m a technology exec in Silicon Valley and became hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields on February 28, 2006. Since then I have suffered head shocks, burning, rashes, sleep disturbances, memory loss, concentration issues, heart palpitations and more than 20 other symptoms from all forms of wireless technologies. A pain hits my head 5-15 seconds before a cell phone rings nearby. I can detect wireless networks by the sharp rodent-like biting across my scalp. I am affected by frequencies both from power-line fields (60 hertz) and radio frequencies (300 kilohertz to 300 Gigahertz). I can tell relative size of the wave by the pain sensation in my head. For instance, on a trip in the Rocky Mountains, where cellular and WiFi were absent, I experienced Park communications signals at UHF/ VHF like a thick 2 inch nail penetrating my skull. I experience cell phones signals as a drilling sensation. WiFi burns for awhile across a wide area of my head/ face like a rope burn and then starts biting like quick pricks from the tooth of a hamster. 2.45 Gigahertz is one of the worse (WiFi, microwave ovens and many cordless phones) frequencies for me. Later I discovered several scientists including Ross Adey have discovered ‘frequency windows’, where bioeffects attain at some frequencies but not others. I have removed all wireless technologies from my house (I had 11) and even had three of my neighbors move their wireless routers to divert their WiFi signal. I also had to sell my brand-new 2006 BMW 5 series because the GPS and BMW assist systems kept transmitting signals into my house, even with the car turned off. I had already disabled Bluetooth, but that was not enough. I got rid of my cell phone in late 2006.
I’ve personally met two dozen people with the same symptoms. Strange finding: almost everyone I’ve met with this affliction either went to top ten schools, or has an advanced degree. Sampling; five PhD’s, three attorneys, three media execs, five technology execs, two doctors, a pharmacist, several real estate execs, a handful of educators. Only two have ever had any previous psychological or emotional issues. In Sweden, between 230,000 and 290,000 (2.6% of the population) are registered with the government for this disability, which they call electric hypersensitivity (EHS). Britain recognized this disability in September 2006 and asserted that as about 3% of the population might be suffering from the affliction.
I understand that skeptics abound. I was an early adopter. I would never have believed that tiny radio waves that I could neither see, nor feel could affect my health. I bought my first cell phone in 1990 and began using WiFi (remember Ricochet?) in 2000. As a technology consultant, I’ve worked extensively with Cingular Wireless, Apple (iPhone), Microsoft (Xbox) and Google. I am anything but techno-phobic. Still you might use my experience and hundreds of thousands like me to curb your usage and consider the bet you are making that these signals are not harmful.
If you do the research, you’ll see that these waves are probably affecting us all. 632 studies link 51 bioeffects to low-level, radio-frequency signals (see http://www.marinproject.org for a complete listing). The 616 page BioInitiative Report (www.bioInitiative.org) released August 2007 by 14 international scientists, reviewed nearly 2000 studies and concluded a strong connection between electromagnetic fields and radio frequency (RF) signals to brain tumors, immune dysfunction, DNA damage, genetic aberrations, Leukemia, cancer, depression, suicide, ADD, Autism and Alzheimer’s. You also might check out http://www.wirelessStress.com to see how everyday nagging symptoms like headaches, anxiety, sleep issues and joint pain, which we typically attribute to the stresses of modern-day lifestyles, may in fact be triggered by our increasingly wireless world. Test it out: if you have been having sleep problems, or are feeling cloudy, or feeling over-stressed, especially in the past 5 years, unplug your wireless router and turn off your cell phone and move your alarm clock more than 5 feet from your body for a week and notice the difference. Why? Hint: the pineal gland is being disrupted by your WiFi, cell phone and cordless phone. The pineal gland is radio-sensitive and uses the Schumann Resonance (7 hertz wave at less than a picowatt) to trigger endocrine function at night. The pineal gland is responsible for the regulation of melatonin (free-radical scavenger), serotonin production (attitude) and the regulation of your biological clock.
Love to hear the results.
Alex
Beginning in mid-2008 (until now) something happened that is hard to believe, particular cell towers in Central Florida started generating a low frequency hum sound. I cannot prove it yet, this has destroyed my sleep for almost two years. It started out as a extreme vibration that jolted me awake, I struggled to find out the source (I can tell the direction the sound is coming from, even though it is louder inside the house than outside), it took me over a year to find the source on a quiet weekend morning. It is the cell towers! For a long time it came from one particular direction, then it jumped to a different direction, almost nightly it changed direction. So far I have found 4 cell towers that the weird low frequency sound is coming from the top of the tower! It has been from one direction (one particular tower) for a long time, and it has really worn me down, I can also feel a weird electrical feeling in the air a lot of the time, early this morning (April 9, 2010) was particularly bad and the noise is pretty loud. At times the low frequency noise is so loud that it really hurts my ears and I pray to fall asleep at night, my relatives in the house are not affected by this in the slightest. I do not know if this is a side-effect, a deliberately created sound, or what it is, I do not think that I am being targeted or anything paranoid like that, only that whatever technology it is, was not developed with the full range of different humans’ sensitivities in mind. I am in the same area as U.S. CentComm, maybe there is a military explanation why I am hearing the “Taos Hum” (!) in Central Florida, or is it just a civilian one, and why it is coming from cell towers, and why I can tell the direction it is coming from, all I know is, no doctor I have been to believes me, no one I know hears it, and it has destroyed my life. Earplugs and earmuffs slightly block the sound, so I must sleep with them if I am to get any sleep at all. I am not sure if it is the Frey effect, my extreme hearing sensitivity may have been affected by the microwaves, I don’t know for sure, but I believe it is a real low frequency sound, and I am struggling to find a way to record the sound as proof.
