Dirty Power -Duane A. Dahlberg, Ph.D. -The Electromagnetics Research Foundation, Inc.

There are two issues associated with what has been called dirty power. One involves the impact of harmonics, power surges, and power sags on electrical equipment. The power source for most electrical equipment is the electric utility system. Under perfect conditions this power is exactly 60 Hz and only 60 Hz, and there are no sages or surges. As the referenced article points out, conditions have changed. Electronic equipment has become much more sensitive to imperfect power, there has been a continued increase in electrical equipment that affects power quality, and the utility system has been extensively expanded. Electrical equipment has been designed and constructed to use 60 Hz power at a specific electrical potential. This equipment may or may not be able to tolerate some differences in frequency or potential. Its tolerances determine
the extent to which dirty power can cause effects. Today we work with less tolerant equipment and there has been a significant increase in dirty power. This has become a serious problem for electrical consumers.

The second issue involves the possibility of health effects from dirty power. This is a more complex issue, because living organisms are not designed to operate on 60Hz electrical power, but they are still inadvertently connected to the power system, because the electrical neutral
is grounded.

Exposure to electricity affects negatively and positively, both humans and animals. Within every living organism are many electrical systems, each necessary for the appropriate function of each of these organisms. Discovering all of the mechanisms for how electrical exposures are able
to affect living organisms is not within scientific grasp at the present time. In fact we are just scratching the surface with our present scientific discoveries.

From information that is available, it is not too difficult to draw any number of different conclusions. These conclusions can span the range from little effects from certain electrical sources to significant effects from many different sources. At this point in our understanding it is
necessary to keep our minds open, always recognizing that because living organisms are so electrically dependent, possible effects may not be separable from effects of other causes. For example it may be difficult to separate chemical effects from electrical effects. Having said these things, from my experience, I am convinced that exposure to electricity that has been put into our environment is causing significant negative health effects.

It is probable that any and all electrical sources can cause similar effects as well as different effects. Until there is a definitive mapping of the electrical systems of living organisms, mechanisms for defining cause and effects are not likely to be clearly established. In our
industrialized world electrical exposures are very complex. All living organisms are continuously exposed to various levels of direct current electric and magnetic fields and of power frequency fields and currents. Other exposures may be more intermittent. Sorting out how each of these sources may play a role in positive or negative effects is not a simple task. When one adds the complexity associated with individual differences, the task becomes overwhelming.

From the investigative work that I have done, there has never been a clearly identifiable electrical cause for the behavioral, health, and production effects in cattle and health effects in humans on dairy farms. Unfortunately the controlled laboratory research has been based totally on the observation of a response from intermittent shock. Although intermittent shock is one of the possible electrical exposures on a dairy farm, there are also a number of others. One of the other exposures is associated with the electrical utility's use of the earth to carry current. It is not clear that dirty power has played a significant role in causing the current to be in the earth rather than on the neutral wire. The multi-grounded electric distribution systems have been designed to
permit the majority of the neutral current to return to substations by means of the earth. The increase in non-linear loads and electronic equipment can increase harmonics, high frequencies, and transients, but the majority of neutral current is in the earth whether dirty power exits or not. The difference involves the location of the harmonics higher frequencies, and transients.

On the neutral side of the distribution system, currents have two basic paths. One is the neutral conductor, which by its very nature has a higher impedance for higher frequencies. The other is the earth, and because of its size, impedance is not especially different for this range of frequencies. The implication of the electrical characteristics of these two paths is that transients and higher frequencies are more likely to follow earth paths. When ground currents are the major problem for dairy cows, one might expect to see dirty power showing up as a significant component of the electrical exposures. Since very little research has considered effects from exposure to continuous very low level currents, it is difficult to determine which components of these continuous currents are causing the major health and production problems.

If the transients or high frequencies are on the phase wires, the main path available to them is the wire. The impedance of the phase wires then determines the extent to which these transients and high frequencies can reach the consumer. Dirty power on the phase wires can cause living
organisms to be exposed to electricity by means of the magnetic and electric fields associated with the phase wires. These electric and magnetic fields are composed of the 60 Hz frequency other frequencies, surges, and sages. The major component to the fields and exposure is
the 60 Hz, and determining the relative differences in possible effects caused
by dirty power compared with that of 60 Hz may be quite challenging.

Duane A. Dahlberg, Ph.D.
Consultant
The Electromagnetics Research Foundation, Inc.
1317 6th Ave. N.
Moorhead, MN 56560
218 233-8816

EMF and the Question of Risk by Michael Milburn, Ph.D.

The heart of the EMF issue comes down to a simple question: what are the risks of exposure to electromagnetic fields? Unfortunately, while the question is simple, the answer is much more challenging. Citizens of the modern, industrial world are exposed to a potpourri of nonionizing electromagnetic energy and until recently little was known about the types of exposure experienced at home and on the job. Even less is known about the biological effects of this kind of exposure.

