The horrors of CFLs and the demise of the incandescent bulb

07/22/2012 By 1 Comment

 

I am always banging on about how unpleasant CFLs are for electro-sensitives because of the electromagnetic fields that their flickering create, but that is nothing compared to the damage that their mercury content can do if they get broken.

If you really want to scare the life out of yourself, read this salutary newsletter/training sheet from the Salisbury Fire Department in Maryland, US of A……

What is particularly scary about this scenario is that so few people are genuinely aware of the dangers – including recycling centres. I am sure I am not the only one whose recycling centre happily mixes incandescent, halogen, flourescent and compact fluorescent bulbs in the ‘bulb recycling bin’. What then happens to all those bulbs? Are they sorted and the CFLs disposed of safely according to the extremely complex guidelines?…. I very much doubt it. Far more likely, as Andrew Goldsworthy suggests, that they are all going into landfill. (See ‘All you need to known about low energy lighting.’)

And just in case you think that it doesn’t matter and that you will just go out and buy some old fashioned bulbs – think again. 100 watt and 60 watt bulbs are no longer on sale and 40 watt and 25 watt are to be banned from sale as from September this year in the UK – under a regulation that has not even been voted on by the EU parliament! In the rest of Europe there is an exemption for those who, for health reasons, need to use incandescent bulbs but this exemption will not apply in the UK.

For those of us who are electrosensitive, the problem has been largely solved by the very much wider use of halogen and LED bulbs neither of which create mini electromagnetic fields around them, as do the CFLs. But that is not the case for the around two million people in the UK who suffer from other light sensitivity issues (such as lupus, migraine, ME, xeroderma pigmentosum, autistic spectrum conditions, light exacerbated eczema, epilepsy or vertiligo). These people are not only affected by CFLs but by the blue light emitted by the other forms of low energy bulbs so for them it is incandescent bulbs, candles or darkness outside the hours of daylight, making any form of normal existence without incandescent bulbs more or less impossible.

The Spectrum Alliance is a totally voluntary pressure group formed after the ban on incandescent bulbs was first announced in 2007 to lobby the government and anyone else who will listen  to retain access to incandescent bulbs for those who are light sensitive. So far their efforts, including an Early Day Motion in June last year, have fallen on deaf ears – which is all the more reason to support them now.

The Alliance is currently circulating a questionnaire among light sensitives to try to get more information about how low energy lighting impacts on their lives. (Mine came through ES-UK but, if this applies to you, I am sure that you can get a copy either via ES-UK or the Alliance itself.) They want more information not only for general purposes but  to provide Sheila Gilmore MP, who has taken up the Alliance’s cause, with more case histories and ammunition in her attempts to get the total ban on incandescent bulbs lifted.

NB  Electrosensitives who want to try  LED bulbs can now get them from main branches of Ryness and from a whole raft on on line stores. A number of IKEA desk and bedside lights come with them already fitted. They are expensive but they do last for a prodigious amount of hours and, the light that they emit is now much softer and yellow/pinkier than in the first bulbs and so much closer to an incandescent bulb.


Filed Under: Allergies, Electrosensitivity, Environmental Issues, FreeFrom Skincare, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Coping – and benchmarking…

06/24/2012 By Leave a Comment

I have a friend, now in her ’80s, who has had  MS (multiple sclerosis) for nearly 50 years. She does not have sufficient muscular strength to lift her feet onto the feet rests of her wheel chair; she does not have the muscular staying power (she can exert a little pressure for a few seconds but for a few seconds only) to operate an electric wheelchair, a computer, a disabled lift or a chip and pin machine. She can stand for  a short while and shuffle for a few steps as long as the soles of her shoes are shiny and the floor smooth. She cannot sit in an upright chair without arms as she would topple sideways, she can only drink a cup of tea if it is in a thin porcelain mug or in a paper cup so that she can can wrap both hands round it and it is not too heavy for her to hold.

