Is This Story About Being Allergic to Modern Technology a Lie?

[tahayassen]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-443717/Im-allergic-modern-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]

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

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.

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

:shy:

 

[zoobyshoe]

Googling, I found this:

An extensive literature search identified 15 new experiments. Including studies reported in our earlier review, 46 blind or double-blind provocation studies in all, involving 1175 IEI-EMF volunteers, have tested whether exposure to electromagnetic fields is responsible for triggering symptoms in IEI-EMF. No robust evidence could be found to support this theory. However, the studies included in the review did support the role of the nocebo effect in triggering acute symptoms in IEI-EMF sufferers.

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

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

 

[Mech_Engineer]

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

Hypersensitivity to Gamma rays?!

 

[lisab]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-443717/Im-allergic-modern-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?

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.