It is a nightmare coming from cell towers.
Alex, I am 100% behind you on this. I do not have a PHD, however, I am a homemaker/writer/work with the UN on a voluteer basis and have a degree in communications. I worked with IBM for 15 years before moving overseas to multiple countries. My husband is Swedish, so I am constantly looking for info on wi-fi from studies there. I could never hold a cell phone anywhere near me, because I felt its effects.
I have a 15 year old in a private school where the routers are all over. They use Mac laptops in school, and I have feared for their lives. When my daughter is home, if I go near her laptop even for a split second, I feel like I am having an electric shock treatment, and the current is running through my head. It lasts for over an hour. I had to type a simple email and felt like I couldn’t do it. I physically feel shocks through my head – straight from the top of my head down the back of it like it is dividing my skull; then my temples start to throb, I get numb in the face and my hearing feels impaired and my left hand experiences pain as well as my lips. The headache I get is blinding; and I never get headaches in general. I cannot be on the laptop at all because of the effects. However, my desktop is fine, and the phones and laptops are killers for me.
I am worried sick that my daughter is being exposed to something, be it radiation, EMF’s, but something very powerful. I detect mood swings, irritability, some insomnia, lack of emotion from my daughter who has always been a vibrant student with interests in performing arts. Now she is lifeless. They spend 8 hours a day at school on the laptops, come home charge them while they are doing another 6 hours of homework on the laptop! It’s horrendous! We switched laptops. thinking maybe it was just that one laptop, but it didn’t make a difference. I spoke to the school and they look at me like I’m some kind of occult figure trying to ruin education and oust the tech guy out of his job (he says the routers would be a possible concern but they are all away from the children. Not true at all!). No one will listen. I am hypersensitivity to chemicals as well, and so I am a good barometer for these kinds of things.
What will it take to convince the world, especially schools (the private schools use the computers in each class as opposed to a lot of public schools who don’t), that this technology is causing more harm than good. Is there any documentation out there I can present to the school (Powerwatch UK, I believe, published a story about schools in the UK who removed the laptops from the classrooms because the teachers feared the radiation. It was based on a study they had done by a Swedish professor – I have it in my files somewhere and did send it to the school, but they didn’t respond – I figure legally I am covered in case any of the children get sick, as I made them aware of the issue, and they chose to do nothing about it).
If anyone has info that subtantiates any physical and emotional damage to children and adults, I would appreciate hearing about it.
Thank you.
Since my previous post in April the situation has only become worse in Central Florida, (specifically BRANDON, FL). I forgot to note in my other post that when this started in mid-2008, it was accompanied by jabs of pain, almost like mosquito bites. Those have continued off and on along with the sound and vibration, but somewhere along the way (My memory of the exact month escapes me) a weird electrical feeling in the air started, it was very disconcerting. However many months and months ago that electrical feeling started, it has only gotten exponentially worse to the point it hurts my eyes at times and the side of my head at times. It isn’t “on” continuously (at least not yet), and I believe I am at least 3 or 4 miles away from the antenna, if the same antenna that produces the awful noise produces the “electrical wash”. What is wrong with these corporations? As I believe was noted in your very informative film that I purchased, some people are the “canaries in the coal-mine”. While I would rather not experience it at all (especially since I have no control over it) I feel vindicated that what I have been suffering with is NOT my imagination. More people in the future will wish that their body was telling THEM that there was something very wrong in with these antenna and with cellular technology in general (that is designed with money in mind, not human safety).
I see a naturpath that specialises in “alergies” aka interferences. it’s not in anyone’s imagination. you can be allergic to water or even your own organs. every form in nature has a unique energy pattern. radio waves have their’s. Theirs an accupressure technique called NAET that I use. It’s a cure, not a form of relief like sudafed or something. you need a sample of the allergen, which can be imprinted in a vile of water. I experienced the electro allergy this summer. it’s nasty. I had to cancel high speed. I was born w/ lots of allergies and actually died of hay fever when i was 1 years old. this technique works awesome. I can eat all sorts of stuff now that I use to avoid. I no longer suffer much during allergy season either.