/Nexus - 0301 - New Times Magazine/pages/0043/image.png)
Page Content (OCR)
@ 1995 by Kim Besly NEXUS Magazine 55 Queens Road E. Grinstead, West Sussex BN25 2lS United Kingdom Phone: +44 (0)1342 32 2854 Fax: +44 (0)1342324574 DECEMBER 1995 • JANUARY 1996 The electromagnetic spectrum includes. at one end, x-rays and gamma rays and, at the other end. radio waves and extremely low frequency waves. with visible light roughly in the middle. We are not usually aware of other types of electromagnet ic energy, and yet it is all around us and may have a potential for damaging peo ple's health. When power lines carry a high voltage. whether carried overhead or buried underground, they appear to have adverse effects on the people who live and work nearby. Since the late 1970s. a 400-kilovolt electricity power line has run through the centre of the tiny village of Fishponds. in Dorset. Today, three quarters of the villagers complain of increasing ill-health. Over a period of six years, four of the eight men living in Fishponds have died of heart attacks. Residents report: "It just seems as though all your limbs go"; feclings of exhaustion so people can hardly bring themselves to do the normal things they like doing; and sleep problems. High voltage power-lines create fields which extend for several hundred feet and which. some scientists argue, can trigger different effects on animals and humans. As under standing of these facts has increased. a number of governments and some states in the USA have established "rights of way" to prevent people living close to the lines. Many scientists think the idea that people should be living directly under high voltage transmis sion lines is simply barbaric. There is certainly clear and convincing evidence that the practice ought to be stopped. and there ought to be a minimal right-of-way prohibiting that kind of thing. Against the background of grQwing worldwide concern about the potential health risk created by power lines, utility companies have commissioned some research of their own which has helped them convince themselves that there is no risk to people living near power lines! There is, however, growing concern on both sides of the Atlantic that power lines are a health hazard. Publicly, both the British and American governments say there are no risks. but many scientists working in this area no longer believe this to be true. Dr Perry in England published findings that showed that people liVing in a high mag netic field were 40 per cent more likely to commit suicide. This report formed part of the growing body of evidence which first started to appear in the early '70s when the US Navy's Project SQIIguine introduced a new way of communicating with their submarine neet, using a transmitter based at Clam Lake, Wisconsin, which worked on a frequency very similar to power lines. Unlike the power companies, however, the Navy was legally obliged to establish that there were no environmental risks in using the SQIIguine transmit ter. The results of some 20-odd programs run by the US Navy on volunteers indicated that there were biological effects which were potentialiy hazardous to human health; further. that since the frequencies being evaluated bracketed the power frequencies of England at 50 Hz, and the US at 60 Hz, and since the power lines emitted a signal far stronger than these, we certainly could expect to have bio-effects in power lines; therefore the investi gating commission pronounced that the American civilian population was at risk. One hundred and twenty volunteers from the Marines were subjected to low-level elec tromagnetic fields. These tests produced some alarming reSUlts. As soon as the fields were turned on, all but one of the Marines showed..a rapid build-up of serum triglyc erides-an unmistakable warning of cardiac or heart problems to come. These problems were a source of considerable embarrassment to the Navy, and remain so today. A secret survey of workers at the Wisconsin transmitter showed a similar result. The Public Service Commission tried to get that information from the Navy, but the Navy refused to forward it to them or even to acknowledge that such a committee had met or that any data of that nature was at hand. • NEXUS· 43