Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization

I spent my career working for the electric utility industry. Concerned myself with everything chemical: Coal ash, PCBs, other chemical products; fate and effects; risk management; policy making; corporate strategies for resource conservation, waste management and designed pro-active management approaches to and programs for environmental, health, and safety protection.However, I buried myself in EMF/RF in 2000 in order to understand it, the role of the FCC in cell/TV tower siting and worked with local citizens to change the landscape on this issue. Back then, spoke to author Sam Milham's editor, B. Blake Levitt, who herself wrote a groundbreaking book on EMF, and was a former writer for the NY Times.After our citizen's group accomplished results: siting legislation, planning the location of cell tower facilities, I dropped the subject matter. You have to survive in this world. Can't volunteer and advocate forever. I closed my mind to go on with life, progress, technology, as if nothing had ever happened.Find someone who will pay people to understand, investigate, even think about the role of man-made electromagnetic radiation in our lives? To even consider that AC/DC or radio transmissions might be bad for us? Just the ... humor me ... possibility of it.You can't. Not in a world that runs on electrons.I never considered that electricity might, under certain conditions, delivery systems, and mechanisms, be bad for us. Like everyone else, I am using compact fluorescent light bulbs. My new furnace has a variable speed motor in it. I have chargers for computers and iPods. We don't have a telephone landline; we have a family cell package (it's cheaper) . We have a wireless router, even though I am plugged directly into cable and have my Airport Off now (for privacy and security reasons).Ever plug is grounded, my AM radio rarely works without serious interference. My 1950s house, though upgraded, has dirty electricity, I am confident of it. But, I am saving money.Most of my closest friends and associates worked for the electric utility industry. Maybe a few, a very small number, have had questions themselves about the health effects of electricity.But, dominating the day is climate. We are all caught up in, and been placed on the bandwagon to reduce pollution, become carbon neutral with a highly debatable and contentious and complicated endpoint, We cause global warming.Ever computer modeled anything? Then, you know the devil is in the assumptions, the assigning of parameter values. We can't predict the weather but we can forecast glacial melting, sea rises, and imminent doom. And, it all fits the current government push.We are incentivized to chuck lightbulbs and HVAC systems by significant improvements in energy efficiency, cash rebates, tax incentives, and savings on monthly expenditures. Our electric chariots await purchase. I am doing it. Am I being a typical greedy consumer? Emphatically, I am. Economics 101's "reasonable man."Yet, what I have done is to envelop myself in electromagnetic radiation, without consideration of exposure, in the interests of reducing carbon dioxide and saving money. What if ... I am making myself vulnerable to disease by my actions?Well, the government does not only not think I am. Quite the opposite, it is incentivizing me to contaminate myself with "harmless" electromagnetic radiation. It's perfectly harmless and safe. Short of electrocution.Epidemiology, as a science, could not be more basic. Studying the epidemic of disease.The study of its frequency and correlates. We think of the plague. How about the common cold? Contagion. Cancer. It's all about the rate of occurrence versus the expected occurrence, and possible unique exposures (your line of work).The latest on cancer is ... it might have always been with us. Much more complicated than one or two genes. Probably a web. Perhaps it just doesn't express itself in everyone. Perhaps some measure of stress is required ... on the immune system.Epidemiologists go exploring ... sifting through paper records, death certificates, incidences of the diagnosis of disease ... looking for linkages. It is very important, tedious, but necessary work. Isn't that part of what your doctor does when he tries to figure out what is wrong with you? Dr. Milham reminds us of what doctors are supposed to do. We tend to just react to ... My insurance pay for this, right?Dosing up animal models is not the only answer. We do want to understand mechanisms. The prevention of problems from occurring, as Einstein once said, is genius ... intellectuals work on the solutions to problems. Isn't it plausible that what is good for us is also bad? Preventable.This book is an airplane-ride fast, Kindle read. Tells a story that could be about many of us: Our academic study, dreams, career, and families. As I found conversing with other experts and citizens on EMF/RF in 2000, this author strikes me as genuine and sincere. Studies exist on both sides. True for almost every scientific question.The subject matter itself, if it ever tackles you, infects you. Can make you very emotional and frustrated. Some people call it NIMBY Syndrome. What's its opposite refrain? "Government and industry say it's safe. It must be."In my case, what I learned about the FCC 10 years ago absolutely frightened me. The control that the agency, a 3-person commission, over the airwaves, connected to us is probably unconstitutional, if we thought about it long and hard.If we ever thought radio-frequnecy exposure might be bad for us, we'd burn this agency to the ground. Sorry. We love our HDTV. Radio. Cell phone. Blackberry, WiFi. It's our entertainment, our interpersonal connectivity. We do.Now, the FCC is a steroid for all electronic communication devices, which, again, I use. But, most of you would be stunned at the authority, power, and control this agency wields over all of us down to your little village. Every one of us.In fact, we should care much more about who is running the FCC than the Federal Reserve or Treasury. Do you know who tthat person is?Think communication.We should read books like Dirty Electricity, because we're trudging around as if all is fine. Let's not bother about this. There is no proof. The lawyers are going to get involved. Asbestos is the real problem. Chemicals, they are bad. We should clean them up.How much money has been spent remediating schools of asbestos, cleaning up underground storage tanks, and replacing them with wireless networks, computers, and using the same old electrical system? If ain't broke, don't fix it.How did we discover asbestos was bad ... when friable? How about smoking?Epidemiology. Trouble from EMF/RF study is the control groups. Dr. Milhem addresses this subject.The reality is that we live with exposures and risk until they become intolerable for mass political/emotional reasons. Then, we invent, change systems ... all at once. It is not always incremental steps. (It is not always good. Patriot Act. TSA, air travel, and .... more radiation ... hmmm.)First, there was no light and running water, then light and running water everywhere. Electricity is as pervasive as the air we breath. Go ahead, try and escape it.Read this book. Then, as I am doing, set it aside and think quietly before you text.

"Dirty Electricity" is a slim but power-packed book by one of the country's most noted epidemiologists of the last 50 years, Samuel Milham, MD, PhD. The book explores and exposes the dangers posed by the continual and increasing "electrification" of the society since the 1930s and 1940s, and its direct association with the surge of modern diseases of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: including cancers, heart disease and diabetes.The approach of the book is a successful blend of biographical anecdotes and research findings that only a scientist of Milham's standing-- with over one hundred published papers concentrating on the adverse impacts of manmade electromagnetic radiation exposure on both workers and the general public-- could have written. The style is straightforward, informative and deceptively easy to read. And this is real tribute to the scientist/author successfully tackling a very important and extremely relevant subject that is too often made unclear or over scientifically detailed for the average reader.As a result, the book lends itself as not only an excellent introductory primer for members of the general public starved for accurate information on this most pressing environmental issue of the day-- that directly relates to the ongoing health problems surrounding the continual saturation of power lines, cell phones, computers and compact fluorescent lights among the population-- but also serves an excellent read for those already grounded in the subject and who are looking to fill in details to be even better informed.Included among the research highlighted in the book is a brilliant study revealing the development of childhood leukemia in the society, which Milham was able to show as being associated with the increased "electrification" of residences in the United States, beginning around the 1930s and 1940s.While showcased is a recent study of multiple cancers among a teacher population in a California middle school that Milham was able to link to abnormal electric voltages-- "dirty electricity"-- being emitted in the wall wiring of the school, and serves as a sobering and chilling warning of similar incidences almost certainly being played out and being unreported across the rest of the country.This highly recommended book should be read by anyone within the U.S., or outside it, who is interested in preserving and protecting his or her health, because it relates to the current health issues surrounding the ever increasing silent and adverse impacts of manmade electromagnetic radiation sources that are, and will continue to be, at the heart of the this and other nations' health debates from this point forward.G. Friedman

Very informative in regards to our health and how we can defend against the electrical power

This book is so fundamental in understanding a subject that is so rarely discussed, that is how electrification brought with itself not only fantastic progress but also an entire host of diseases.

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Dr Milhan explain in a simple way the black side of our technology and the price to pay to use it.From what I see around me, smartmeters are one step forward to create much more dirty electricity and create health trouble.This book helps to be aware of what is coming for your future health and how to manage it...

informative......recommend to invest time for this book