Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: E-M fields health risks



David is correct in attributing the increase in lifespan to improvements in
sanitation and to medical advances. However, the use of electric energy has
become so ubiquitous that we often overlook how important it is to both
sanitation and to health care.

Mark Shapiro
http://www.IrascibleProfessor.com


-----Original Message-----
From: David T. Marx
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu
Sent: 7/18/2001 8:46 PM
Subject: Re: E-M fields health risks

I am not the one to knock Alvarez' methods or conclusions, but starting
from a US life expectancy in 1900 of 48 years or so and noting its
exponential rise by perhaps 50% in the interim to almost European
levels, am I to conclude that the correlated increase in electrical
supply over the same period indicates a therapeutic value to electrical
and magnetic fields in the US?

brian whatcott <inet@intellisys.net> Altus OK

Brian,
I don't think your statement is equivalent to Alverez'
analysis at all. He is applying a valid statistical approach to the
problem by looking at the overall trends affecting the population.
He found no increase in non-respiratory cancers over the 75 year
period that he examined. To me, this is very significant, given the
rapid exponential increase in electricity production. From what you
wrote, it seems you are indicating one of two things has happened
(assuming Alverez' data is correct):

1. That E-M radiation has a detrimental effect on the health of the
population, but another factor has come about that cancels out the
effect of the E-M radiation and results in no net increase in the
incidence of non-respiratory cancers.

2. E-M radiation has a positive effect on the health of humans,
reducing the rate of cancer, but other modern factors have increased
the rate of cancers, resulting in no change in the incidence of
non-respiratory cancers.

The third possibility is the one that Alverez found:
3. E-M radiation does not influence the incidence of non-respiratory
cancers.

We attribute our increase in life expectancy to other simpler
explanations, such as inproved sanitation and medical advances.

Take care,
David Marx

______________________________________________________________
At 21:02 7/18/01 -0500, David Marx wrote:

/// Luis Alverez published a study
... a graph showing the incidence per hundred
thousand of cancers and it increased in a slowly increasing, nearly
exponential manner from the year 1900. He plotted on the same graph,
the electricity production per hundred thousand people and it
increased at a larger exponential rate over the same period. Then,
he removed the respiratory cancers from the earlier plot and found a
nearly constant rate of non-respiratory cancers.

From this, we
conclude that although we have substantially increased our production
of electricity over the past hundred years, we haven't increased the
incidence of cancer. Presumably, the increase in respiratory cancers
is due to air pollution and smoking increases over that period.

Take care,
David Marx
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL