Allergic to technology?

tahayassen

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rn-living.html

It sounded pretty believable to me until I read this:

"We have a plasma screen TV because the old style one gave out gamma rays, which brought on my reaction."

Is the story a lie?

Ryan_m_b

There are tonnes of stories like this out there, the phenomenon is known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity but there is no evidence that it is real. In fact there's plenty of reasons to think that it isn't, like how participants in tests respond to placebos and not to hidden sources of EM radiation. There's also no mechanism in biology that could account for this.

Having said that it clearly is a relatively common condition and it's interesting to note that so many people across the world exhibit the same psychosomatic response. It's possibly related to mass hysteria but I don't know of anything showing that.

Evo

Until a valid study shows there is evidence, which there is not currently, it's just a story.

Darn, Ryan beat me to it, and did a better job!!

Ryan_m_b

It's so annoying that so much is known about this and we know that there's not a shred of evidence for it yet it still does the rounds in print and on the blogosphere. It's pure churnalism.

zoobyshoe

Googling, I found this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19681059

At this point there's every reason to believe it's completely psychosomatic.

Mech_Engineer

Hypersensitivity to Gamma rays?!

lisab

I get a profoundly negative reaction to TV, too. But it's not the "gamma rays" causing it -- it's the content .

Chronos

Its right up there with cellular phones causing brain cancer, IMO.

cavinmozarmi

There might be some evidence for it, but nothing significant.