Some particularly prominent physicists have promoted the idea that since we know all about the interaction of electromagnetic energy with matter (the dead stuff that physicists study), it is clear there are no risks from fields except at high energies and high intensities. High energy electromagnetic waves, like X-rays, can rip apart molecules and are a potential danger to health. while people in the past used X-rays to help fit shoes in shoe stores, today much more care is taken in the use of X-rays for things like medical purposes. High intensities of electromagnetic energy can actually heat things up and this is why a microwave oven works. If people are exposed to too many microwaves they get cooked too and safety standards have been developed to prevent this.

Yet what these physicists fail to comprehend is that living systems are not the same as the dead stuff they are used to studying. Biology is the study of the extremely complex organization of dead stuff and it is this remarkable organization that characterizes life.

While dead stuff is easy to take apart and study, living stuff presents a more complex problem. When you take complex things apart, you loose insight into their organization. This is the great problem of biology and the basis of a perennial debate over holism versus reductionism. In a nutshell, it is not at all clear that the interaction of EMF with dead stuff in a laboratory is the same as the interaction of EMF with whole, living, breathing creatures. The types of EMF people are exposed to in their daily lives might not be important for dead stuff but it may affect the organization of living system and be important for people.

Carrying out research on living things is difficult because they are not identical (like atoms are) and are constantly interacting with their environment. Hence biologists get results that are not as perfect as those of physicists and many physicists cast a critical eye on biology, causing some to go as far as to claim that results showing bioeffects from EMF are not scientifically valid.

The point of all this discussion is that it is not possible to make definitive statements about the risks of EMF. There is too much that remains unknown. Yet that is exactly what the editor of a major scientific journal did recently in response to a single epidemiological survey. Since scientists do not yet understand fully the interaction between EMF and people, epidemiological surveys can only be crude and imperfect attempts at defining broader health implications. In the meantime, how should society deal with new and old risks with a significant degree of uncertainty? The first principle is that of the importance of public involvement. Too often experts with contempt for the "emotional" public get to decide which risks should be judged acceptable. Here it is useful to quote Carnegie Mellon University's M. Granger Morgan, a breath of fresh air in the risk management business: continued top of next column.

My experience and that of my colleagues indicates that the public can be very sensible about risk when companies, regulators and other institutions give it the opportunity. Lay people have different, broader definitions of risk, which in important respects can be more rational than the narrow ones used by experts. Furthermore, risk management is, fundamentally, a question of values. In a democratic society, there is no acceptable way to make these choices without involving the citizens who will be affected by them."

The second principle is that of the importance of "balance" in risk decisions, another way of saying that there should be a way of reducing the power of money in influencing decisions. The first principle is a difficult one; the second very difficult.

A pair of risk experts were recently interviewed about their new book on risk issues. They laughed about the irrational members of the public who were concerned about things like PCBs and growth hormones in milk and pointed out that protesters who had traveled to demonstrate against a large shipment of PCBs headed for their community had a much greater chance of injury or death from their use of the car than they did from the PC Bs. Presumably, they should have stayed at home unless they were able to reach the demonstration by public transit. According to this "theory," very popular amongst experts, people willingly accept the risk of the automobile so they should willingly accept all (putatively) lesser risks. Because of the great danger of automobile, this includes practically everything except jumping the Grand Canyon in a rocket propelled car and climbing Mount Everest.

The holes in this theory make it look like Swiss cheese. First of all, people do not necessarily accept willingly the risks of the automobile. Modem cities, especially North American ones, leave citizens little choice. A little known fact is that several large corporations bought up privately owned and profitable mass transit systems in the US and trashed them in order to increase dependence on the private car. Cars are only as safe as they are through the work of citizens and consumer advocates like Ralph Nader.

Secondly, even if the danger of the car is accepted "willingly" by most citizens, and there is much reason to doubt, that does not make concern about other, perhaps smaller, risks "irrational." Risks are not spread evenly - the executives of nuclear power plants and their families are not usually among those living in the plants' shadows nor does everyone get the benefits of the risks they are supposed to accept.

Perhaps the really irrational things about the risk issue are the unequivocal pronouncements about complex and unsolved problems and the blind faith in technology that so often steamrolls the concerns of communities.

This article originally appeared in the Fall 1997 edition of Network News.

Michael P. Milburn, Ph.D. is the author of Electromagnetic Fields and Your Health, (New Star Books, Vancouver) and the forthcoming, The Tao of Healing: Chinese Medicine and the New Biology, (Avery, New York). Dr. Milburn may be reached at his office in Canada at Elmag Research & Consulting, 421 Barrie Place, Suite 11, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3Z6 Canada, or via e-mail at mpm_mo@compuserve.com

Dowsing for Electrical Pollution - Dan Nakari

Research is showing that we need to be seriously concerned with the harmful aspects of “electrical pollution”, which are stray currents and Electromagnetic Fields that adversely affect our lives and health.
Electrical high-tension wires, radio, radar, microwave transmissions, and computers, etc are some of the causes of this pollution.

They can affect your physical and mental health, your sleep, work, and your ability to concentrate. There are things that you can do to greatly reduce the detrimental effects of these energies.