Allergy to electricity - electromagnetic hypersensitivity

[Guest guest]

Jodie Sinnema

The Edmonton Journal

Thursday, December 27, 2007

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=12092d34-bfc3-4e0b-84ce-b493345c9bbd

CREDIT: Lucas, The Journal

Nadrofsky and his wife, Simona,

live almost like hermits.

CREDIT: Lucas, The Journal

ELECTRICITY

MAKES THIS MAN SICK, MDS SAY. Walter Nadrofsky lights a lamp on

his Barrhead-area acreage. His apparent allergy to electricity leaves

him sensitive to equipment that uses electricity, from refrigerators to

lamps and even cars.

CREDIT: Lucas, The Journal

A meter demonstrates the voltage

coursing through Walter Nadrofsky.

EDMONTON

- Without warning, Walter Nadrofsky falls to his kitchen floor, a

seizure stiffening his body and restricting his throat so much that he

gasps for air. He squeaks out a request for his wife, Simona, to turn

off the furnace.

Walter sits up weakly, his face red, his eyes teary.

A

short time later, his body is seized again and spasms on the floor, set

off by what Walter and several Canadian doctors say is an allergy to

electricity, also known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

"I

become like a capacitor, a battery," says Walter, 57, in his isolated

home near Barrhead, where the unplugged lamps in his living room are

just for show.

In the kitchen, the fridge runs on propane and a

gas lantern dangles over the table for dark winter suppers. The

Nadrofskys light the burners on their gas stove manually so the blink

of the digital clock doesn't sicken Walter. Flashlights guide the

couple to bed, and a fire-burning stove keep them warm.

"My body

collects electricity, radio frequencies and radiation from the sun,"

Walter says. "It took a long time to figure out." Many remain skeptical

that electromagnetic hypersensitivity even exists, saying the disease

is psychosomatic and set off by a mind convinced that our world, filled

with cellphones, computers and buzzing street lights, is polluting the

body.

The World Health Organization is co-ordinating worldwide

studies on the issue, and while it says the "symptoms are certainly

real" and "can be a disabling problem," it says that electromagnetic

hypersensitivity isn't a medical diagnosis.

The organization says

the majority of studies indicate people who claim to be sensitive to

electricity can't detect its presence any better than others.

Yet

Sweden recognizes electromagnetic hypersensitivity as a physical

disability, just like blindness. The Swedish Association for the

Electrosensitive has 2,400 members, and Swedish officials estimate

three per cent of people have the disease.

Hospitals have safe

wings, and houses have been built where people can stay for several

weeks to recuperate and detoxify from electricity and radio frequencies.

But

in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, people with the severe allergy are

fleeing cities to live in canyons, says Dr. Rea, a surgeon who

in 1974 founded the Environment Health Center in Dallas, Texas. His

centre sees 20 to 30 electrically sensitive people each month and

discharges them by "plugging" them into the ground and treating their

mineral imbalance problems.

There is no cure-all treatment for

the progressive disorder, although some doctors advocate boosting

immune systems or putting filters in a home to clean up "dirty"

electricity, caused by a proliferation of modern gadgets that produce

negative feedback and use electricity in peaks and ebbs rather than a

smooth flow.

Nothing has worked for Walter, who has largely removed himself from

society.

"(He) has worsened to (the) point that he has to live like a

hermit," wrote his family doctor in Ottawa in December 2005.

Another

doctor, Armstrong, who works at the Ottawa Environmental

Health Centre, wrote in a March 2006 letter to the Workers'

Compensation Board, "Mr. Nadrofsky most definitely is sensitive to

electromagnetic radiation. ... The best thing that he can do is to

avoid electromagnetic fields." Armstrong wrote, "Without his wife to

help him, he would not be able to function at all. This is an extremely

stressful situation for him and I do not know what keeps him going, as

he has absolutely no support or recognition for his health problem.

There is a clear cause and effect to his health with electricity."

Walter's sickness became so severe in humid Ontario (electricity

travels faster in moist air) that he had 30 seizures some days,

prompting the Nadrofskys to flee to rural, dry Alberta. They left

behind an unsold 1,500-square-foot house and 30 years of married

memories, and now live down a dead-end gravel road in an old trailer 27

kilometres from Barrhead, northwest of Edmonton.

