Bioelectromagnetics

[Timble]

Yes, I said poison:

Also from the BBC's website:

"However, it is known that exposure to large doses of ionizing radiation, cigarette smoking, and, infrequently, high dose chemotherapy for other cancers, can contribute to the development of leukaemia".

You said earlier

"....only agreed cause of leukaemia is elecromagnetic radiation ..."

The reference I supplied to point out your error already noted that cancer chemotherapy can induce leukaemia. It's not ideal, but all treatment carries risks.

Of course many chemotherapeutic agents are toxic, the idea is to poison the cancer cells without poisoning the patient. But they're no longer the only game in town.

And your alternative is?

 

[MRC_Hans]

Thanks Hans,

In the case of the kettle lead, yes, it might be nitpicking, but there is a bigger point here that IS relevant, I promise!

*snip*

Now forget the kettle lead. Let's scale it up to an EHT distribution line. The same principle applies except that NOW we have a much more powerful magnetic field, in an unexpected plane (parallel to the ground), that is independent of both current flow in the wires AND how the lines are phased.

Mmm, you are right, but the main difference, apart from scale, is that the EHT line is under load; there is a current flowing through it because it, to put it simple, has a generator in one end and a load in the other. The field arising from the load current is many orders of magnitude more intensive than quiscent field.

The point being that you can cancel through currents with counterphasing, you CANNOT cancel this field though in a straight distribution line above ground. And this field drops with reciprocal distance, not inverse square or cube. Given the length of some distribution lines we have to start thinking in terms of true EM transmission lines even though the frequency is low.

Well, a good rule of thumb in transmission lines is that a conductor should be treated as a transmission line if it is more than a quarter of a wavelength. Since the wavelength of a 50Hz signal is close to 6,000 kilometers, you rarely need to take such things into consideration. In fact, for nearly all practical purposes, you can treat 50Hz as DC, which makes the math much simpler .

So if magnetic field CAN be a health hazard, here is a whole field which is apparently completely ignored by all these risk experts! So when people like Roger try to convince us that no mag field could cause a particular effect, and we discover that he doesn't even know about the existence of one type of field, then how can we rely on his assertions that a given effect cannot possibly be caused by a mag field? Rhetorical question.

Ahh yes, but that is also my beef with his experiment: Even if we accept he has disclosed a correlation (which is doubtful), his conclusion of causality is unfounded.

Conversely, some power engineering companies are using "displacement current cancellation" which by some novel geometry they can offset the displacement field against the through wire field. The mere fact that they can do this proves that the displacement field is NOT negligible as it would be in the kettle lead. I think this is used in buildings but NOT in distribution lines as far as I am aware.

I think these latter points are very relevant to the discussion. They present evidence that Roger is ignorant of a key parameter that influences his experiments, thus throwing even MORE doubt on the validity of his results. And also it demonstrates that power companies are NOT simply ignoring the whole problem (they may not be doing ENOUGH, but they're not ignoring it either).

My point too. Obviously, Roger's knowledge of electromagnetics is not on par with the importance he puts on it, which casts severe doubts on his qualifications for designing, conducting, and evaluating experiments in the field.

There are two obvious conclusions:

1. There is a possible risk that nobody seems to be addressing, and....
2. Roger doesn't know what he's talking about!

I submit that the latter was obvious, but not necessarily the former!

I agree.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

This issue of balancing came out at the North Yorks Power Line Public Inquiry in 1992. I do not profess to be an electrical engineer, but perhap one with better knowledge than me can explain how the generators can ever exactly predict the demanded load so that there is current balance?

They don't need to. Electrical current runs in a closed circuit. To put it simple, it runs out from the generator, through one wire to the load, through the load, and back to the generator through the other wire. Thus, if the wires run parallel, there will always be current balance.

There is always gojng to be a small difference between generation at one end of the line and uptake at the other isn't there?

There are minute losses due to stray capacities and inductances (the phenomenon Pragmatist mentioned), but they are many orders of magnitude smaller than the fields from the current due to load (except, of course, for the rare case where a powerline is live, but unloaded). Losses due to ohmic losses in the line do not count, they are included in the balancing.


And what about phase balance? (Another mystery to me). Do not these imbalances give rise to fields? Then there is the issue of unbalanced ground return currents too.