Yet, she lives on her own, has a home help for half a day every two weeks, cooks for herself (no ready meals allowed in her kitchen), bakes her own bread, grows her own tomatoes, salad leaves, strawberries and black currants in her flower-deep garden, provides me with basil plants, morning glory plants grown from seeds and innumerable flourishing cuttings for my garden, sits on a number of committees monitoring accessibility and is the accessibility/disability consultant to a couple of large architectural practices.

So well has she organised her ‘coping’ strategies that it is only when her roster of home help/friends who take her shopping fails or some event totally outside the norm occurs that her disabilities really impact on her life.

I had thought that thanks to my various house adaptations and to my oxygen therapy (see here for more) my electrosensitivity was really no longer much of an issue for me, but…

I was called for Jury Service a few months ago and, having never done it, I said yes. However, I did call the  ’recruiting office’ to tell them that I was ES and that, depending on what was allowed in the court in the way of laptops and mobile phones, and  what sort of lighting they used, I could have a problem. They were extremely helpful, said that no phones or laptops were allowed in the jury box but that barristers could use both, and that they thought the lighting in the court was LED bulbs rather than fluorescent. So I decided to go for it – last week, as it happens.

However, what I had not taken into account was that, to get to Southwark Crown Court, I would need to spend 45 minutes on a bus through central London (fluorescent light and surrounded by busy mobile phones), then walk for 4o minutes along the embankment with nothing between me and the 42 mobile phone masts on the north side of the Thames except the river. Once at the Court (surrounded by 17 more mobile phone masts), the 150 odd of us who had been called  were ‘assembled’ in the Jury Assembly room which was wifi enabled and where you could (and most people did) use your mobile phone, until you were picked, at random, to sit on a jury. As it happened, I was not called on day one so spent the whole day sitting in the Assembly Room reading a book. We were allowed out for lunch for an hour, but though pleasant, as the sun was making one of its rare appearances that day, that was no better in ES terms as I merely swopped the in-built wifi of the Jury assembly room for the wifi bath that is the city of London where, in a drive for connectability, Boris has wifi enabled every lamp post.

I did not feel ill but I was very tired on the evening of day one. Day two looked as though it would follow the same pattern and I started to wonder whether I actually would make it through to the two weeks. Around lunchtime on day two I therefore went and spoke to the Jury Master’s assistant, who could not have been more helpful and charming. We had a long discussion about ES after which she went to consult with her colleagues who finally decided to ‘release’ me immediately. Sensibly, I guess, they decided that if I was likely to fall by the wayside it was better to have me do so there and then rather than waiting for me to get stuck into a case.

That was Tuesday and we are now Sunday, five days later. I still feel extremely tired and, while not actually ill, I feel very distinctly grumpy and under par with a slightly dodgy digestion and absolutely no energy. And all of that for a day and half doing what most of the rest of London does five days a week, 52 weeks a year… But because I have got so used to the coping strategies that I have set up over the last few years, I had quite forgotten that I cannot do what the rest of London does as a matter of course.

I only tell this tale to highlight the fact that all of us who suffer from ‘disabilities’ – and that most definitely includes those who have serious food or chemical allergies or intolerances –  develop coping strategies that enable us to get through the day and which become so second nature to us that we no longer even notice them. (I, for example, whenever I go into a ‘new’ room, stick my nose up the lamp shade to see what sort of bulbs they are using. I only notice that I am doing it when I get a very old fashioned look from whoever I am with who is wondering what on earth I am doing…)

But, although, if we are to remain sane and get on with our lives, we do need to ‘cope by habit’, we also need, if we are to get the kind of help that both we, and others who may not be quite so good at coping need, to remain aware that we are ‘coping’. I draw the analogy below, only because it will be a familiar one to most of you, with gluten free breads…..

When we first started working with gluten-free bread the average g-f loaf was so deeply undesirable that coeliacs greeted any bread that would not break your toe if you kicked it as the most delicious thing they had ever tasted. In fact, if compared with a ‘normal’ loaf, it was no more than just about acceptable. Which is why, when we taste test ‘freefrom’ foods, we always include at least one ‘normal, non-freefrom’ taster in the judging panel to benchmark the products against the non-freefrom version of the product.