"We closed the door and walked away like refugees," Walter says.

He

says his electricity allergy began in earnest in 2003 when he was a

welder and working around a plasma cutter. The machine uses

high-voltage electricity and is supposed to be isolated, Walter says,

but he worked near it all day cutting sheet metal.

"After a thousand times a day, you glow in the dark," he says.

Walter's

symptoms began with sore feet, continued with restless leg syndrome and

a sensation of rats running up and down his legs. It progressed to

full-body seizures. With time away from work at Christmas, the problems

went away, only to continue again in January.

Magda Havas, an

environmental and resource studies professor at Trent University in

borough, Ont., says welders, seamstresses and tailors are in

high-risk industries for a disease she has no doubt exists.

"I'm

totally convinced now," says Havas, seen as the Canadian expert in the

area of electromagnetic hypersensitivity. "It took me a while. I was

quite skeptical as well." She has repeated a study in four schools,

installing filters to clean up dirty electricity without notifying the

teachers.

In every school, between 40 and 50 per cent of the

teachers reported they had fewer body aches, more energy and clearer

thinking when the filters were in place, Havas says. They said 60 per

cent of their students were also better behaved and more able to

concentrate.

Havas has also documented spikes and dips of blood sugar in

diabetics when they were exposed to electricity.

A person with multiple sclerosis gave up his cane and experienced

fewer tremors after the electric environment was cleaned up.

"That's not something they can control that's psychosomatic," she

says.

Havas

says other studies, including the ones mentioned by the WHO, haven't

worked because the researchers assumed every patient would be allergic

to the same frequencies or wavelengths. Just as someone with a chemical

allergy might be allergic to perfume but not the smell of varnish, the

electrically sensitive respond differently to different electric

sources.

"The scientists simply assume you can turn on a switch

and a person will respond, and you turn the switch off and their

headache will go away, and that's not the case," Havas says. "Because

the symptoms are so diverse, it's very easy to say they're

psychosomatic." Similar accusations were made of people with chronic

fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia, Havas says.

"These people are

not mentally disturbed, although some of them become mentally disturbed

because of all the stress they are under," she says.

"In North

America, there is virtually no funding to do this research and there is

a very strong lobby to prevent any of the science from getting out, so

we're in a very backwards situation right now. ... "How many bodies do

you need before people realize there is a problem?" Walter's problem

worsened in November 2004 when he received a 600-volt electric shock in

a work accident.

Walter saw neurologists and family doctors, who put him on drugs for

epilepsy or diagnosed fibromyalgia and arthritis.

Only when a Calgary doctor said the welding was making Walter sick

did things fall into place.

But

with no treatment, Walter became hostage to electricity. He stopped

working in July 2005 and hasn't received any compensation, although the

fight continues. Simona works two part-time jobs to help pay the bills,

and she does most of the driving in a diesel vehicle, since Walter

can't be in a car with electronic ignition. Driving under power lines

can also set him off, though some days are better than others.

His disease manifests itself in strange ways.

Full

sun is OK, but when its rays glint off polished wood surfaces or peek

through clouds or tree branches, Walter says he hits the ground, his

chest screaming from the shock of the magnified exposure.

Such symptoms sound more like epilepsy than electric sensitivity,

Havas says, but notes someone can have both conditions.

Whatever the case, Walter's brother-in-law recently felt Walter's

carotid artery during a seizure and couldn't find a pulse.

Life

for the couple has changed dramatically. When Simona does the laundry

or fires up the furnace for a prolonged time, Walter heads outside. The

Home Hardware employees in Barrhead serve Walter outside the building.

Walter says the nearby hospital turned him away when he asked for

treatment in the parking lot for a cut finger.

"The

doctor refused to come out to see him," Simona says. Instead, the

couple drove to the local drop-in clinic where staff waited until the

slow lunch hour, turned off all the lights and stitched Walter's finger

by flashlight.

"I worry about coming home one day and finding him on the floor,"

Simona says.

"You can't dwell on what's going to happen, what could happen,

because then you'll go nuts."

jsinnema@...

Ù The Edmonton Journal 2007