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onsider this story: It's January 1990, during the pioneer build-out of mobile phone service. A cell tower goes up 800 feet from the house of Alison Rall, in Mansfield, Ohio, where she and her husband run a 160-acre dairy farm. The first thing the Rall family notices is that the ducks on their land lay eggs that don't hatch. That spring there are no ducklings.

By the fall of 1990, the cattle herd that pastures near the tower is sick. The animals are thin, their ribs are showing, their coats growing rough, and their behavior is weird - they're agitated, nervous. Soon the cows are miscarrying, and so are the goats. Many of the animals that gestate are born deformed. There are goats with webbed necks, goats with front legs shorter than their rear legs. One calf in the womb has a tumor the size of a basketball, another carries a tumor three feet in diameter, big enough that he won't pass through the birth canal. Rall and the local veterinarian finally cut open the mother to get the creature out alive. The vet records the nightmare in her log: "I've never seen anything like this in my entire practice… All of [this] I feel was a result of the cellular tower."

Within six months, Rall's three young children begin suffering bizarre skin rashes, raised red "hot spots." The kids are hit with waves of hyperactivity; the youngest child sometimes spins in circles, whirling madly. The girls lose hair. Rall is soon pregnant with a fourth child, but she can't gain weight. Her son is born with birth defects - brittle bones, neurological problems - that fit no specific syndrome. Her other children, conceived prior to the arrival of the tower, had been born healthy.

Desperate to understand what is happening to her family and her farm, Rall contacts the Environmental Protection Agency. She ends up talking to an EPA scientist named Carl Blackman, an expert on the biological effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMFs) - the kind of radiofrequency EMFs (RF-EMFs) by which all wireless technology operates, including not just cell towers and cell phones but wi-fi hubs and wi-fi-capable computers, "smart" utility meters, and even cordless home phones. "With my government cap on, I'm supposed to tell you you're perfectly safe," Blackman tells her. "With my civilian cap on, I have to tell you to consider leaving."

Blackman's warning casts a pall on the family. When Rall contacts the cell phone company operating the tower, they tell her there is "no possibility whatsoever" that the tower is the source of her ills. "You're probably in the safest place in America," the company representative tells her.

The Ralls abandoned the farm on Christmas Day of 1992 and never re-sold it, unwilling to subject others to the horrors they had experienced. Within weeks of fleeing to land they owned in Michigan, the children recovered their health, and so did the herd.

We are now exposed to electromagnetic radio frequencies 24 hours a day. Welcome to the largest human experiment ever.

[continued....]

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
We are not as bad as we should be, given the premise of the article, despite swimming in the stuff.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
What else must have been happening at that farm? What routine farm practices are so toxic as to frame a perfect soup for the EMF sauce?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
How much does it take to sterilize a duck?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
As far as EMFs go, I think the EMFs from power lines and even household current is a lot higher.

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EMFs are a danger. Definitely don't live under a powerline.

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But the level of catastrophe reported here is essentially asking for that Chernobyl comparison, and it's hard to credit that a 20,000 watt radio tower is going to do that.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I don't think DT was saying that it's not a healthrisk, but that it IS a question of scale.

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Some people have claimed impacts from everyday wireless devices, but studies into it have not been slam dunk.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Not *that* young a science. It's started towards the end of the 19th c.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
That's why I said "except"

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Originally posted by piratenews:
Y'all are just a bunch of whackjob conspiracy theorists!!!

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
First one means first post.

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"bioelectromagnetics" I don't know this, all I know it as is biophysics.

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1) that a given frequency does damage.

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2) that it is *enough* damage to see the effects that are being attibuted to it (in that last case, sickness and infertility in all of the animals.)

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3) that the wavelength is unique, and not something you're already getting in much higher doses from some other source.

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How much the livestock absorbs is dependent on the location and size of livestock, their proximity to the tower, and the material they are made of.

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The one point I've conceded so far is the 2cm rule, which means cell phones are a bad idea, but not nec. cell tablets.

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http://www.seizeco.com/upload/biological_effects_from_exposure_to_elec
tromagnetic.pdf

Many biological effects have been documented at very
low intensities comparable to what the population experiences
within 200 to 500 ft (*60–150 m) of a cell tower, including
effects that occurred in studies of cell cultures and
animals after exposures to low-intensity RFR. Effects reported
include: genetic, growth, and reproductive; increases
in permeability of the blood–brain barrier; behavioral; molecular,
cellular, and metabolic; and increases in cancer risk.