In assessing what is needed to help those who are food allergic, intolerant or chemically or electrically sensitive we need to remember what we/they can not do, while working to ensure that the ‘can not do’s are reduced to the minimum. Which requires the kind of split awareness that not everyone finds that easy….

Filed Under: Allergies, Electrosensitivity, FreeFrom Food Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Earthing…

03/03/2012 By 14 Comments

Those of us who are electrically or electromagnetically sensitive know about ‘earthing’ as a means of drawing excess electric and electromagnetic energy back to the earth where it is harmlessly discharged – rather than have it whizzing around our bodies and damaging us! It is normally achieved by connecting shielding fabric, bed sheets, mats  or paint, via copper wire, to pipes or an electrical circuit which discharge to earth.

However, I was interested a few weeks ago, to get an email from a one-time subscriber to the now defunct Foods Matter magazine, telling me how her own health had been greatly improved by using  an earthing sheet on her bed and an earthing mat under her computer –  much better sleep patterns and a general ‘calming down’ effect. She had heard that earthing could also be useful for ES and, as she knew I was a sufferer, very kindly thought she would tell me about it.

While the earthing theory for electrosensitives is both valid and helpful, there is another aspect to earthing of much wider significance. The earth is (to quote the Groundology brochure)  ’a massive reservoir of negatively charged free electrons’. By coming directly in contact with the earth (through walking barefoot on the earth or connecting ourselves via ‘earthing equipment’ to the earth) our bodies can absorb these negatively charged electrons that are then able to neutralise the reactive oxygen species (free radicals) which are so heavily involved in the body’s immune and inflammatory response – at the heart of so many chronic, degenerative modern conditions.

The theory is not new – in the late 19th century, a back-to-nature movement in Germany claimed many health benefits from being barefoot outdoors, even in cold weather. But the displacement of leather soles in our shoes by rubber and plastic, and the advent of insulating mattresses and insulated houses, have meant that we now rarely come into direct connection with the earth .

This disconnect and its implications are investigated in some depths in an article just published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health  which quotes a number of studies looking at the positive effects of earthing on sleep patterns, chronic pain, fibromyagia and muscle soreness, stress, heart rate variability, glucose regulation and osteoporosis. There was also a discussion  paper covering much of the same research in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine  last year.

If you read the papers and decide that it might be worth a try, grounding yourself could not be simpler. Walking barefoot on the earth as often as possible is, obviously, the cheapest and easiest option but, if you live in an urban environment – or the ambient temperature is 10 degrees below – then a grounding sleep sheet or a mat might be a better bet – although do see below before you get too excited.  In either case it is better for your skin to be in direct contact with the grounding mat or sheet, but the electrons will normally make it through thin fabric such as a sheet.

A bed sheet is obviously a good idea as you remain in constant contact with it for, depending on your sleeping habits, between 6 and 9 hours so get a really serious electron hit. I have used an earthing sheet for several years – and have a small one with which I travel so as to minimise the electromagnetic radiation to which I am subject in other poeples’ electrosmoggy houses! You could also have a foot mat on which you rest your feet while at your computer or anywhere else that you remain for a while – but this does require you to be barefoot to get the full benefit.

Grounding sheet material (cotton intwerwoven with stainless steel) can be had from EMFields – not cheap, I fear, but it washes and will last for ever – along with earthing leads that you just need to attach to your sheet. Mouse mats, foot mats and earthing leads can be had from www.groundology.com (a mouse mat complete with earthing leads will only cost you a very modest £30) along with grounding patches, grounding wrist bands and, if you do not have a properly earthed outlet, a grounding rod kit.

Groundology can also offer you around a dozen scientific research papers on earthing/grounding and a book, Earthing, by Clint Ober – strongly recommended by the lady who contacted me in the first place.