Yes, this is obviously a mystery to you, which is very unfortunate since you are making conclusions based on your obviously limited knowledge about electromagnetics.

In fact, Roger, I would strongly suggest that you make a serious effort to educate yourself about electromagnetics. I think you are basically sincere, but you are working in a field that straddles at least two disciplines (electromagnetics and biology), and you need to have a good knowledge about both fields to do that.

Hans

 

[Cleopatra]

Magnetic products are moreover pretty durable (unless heated) so your insoles will still available to you Cleopatra long after your thermal socks have worn out. Kalinukta. Or something like that!

So the only thing where the simple thermal insoles and your expensive ones differ is durability?

 

[cogreslab]

You said earlier

"....only agreed cause of leukaemia is elecromagnetic radiation ..."

The reference I supplied to point out your error already noted that cancer chemotherapy can induce leukaemia. It's not ideal, but all treatment carries risks.

Of course many chemotherapeutic agents are toxic, the idea is to poison the cancer cells without poisoning the patient. But they're no longer the only game in town.

And your alternative is?

Note the use of the word "agreed", which limits my statement. When you are writing your monograph I hope you will include the papers by Szent Gyorgii, Otto Warburg, William Koch and others who regarded cancer as a metabolic disorder which might be curable not by cytotoxic agents (which fail to address the problem of metastasis) but by restoring normal metabolism. The Jakab et al. paper in BJC is an example of that, and if you read it you will see it was very effective in inhibiting metastasis. At our lab we knew about the antimetastatic effects of these quinones in 1990. The Hungarians producing Avemar took their starting point with Szent Gyorgii, but there were papers on this discovery even before Warburg's hypothesis in the 1950s.

 

[MRC_Hans]

To Hans:

Thanks for clearing up the issue of whether you live in the UK, but does that answer mean that you do not work for an overseas utility too, since your answer leaves that question unanswered?

I work in the medical industry. I do not now and never have worked for a power company. I have worked with medical electronics (to some degree still do), this is the reason I feel qualified to discuss these matters.

I am not trying to suppress knowledge of possible dangers around electromagnetic fields, in fact, being a potential victim like anybody else, I would like such dangers to be disclosed. I am, however, interested in the truth, and I am taking time to discuss this subject with you because I suspect that you are on a wrong track and one with considerable potential to spread needless fear and hysteria in the population.

You may say that this is none of my d*mn business, but ...well, this is a forum for skepticism; we are here to find the truth and disclose deception, wherever we find it.

To respond to the question you say I have not answered, namely:



"Now, for one question you have not answered: Do you or do you not claim that potential damages from electrical fields are caused by caused by the fields and running in the tissues of the body?"

Well, I can see I bungled up the typing rather bad there, sorry.

This is how I see it: there are a number of different life processes dependant on the use of electrons in some way or other, including electric fields. For example, the brain and the heart both use relatively weak electric fields to convey instructions to the body's cells, and there is evidence that exposure to external electric fields (say from high voltage powerlines but not exclusively from that kind of source) can cause bradycardia. (Asanova and Rakov 1966 was the earliest example I can think of there, but there were also studies published before that).

In the brain, which is largely composed of glial cells responsible for synthesising ATP, the effect is different in that the electric field depolarises their inner mitochondrial membranes thus lowering the amount of energy available in the brain, and having diffuse cognitive effects.

These are only two examples of the many differing effects I believe are going on, and though I take your point about the skin acting as insulator, it is not really able to prevent ELF entry in the same way it might be protective against microwaves (the longer the wave the more penetrative, hence the use of ELF for submarine communication).

I am still not sure if I have completely answered your question, because I cannot understand the sense of the last part, and wonder if you may have left some word out?

Yes, sorry. The word is "current"

...see below.

I won't be able to post more tonight but will come back for more tomorrow. Ding Ding; end of this round!

I think this requires a bit of clearing-up. First the term "electrical field":

You are using this word for two different pnenomenons and you are evidently confusing them.

1) Electrical field, as used in electromagnetic theory. This is the field that exists between two differently charged entities. The classical example is a capacitor, and indeed all systems generating an electric field can be treated as a capacitor. A capacitor consists of two conductors, or plates, with an insulating material between them. If the conductors have a different potential, an electric field will exist between them. If the potential between the conductors changes (like in AC) a charge is passed between them, in other words: The capacitor can pass an AC current.

