Allergy to electricity - electromagnetic hypersensitivity

[Guest guest]

Odd allergy

Diagnosis controversial, but a Canadian researcher is 'totally convinced'

Jodie Sinnema

The Edmonton Journal

Thursday, December 27, 2007

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

-b493345c9bbd

Nadrofsky and his wife, Simona, live almost like hermits.

CREDIT: Lucas, The Journal

Nadrofsky and his wife, Simona, live almost like hermits.

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

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.

A meter demonstrates the voltage coursing through Walter Nadrofsky.

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@...

© The Edmonton Journal 2007

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