A BOOK REVIEW............
WARNING: EMF may be hazardous to your health.......
Quietly and unobtrusively a new book about a major environmental issue has been given to the world: _WARNING: The Electricity around you may be Hazardous to your Health_ by the tested and proven investigative reporter, Ellen Sugarman. Though only 176 pages in length, it could shake the world with its easy to read expose of the electromagnetic field (EMF) health hazard that is now spreading out of control worldwide. WARNING is Ms Sugarman's updated version of a book by the same title published five years ago.
Electrical power lines with their substations, cellular phones, the antennas and transmitters which carry and concentrate all of the electrical energy that is needed to run the electrical and electronic "gadgets" of our time, all of these and more are the subject of her treatise. It might better be described as the necessary "handbook" for anyone who harbors concern about the safety of electromagnetic fields (EMF).
"Electropollution" is the author's description in her first chapter. It is a condition which is rapidly sweeping worldwide and which portends serious adverse health consequences in the future, as she also documents dangers already existent and at least partially understood.
The history of EMF has been one of controversy and cover-up, she writes. Cover-up by governments as well as by powerful vested interests who fear the "cost" consequences if they are required to take measures that will protect the public from the insidious (delayed action) effects of electromagnetic radiation upon human cells and human bio-systems, such as our hormone or neuroendicrine systems.
"If you wonder whether EMFs are hazardous to your health," writes the author, "turn to the back of the book and read appendix A. This appendix is a compilation of decades of positive studies -- studies reporting significant bioeffects when people, animals or cells were exposed to EMFs.... You'll see that for the past two decades, a growing body of scientific evidence has linked EMFs to increased health risks."
The resultant illnesses and adverse health conditions reported by Ms. Sugarman span a surprisingly broad portion of the human health spectrum. That includes cancer, particularly brain cancer and breast cancer (in both men and women); but also includes leukemia, reproductive effects, immune system consequences; Alzheimer's and other brain or central nervous system disorders; and an -- as yet not fully understood -- impact upon human cell division and reproduction.
Historically, the EMF health hazard issue is not new as Ms. Sugarman points out: "In 1973, a stellar committee of U.S. scientists attempted to issue a warning about disturbing biological effects of electromagnetic fields. The eight-member scientific panel had been commissioned by the U.S. Navy to review a series of studies on electromagnetic field bioeffects that were being conducted at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratories in Pensacola, Florida.... The Navy expected its enquiry to help diffuse the opposition [to project 'Sanguine']. Instead, the panel reported a number of worrisome findings....
"We can probably mark the year 1973, when the Project Sanguine advisory panel turned in that report, as the beginning of a trend on the part of the military, the power companies, and at times, even the government, to engage in a massive cover-up in order to keep people from learning that exposures to the ambient electric and magnetic fields produced by everyday 60-Hz power systems might be dangerous to their health."
This is certainly the book for anyone who wants to understand the EMF issue in all its dimensions: political, economic, scientific, or "what you need to know" to protect yourself!
It is this reviewers hope, however, that the people who REALLY NEED TO KNOW -- our political leaders and the media -- will be the first to obtain copies and get out there "in front of" the public, instead of the usual waiting until the phones ring off the wall and then responding.
With the frenzied cell-phone marketing and electrification of the world that is now in progress, and with the impressive evidence of genuine public danger that has been martialed in this book by Ellen Sugarman, in the words of Dr. David Carpenter, p. 55, in WARNING:
"We need to really raise some red flags on this. I believe
we had enough information three years ago to make changes. It's time
to stop pussy-footing around. The evidence is very good right now....
We public health professionals should be telling people there are a few
things you can do to reduce exposure and reduce the chance of you and your
family getting cancer." [Dr. Carpenter is the senior Public Health
official in the state of New York.]
*****Note: copies of WARNING (ISBN 0-9661194-0-1), an inexpensive soft-cover edition, may be obtained from the Miriam Press, Miami Florida, ph. 1-800-884-6763.
........and, while you are at it ... get a few extra copies for your congressman and your contacts in the news media.....
Cheerio....
Roy Beavers(EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org