Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization by Samuel Milham MD MPH

Author:Samuel Milham MD MPH
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781938908194
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2012-12-06T06:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 3

T and B cell counts in microwave exposed and sham exposed rats

There also were seven benign adrenal pheochromocytomas in the exposed rats, versus one in the controls. These are functional tumors of the adrenal medulla, which produce adrenaline. Eric Ossiander, my friend from the health department, provided me with the annual number of pheochromocytoma hospital discharges in Washington State between 1987 and 2007.

FIGURE 4

Pheochromocytoma hospitalizations WA

There has been a remarkable increase in cases, with a steep increase in annual cases beginning in the year 2000, just as cell phones were becoming most popular. For example, there were eighty-three hospital discharges in Washington State for this tumor in 2000, but 208 in 2007. National United States hospital discharges show a similar pattern with 1,927 total discharges for benign adrenal gland tumors in 1997, and 3,764 in 2007. Clearly something is going on, which may be a reflection of rapidly increasing ambient RF levels in our environment.

Childhood Leukemia Age Peak Study

One night in 1999, while surfing the Web, I came across a graph (Figure 8, chapter 9) showing the percent of urban and rural residences connected to the electric utility grid in the mid-1900s (Ausubel and Marchetti 1996). I E-mailed the author, Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University, and he gave me a reference to a United States Census Bureau document. The Michael Court-Brown and Richard Doll paper documenting the emergence of the U.S. childhood leukemia age peak in the 1930s (Court-Brown and Doll 1961) came to mind, and I intuitively thought that electrification might have caused the emergence of this childhood peak.

The childhood leukemia age peak simply didn’t exist in places without electricity, and electrification is worldwide phenomenon. The only other technology to cover the planet in the last century was the internal combustion engine, and it was present in rural areas of the United States long before electricity. Some change in the environment had to account for this steady rise in childhood leukemia incidence.

Eric Ossiander and I dug out childhood leukemia deaths for children dying under age five classified by state in the years around the 1930 and 1950 U.S. censuses. From the United States Census Reports, we abstracted individual state population data and the percentage of homes with electricity in urban, rural non-farm, and farm homes. At ages two through four in the peak years, there was a 24 percent increase in leukemia mortality for every 10 percent increase in the percentage of homes served with electricity. There was no relationship to electricity in the non-peak ages from birth through age one.

The peak was made up of a single leukemia subtype, common acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and the rates worldwide vary from 0.4 per 100,000 people in places without electricity, to more than 4 per 100,000 people in industrialized countries.

Trying to get the paper published was an ordeal. We tried the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the Lancet, and others. I sent it to a friend who had been editor of AJE.

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