However…..  And this is a big ‘however’. While walking barefoot on the earth presents few problems (apart from cold feet in winter) the efficiency of the various ‘grounding’ or ‘earthing’ devices depends entirely on how good their connection with the earth actually is. As anyone who is involved in electronics (audio electronics, for example) will tell you, earthing is somewhat of a black art and creating a genuine, reliable ‘earthed’ connection can be very difficult. The only really fail-safe way to do it (as they do in Russia, for example) is to make your ‘earthing connection’ via an ‘earthing stake’ – a large metal stake driven at least a metre into the ground to which your devices to be earthed are connected. Although electrical circuits in buildings are nearly always ‘earthed’, the ‘earthing’, while sufficient to prevent electrical accidents, rarely remains pure and uncontaminated so, for electrosensitives, far from delivering the promised benefits, it might do quite the opposite!

I say this from personal experience as, inspired by the articles quoted above, I thought I would invest in an ‘earthing’ mouse mat – a great bargain at under £30, I thought. When it arrived, last Thursday afternoon, I set it up and plugged it into one of the plug strips which sits at the back of my desk. However, this plug strip is one of two, four-socket strips (all sockets full of cables which, although all very low current, have a number of connections) which in turn are plugged into the ring main.  Although two of the sockets are taken up by dirty electricity filters, the potential for electrical contamination within the room, whatever about the whole house, is significant.

I used my computer and new mouse mat on Thursday evening and on Friday, and again, briefly, on Saturday morning. I then got side tracked by discovering a great pile of carpet-munching moths under my desk. So, much against my principles, I cleared the area out and sprayed it with noxious anti-moth spray. I then left the window wide open to dispel noxious fumes and did not come back for a few hours. When I came to my computer some hours later, after about half an hour I felt the tell tale signs of having been electromagnetically ‘rayed’ – in my case an ache in the chest – something that I have not felt for many months, thank goodness!

At first I thought it must be the moth spray (electromagnetic sensitivity often goes hand in hand with chemical sensitivity although I have never displayed any symptoms of the latter) so continued to leave the window wide open. Off and on over the weekend, I came back to the computer but each time I found that, after about 15 minutes, the pain in my chest came back – but gradually subsided once I left the computer. By this morning (Monday) the room had had 48 hours with a full gale blowing through it, so I felt that any remaining fumes must have been dispersed. I therefore closed the window and sat down to work – and once again, within minutes, my ache had come back.

And then, suddenly, I thought of the mouse mat – in constant touch with my hand and plugged into the electrical circuit although, in theory, only connecting me to the earth… I unplugged the mat and brought back my old one. It took a couple of hours for the ache to subside but, since around 2pm (it is now 7.30pm) I have been back at my computer with no sign of a resurgent ache…

Who knows whether the connection between my mouse mat and the ground failed at the junction with the plug strips, in the cabling connecting them all together, at the junction with the ring main or at some other point in the house’s electrics, all of which are well over 30 years old. But what was obviously happening was that instead of the mouse mat connecting directly with the earth and transporting negative electrons my way, it was merely plugging into the buzzing electrical world under the back of my desk and transporting it back to me.

Electromagnetic sensitivity is cumulative and, since I have been very well for a long time now (over a year), my resistance is relatively high. So it took all of Thursday evening and Friday for my close connection with my electrical circuits to actually start to affect me, but once it did the ‘lead time’ got ever shorter. Had I not sussed out the problem, within a few days, I would no doubt have been feeling thoroughly unwell and unable to watch the television, go into my local  CFL-lit shops etc, etc.

So, I am not saying for a moment that earthing, or indeed an earthing mouse mat, can not be hugely beneficial – I am sure that it can. But I am saying that, if you are to use an earthing device, you need to be very sure that your connection with earth is pure and true…. My next experiment will be to connect my mouse mat to the radiator pipes via a tightly done up Jubilee clip and see how well that connects to the earth outside. Watch this space!

 

Filed Under: Allergies, Electrosensitivity, Environmental Issues Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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