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The Man Who is Allergic to Radio Waves
Feature
Your cellphone does not in itself cause cancer. But in the daily sea of radiation we all travel, there may be subtler dangers at work, and science is only just beginning to understand how they can come to affect people like Per Segerbäck so intensely .
Per Segerbäck lives in a modest cottage in a nature reserve some 75 miles northeast of Stockholm. Wolves, moose and brown bears roam freely past his front door.
He keeps limited human company, because human technology makes him physically ill. How ill? On a walk last summer, he ran into one of his few neighbors, a man who lives in a cottage about 100 yards away. During their chat, the man's cellphone rang, and Segerbäck, 54, was overcome by nausea. Within seconds, he was unconscious.
Segerbäck suffers from electro-hypersensitivity (EHS), which means he has severe physical reactions to the electromagnetic radiation produced by common consumer technologies, such as computers, televisions and cellphones.
Symptoms range from burning or tingling sensations on the skin to dizziness, nausea, headaches, sleep disturbance and memory loss. In extreme cases like Segerbäck's, breathing problems, heart palpitations and loss of consciousness can result.
A cellphone has to be in use -- either making or receiving a call, or searching for a signal, when radiation levels are highest -- for it to have this kind of effect on Segerbäck. Phones that are on but neither sending nor receiving usually don't produce enough radiation to be noticeable. But it's not the sound of the phone that sets him off. Once, while on a sailboat with friends, he recalls, he was on the front deck when, unknown to him, someone made a call belowdecks. Headache, nausea, unconsciousness. When Segerbäck is within range of an active cellphone (safe distances vary because different makes and models produce different radiation levels), he experiences the feeling that there is "not enough room in my skull for my brain."
Sweden is the only country in the world to recognize EHS as a functional impairment, and Segerbäck's experience has been important in creating policy to address the condition. Swedish EHS sufferers -- about 3 percent of the population, or some 250,000 people, according to government statistics -- are entitled to similar rights and social services as those given to people who are blind or deaf. Today, local governments will pay to have the home of someone diagnosed with EHS electronically "sanitized," if necessary, through the installation of metal shielding.
SEA OF RADIATION
Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are inescapable. We are constantly exposed to them, mostly in the form of either extremely low-frequency (ELF) radiation from things like domestic appliances and power lines or radio-frequency (RF) radiation from things like cellular and cordless phones, telecom antennas, and TV and radio transmission towers. Our bodies even produce faint EMFs of their own, from the electrical activity in the brain and heart.
Ionizing radiation -- the kind produced by x-rays, CT scans and nuclear bombs -- can do terrible damage to the body. It is classified as a carcinogen. But ELF and RF are types of non-ionizing radiation, which is thought to be nearly harmless. Non-ionizing radiation isn't powerful enough to break molecular bonds, so it cannot directly cause the cellular damage that leads to disease. This type of radiation is everywhere. "We are bathed in a sea of non-ionizing radiation," says John Boice, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute, a biomedical research firm in Rockville, Maryland.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/disconnected
Feature
Your cellphone does not in itself cause cancer. But in the daily sea of radiation we all travel, there may be subtler dangers at work, and science is only just beginning to understand how they can come to affect people like Per Segerbäck so intensely .
Per Segerbäck lives in a modest cottage in a nature reserve some 75 miles northeast of Stockholm. Wolves, moose and brown bears roam freely past his front door.
He keeps limited human company, because human technology makes him physically ill. How ill? On a walk last summer, he ran into one of his few neighbors, a man who lives in a cottage about 100 yards away. During their chat, the man's cellphone rang, and Segerbäck, 54, was overcome by nausea. Within seconds, he was unconscious.
Segerbäck suffers from electro-hypersensitivity (EHS), which means he has severe physical reactions to the electromagnetic radiation produced by common consumer technologies, such as computers, televisions and cellphones.
Symptoms range from burning or tingling sensations on the skin to dizziness, nausea, headaches, sleep disturbance and memory loss. In extreme cases like Segerbäck's, breathing problems, heart palpitations and loss of consciousness can result.
A cellphone has to be in use -- either making or receiving a call, or searching for a signal, when radiation levels are highest -- for it to have this kind of effect on Segerbäck. Phones that are on but neither sending nor receiving usually don't produce enough radiation to be noticeable. But it's not the sound of the phone that sets him off. Once, while on a sailboat with friends, he recalls, he was on the front deck when, unknown to him, someone made a call belowdecks. Headache, nausea, unconsciousness. When Segerbäck is within range of an active cellphone (safe distances vary because different makes and models produce different radiation levels), he experiences the feeling that there is "not enough room in my skull for my brain."
Sweden is the only country in the world to recognize EHS as a functional impairment, and Segerbäck's experience has been important in creating policy to address the condition. Swedish EHS sufferers -- about 3 percent of the population, or some 250,000 people, according to government statistics -- are entitled to similar rights and social services as those given to people who are blind or deaf. Today, local governments will pay to have the home of someone diagnosed with EHS electronically "sanitized," if necessary, through the installation of metal shielding.
SEA OF RADIATION
Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are inescapable. We are constantly exposed to them, mostly in the form of either extremely low-frequency (ELF) radiation from things like domestic appliances and power lines or radio-frequency (RF) radiation from things like cellular and cordless phones, telecom antennas, and TV and radio transmission towers. Our bodies even produce faint EMFs of their own, from the electrical activity in the brain and heart.
Ionizing radiation -- the kind produced by x-rays, CT scans and nuclear bombs -- can do terrible damage to the body. It is classified as a carcinogen. But ELF and RF are types of non-ionizing radiation, which is thought to be nearly harmless. Non-ionizing radiation isn't powerful enough to break molecular bonds, so it cannot directly cause the cellular damage that leads to disease. This type of radiation is everywhere. "We are bathed in a sea of non-ionizing radiation," says John Boice, a professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and scientific director of the International Epidemiology Institute, a biomedical research firm in Rockville, Maryland.
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/disconnected