Let us look at a pertinent practical example, a human body, and a power wire: The wire holds a potential (one that changes, assuming it is an AC wire), the human body is more or less at ground potential, or at least, let us assume for now that it is. The wire and the human form a capacitor, each being one plate. The air, plastic sleeving, clothes, upper skin, furniture, that happen to be between them is the insulating material, the dielectricum. The field extends between the surfaces of the conductors, but it does not penetrate into either conductor. If an AC current is passed between the plates (in the present case there will be a small current passed), it will be converted to electrical current inside the plates; the electrical field cannot exist inside a conductor (faraday cage).

2) Electrical field, as in the electrical fields controlling the heart and other organs, and the field that certain types of fish use for sensory input, end even for a weapon. This is basically an electrical current running in a conductor, but because the conductor is not a wire but a three-dimensional conductive medium, current moves and is distributed in a fashion that resembles, but is far from equal to the electromagnetic type of field.

The two forms of "fields" are inextricably connected, but the exchange of energy between them is quite complicated, and it is important not to confuse them. I would advice the use of the term "current field" for the second type, for clarity.

When a human (or animal, of course) is subjected to an electromagnetic field (AC), two things happen:

The electical field component will pass a current capacitively through the body, to ground. It is a low current, and it will be distributed over large parts of the body. The electical field itself will not penetrate much below the skin because the conductivity of the body is much higher than that of the surrounding medium (air, etc.).

The magnetic field will pass through the body and will induce a current in the body (as a changing magnetic field will do in any conductor it passes). The size and the direction of the current will depend on a number of factors, but it will act in much the same way as the one caused by the electric field. The two currents may add or subtract, according to conditions.

As you can see, it does not appear that an electrical field can influence the body in any other way than causing cmall currents to flow in it. I see no reason to suppose that it should have any effect different from a magnetic field, thus I would assume that tests taking magnetic fields into account will also be valid for electric fields.

I hope this clears things up a bit.

Hans

 

[cogreslab]

To Hans: Maybe you should take in a little basic biology too, Hans. The difference between us is that I have physicists and others whom I pay to advise me, (but I have not bothered them to get involved in this thread). May I point out that physicists also argue amongst themselves over their science (see how Pragmatist has scoffed at other physicists' views -eg WHO- ) so who am I to say which is correct?

I see examples of phase imbalance and ground return currents delivering high ELF magnetic fields via my instruments, and though it would be interesting to know exactly how these arise, I doubt whether any physicist could compute the answer exactly, and it is not essential, unless I am an NGT employee tasked to reduce these to the minimum.

My work is investigating the interactions between these energies and organic life, not just explaining how the energies are derived and from which particular imbalances.

 

[cogreslab]

To Hans: You said: " As you can see, it does not appear that an electrical field can influence the body in any other way than causing cmall currents to flow in it. I see no reason to suppose that it should have any effect different from a magnetic field, thus I would assume that tests taking magnetic fields into account will also be valid for electric fields"

How small do you imagine these small currents to be Hans?

I have heard of electrocution, but never heard of magnetocution.

 

[MRC_Hans]

I can see that we are cross-posting, so I'll just adress the direct issues in the following.

To Hans: Maybe you should take in a little basic biology too, Hans.

Yes, I'm sure my knowledge of biology is limited, compared to yours, and indeed you will notice that I refrain from making definitive statements about biology.

The difference between us is that I have physicists and others whom I pay to advise me, (but I have not bothered them to get involved in this thread).

Then perhaps you should ask them to educate you a bit about electromagnetic theory.

May I point out that physicists also argue amongst themselves over their science (see how Pragmatist has scoffed at other physicists' views -eg WHO- ) so who am I to say which is correct?


I can assure you that there is very little argument about electromagnetics. It is one of the oldest and best explored disciplines in physics.

I see examples of phase imbalance and ground return currents delivering high ELF magnetic fields via my instruments,

You are measuring a field, period. Except by switching on and off appliances, you have no way of discovering the exact source ot the field. But we are not debating whethere those fields exist; they certainly do.

and though it would be interesting to know exactly how these arise, I doubt whether any physicist could compute the answer exactly, and it is not essential, unless I am an NGT employee tasked to reduce these to the minimum.

My work is investigating the interactions between these energies and organic life, not just explaining how the energies are derived and from which particular imbalances.