Some examples are as follows:

 Dutta et al. (1989) reported an increase in calcium efflux
in human neuroblastoma cells after exposure to RFR at
0.005 W/kg. Calcium is an important component in normal
cellular functions.
 Fesenko et al. (1999) reported a change in immunological
functions in mice after exposure to RFR at a power density
of 0.001 mW/cm2.
 Magras and Xenos (1997) reported a decrease in reproductive
function in mice exposed to RFR at power densities
of 0.000168–0.001053 mW/cm2.
 Forgacs et al. (2006) reported an increase in serum testosterone
levels in rats exposed to GSM (global system
for mobile communication)-like RFR at SAR of 0.018–
0.025 W/kg.
 Persson et al. (1997) reported an increase in the permeability
of the blood–brain barrier in mice exposed to
RFR at 0.0004–0.008 W/kg. The blood–brain barrier is a
physiological mechanism that protects the brain from
toxic substances, bacteria, and viruses.
 Phillips et al. (1998) reported DNA damage in cells exposed
to RFR at SAR of 0.0024–0.024 W/kg.
 Kesari and Behari (2009) also reported an increase in
DNA strand breaks in brain cells of rats after exposure
to RFR at SAR of 0.0008 W/kg.
 Belyaev et al. (2009) reported changes in DNA repair
mechanisms after RFR exposure at a SAR of 0.0037 W/kg.
A list of publications reporting biological and (or) health
effects of low-intensity RFR exposure is in Table 1.

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The one place the farmer might have a point would be if a particular wavelength was shown to be particularly harmful to DNA, and also shown to be scarce in the natural environment.

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I think that having a CRT television set, for example, is really a bad idea, and sitting 4 feet from one on a couch watching cartoons can actually increase chances of sterility, as well as other problems.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:

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I think that having a CRT television set, for example, is really a bad idea, and sitting 4 feet from one on a couch watching cartoons can actually increase chances of sterility, as well as other problems.

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...Well, damn. Again.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
You then go on to use religion as an example of something that's "not mathable"

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that sometimes you're not aware of when you're drawing from something faith-based that is seen by (at least by me) as a religious-style train of thought.

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You would dismiss that claim completely as lunacy and lies, because there is no known mechanism for explaining how "pixie dust" and hopping would produce insulin. You would not waste time investigating it.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Their logic appears to fail the test for soundness, and is more along the lines of "jumping" to a conclusion.

Basically, they may not be wrong about the helpful qualities of their "pixie dust" but they're certainly not right either.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
There are large fields that I think basically have no mechanism and no logical basis why it should be so, and I save a lot of time by rejecting the lot.

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I think it's even logically possible to find a reason why it cannot be so, and then move on to something else.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
IIRC, you really pushed me to say it, you were pretty insulting.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I was trying to be nice, and you immediately attacked me,

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Originally posted by canttakesky:

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
How much does it take to sterilize a duck?

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I'm pretty sure no one has done this experiment before, so I believe no one knows.

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Originally posted by mal4prez:
Of course people have tested the biological effects of radiation.

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CTS, you seem to dabble in science often without ever taking the real plunge. If you'd ever like to quit dipping your toes and get down and dirty, try sciencedirect.com.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
But EMFs don't have anything to do with the radiation. ... but EMFs are fields,...

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Originally posted by canttakesky:
It is not the job of non-scientists to present their observations in a logical, sound, and non-jumping-to-conclusions way, complete with controls and adequate sample size. They observe what they observe.

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I not only think it is an opportunity lost to reject apparently silly observations, I think it is unscientific to reject such observations without careful investigation and experimental proof.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I'll go you one better and quit the board. It's high time I did it anyway. Anthony's right, I can't communicate with anyone, and I'm just wasting my time and theirs.

Face it, my time is already taxed passed what I can handle, and this is the lair of the time vampires. You guys make me redundant anyway, and I'm not a good spokesperson for my causes.

It's not you, fireflyfans, it's me. I think it's time me and this forum start seeing other existences. It's done been proven that y'all get along jes fine without me, better I swan, as you have that much less time wasted.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Just OOC doesn't the earth itself have a vertical voltage gradient of about 120 volts per meter?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Anthony's right, I can't communicate with anyone, and I'm just wasting my time and theirs.

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