Exactly. And this requires a good understanding of how such fields propagate and interact. And this is what I am pointing out that you don't seem to have.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

*snip*

How small do you imagine these small currents to be Hans?

I have heard of electrocution, but never heard of magnetocution.

I could try to do some math, but I don't have the time ofr it just now. However, I can tell you that those currents are very pertinent when working with ECG equipment, because they present as noise over the ECG signal. Now, from my work with ECG equipment, I can tell you that noise from current caused by external fields is low compared to the ECG signals measured by electrodes in good contact with the skin. We normally assume that the resistance between the signal electrodes inside the body is 100 Ohms, and ECG signal is about 2 mV. The noise is an order of magnitude lower, so lets assume 200 uV. Divided by 100 Ohms, that gives us 2 uA (micro-ampéres). This is a ball-park figure, of course, but i would guess it is in the high end, in a normal indoor environment. For comparison, an eletrical shock that you can feel is of several milliamperes, a thousand times stronger.

Electrocution requeres direct electrical contact, so that is hardly relevant for the discussion at hand.

Hans

 

[Pragmatist]

To Pragmatist: Not really living up to your username are you? Another speculation to accuse me with!

"Acting in reliance upon your claims that some product will protect me against harmful EM, I purchase said product and then stop worrying about exposures to EM sources. It turns out that the device does NOT protect me and I subsequently develop terminal cancer as a result of the exposures I thought I was protected from. I am reassured you'll give me my money back".

Which product of ours are you referring to?

What you are describing might well be the disgraceful con trick perpetrated by the cancer industry right now, who lull patients into the false sense of security that they can treat cancer by poison, cutting or burning, and quote five year survival figures to support their lies, when the secondaries start appearing in year six.

It was a hypothetical question, scientists ask these kind of questions all the time, I wrongly assumed you'd be familiar with the technique. Sorry.

BUT it IS a serious question nonetheless. I believe you sell products claimed to protect against EM do you not? I seem to recall seeing something called a "harmonizer" for example. I also distinctly recall seeing one of your "scientific" product tests in which you claimed that some device (don't know if it was the one above), "completely protects against EM".

Now I will bet that somebody, somewhere will rely on your information to be accurate. And if they act in reliance upon it, and it turns out NOT to be accurate, then they may be putting themselves at risk because they trusted you. And if they then come to harm, that is (at least partially) YOUR responsibility.

And so the question is, what would you do about that? You can give them their money back, but can you undo the harm? And so it goes to the heart of the question of "ethics" does it not?

By the way, if I purchase one of these devices that you claim "completely protects against EM", use it as instructed and go lie on the beach all day in the sun, presumably it will guarantee that I won't get sunburn?

Re: "the cancer industry", I take it your argument there is that if they do it, it's O.K. for YOU to do it? Great argument! What a fine level of ethics THAT argument shows!

 

[Prester John]

1) You stated that animals are not affected by placebo, they are via their owners subjectivity.

2) You still have not addressed points re the statistics in your paper. I shall reiterate a couple of points re stats of your paper
i) The control group had an average exposure of 7.3 with a standard deviation of 12.9. How is this possible?
ii) For the >20 group the CI was 1.17 - 27.78 with a mean of 4.69. The CI is huge, and suggests that this group had some very large outliers. Is it possible that these were as a result of the TV advertising and that it attracted some families with childhood leukeamia who lived near overt power sources eg power lines. This would be enough to skew the data significantly, especially with the small sample size.
iii) In all the dose adjusted groups the CI overlap . Does this not throw doubt on the usefullness of the results given the small sample size, and the possibilty of outliers that have skewed the data
If a statitician could throw some light on my points/questions it would be useful , as Mr Coghill seems reluctant to discuss his paper.

 

[cogreslab]

To Pragmatist:

Of this Harmoniser (a third party product) we say on our online shop:

"Promotes that feeling of wellbeing and gain personal protection most RF radiations with this pendant device. Also available in Silver and Gold.
The Harmoniser protects against ambient radiation of all frequencies using the technique of implosion. IMPLOSION is a word derived from the research of Schauberger, a Scandinavian water engineer, and its protective effects have spiral tube for wear around the neck. For all around protection at most RF/MW frequencies".

I take your point. What what we were trying to say that the protection is limited to RF/MW frequencies, but I can see how the text might be misinterpreted and will have it changed. (We may actually take the Harmoniser off our list altogether, actually, since a recent replication test did not show the effect we saw at first, and I beleive the design has been modified since our first investigation). Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[cogreslab]

I am not reluctant to discuss my paper, even though the NRPB are, indeed I have been promoting it on this thread. The outlier as far as I can tell was not because of a powerline but because the child (now dead) slept in a metal bed in a room with the electricity meter on the other side of his wall on one side and an electricity substation outside the (ground floor) bedroom on the other. There were some powerlines about a quarter of a mile away, so I suppose this might have caused the volunteer, but even without this outlier the stats still showed the elevation.

The mean SDs were derived both for data collected and compared within homes and data collected and compared between homes. It is better understood from Table 2 in our paper, but I have difficulty in reproducing tables in these thread texts.

 

[cogreslab]

In Table 2 of our paper the mean SD for controls within homes was 1.9. The SD for controls quoted in the abstract (12.9) was the SD between homes. This is clear in Table 2 within the paper, but not so clear in the abstract. Well spotted.

I should also add that the E field in the outlier bedplace was 34 V/m so far as I can recall without revisiting the datasheets.

Yes I also noticed this wide 95%CI figure and also saw the same broad spread in several other epi papers. This is one reason why we called for a larger study to be done. You are I am sure aware how expensive even small pilot studies are to carry out. We were disappointed that no large, good quality e-field study has yet emerged. The UKCCCR study could be useful if the data were reanalysed to reflect nocturnal bedplace exposure, and we are working on that request. There is also I understand an unpublished NGT study which they are presently refusing to publish, also showing a doubled incidence of childhood cancer near powerlines.

I hope these help you to understand our paper.

 

[MRC_Hans]

To Pragmatist:

Of this Harmoniser (a third party product) we say on our online shop:

"Promotes that feeling of wellbeing and gain personal protection most RF radiations with this pendant device. Also available in Silver and Gold.
The Harmoniser protects against ambient radiation of all frequencies using the technique of implosion. IMPLOSION is a word derived from the research of Schauberger, a Scandinavian water engineer, and its protective effects have spiral tube for wear around the neck. For all around protection at most RF/MW frequencies".

I take your point. What what we were trying to say that the protection is limited to RF/MW frequencies, but I can see how the text might be misinterpreted and will have it changed. (We may actually take the Harmoniser off our list altogether, actually, since a recent replication test did not show the effect we saw at first, and I beleive the design has been modified since our first investigation). Thanks for pointing that out.

The fact that you promote such a device at all is one reason you will have to put up with being on my woowoo list (not that you probably care). Even if you don't earn a penny from these devices, you are an accomplice in trying to cheat people into paying for a worthless object.

That device does not protect against ANY frequencies. It is not possible within the laws of physics for it to do so. So, you are promoting a lie and selling a worthless (apart from any aestetical value, on which I shall refrain from commenting) product.

Hans

 

[cogreslab]

To Hans: How can you be so sure that the device offers no protection from RF/MW so categorically unless you have performed an investigation of it under controlled conditions? It really is important to keep an open mind, Hans, until you have conducted a rigorous scientific test, and not simply rely on your intuition based on existing physics conventions.

The Laws of physics seem to have changed radically in the last one hundred years, -m from classical physics to quantum physics- and even Thomas Young's ideas are less than two hundred years old. Any bets that these "Laws" will stay unchanged for the next two centuries?

 

[Cleopatra]

You forgot to add a reference to the Establishment in your previous political post Mr. Coghill.

 

[cogreslab]

To Pragmatist You said:

It was a hypothetical question, scientists ask these kind of questions all the time, I wrongly assumed you'd be familiar with the technique. Sorry.

So should I give a hypothetical answer to your hypothetical question or to the hypothetical conclusion you have drawn from it?

May I suggest we stay within the real world, instead?

 

[cogreslab]

Well Cleopatra, if only the establishment (in this case the UK Members of Parliament) knew as much science as I have included in these posts our country would be far better run, and maybe even avoid the political gaffes such as BSE, asbestos, tobacco promotion, fluoridation, EMF, MRSA, innoculation, etc.

If there is a political aspect to my agenda it is only because our UK Government has continually failed us in scientific matters, arguably for the sake of vested interest.