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On TV about HV power lines and health

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LAN_403

Sulaiman

Sun Jan 03 2010, 11:47PM

Registered Member #162 Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3141

Mates, One of my favorite tripping grounds has a 275 or 400 kV (not sure which)
overhead line and I never noticed anything particularly unusual
.... other than the bizarre

Since a fluorescent tube will light up in the E-field,
I can't imagine the human body NOT being effected
- to the point where physical sensations can be felt,
presumably there will also be some subtle effects too.

all gone now - winter, so can't verify your experiment.

I suspect the masses of Soviet experiments with (and applications of) magnetism have influenced you (and me) i.e. not an outright sceptic!

radiotech

Mon Jan 04 2010, 01:48AM

Registered Member #2463 Joined: Wed Nov 11 2009, 03:49AM
Location:
Posts: 1546

With a handheld gaussmeter magnetic fields of lines and appliances can be mapped and recorded to practice prudent avoidance. Outdoors field meters never should be read by extending your arms or reaching. The same goes for infrared gun-type thermoprobes. There is basic reason for this. If your eyes are on the meter you cant see where your arms are reaching and the source could be dangerous. About transmission lines, lines between power substations, vegetation that blocks your seeing the lines effectively
reduces the volts/meter field below, and increases it above the tree.
The magnetic field is not attenuated by trees. Carnegie Mellon University. Measuring Power-Frequenciy Fields Part 1 and Part2: What We Can Conclude From the Measurements of Power Frequency
Fields? (Department of Engineering and Public Policy) 1993. These easy to read booklets were used for educating the public by utility companies and show how the gaussmeter is used. A productive use by skilled experimenters, would be put on a workshop in your community and invite the public to bring appliances to be measured and recieve instruction on how to check the home. There is much to be passed on about what you do know about electromagetism.

Mattski

Wed Jan 06 2010, 08:41PM

Registered Member #1792 Joined: Fri Oct 31 2008, 08:12PM
Location: University of California
Posts: 527

Mates wrote ...

Ok, I already said that the drug mediated ability of sensing the power lines was not only my experience but than you can argue about collective hallucinations. But letâ€™s skip this, because I know what I felt but I can hardly persuade anyone that it was not hallucination. You can always try it to find out by yourselfâ€¦

It's ironic that you criticized the experimental methods of the other studies. "I know what I felt" doesn't really carry much scientific weight, regardless of how sober you were

Doing experiments with humans is tricky because the brain will think and sense whatever the heck it wants to under the right conditions. Let me guess that somebody walked under the power lines and said something along the lines of "Whoa... when I walk under this power line I get this trippy feeling." So the next person tries it, but now you have experimental bias at work. You "repeat the experiment", getting the same results, but the results are still biased. If you really wanted it's possible to set up a reliable experiment to test the effect of 50/60Hz power lines on people taking various hallucinogenics, with controls and blind trials and all. What you have is a fun story to tell at parties.

As to your 2nd and 3rd arguments... I think you will find that power lines are very well understood. The current densities are never unusually high, so we don't see any nonlinearities from that. The voltages are high, but that doesn't cause any problems I've heard of, and if it did then I'm sure they would have it all figured out by now. They can set up an experiment which accurately simulates in mice what humans experience, because you just need to have similar magnetic and/or electric field intensities and shapes. They don't need megawatts for that because the size of the mice is much smaller.

Also, TDU: Awesome! You serve as a pretty good subject expert as somebody who is a doctor AND obviously knows a thing or two about electricity.

LutzH

Thu Jan 07 2010, 02:04AM

Registered Member #1721 Joined: Sat Sept 27 2008, 08:44PM
Location:
Posts: 136

Good Show!!!

Thanks for a well well thought out, and well presented, presentation. Very informative and educational, yet fun to read at the same time. I also enjoyed the replies as well, some of these were also very informative.

I realize that power line fields are AC in nature so they are not the same as a static magnetic field. On this note they have found that MRI scans do not seem to have any measurable long term effects on the human body. One note on this: If you ever find yourself in an MRI machine, (And they are not scanning at the moment.) try to turn your head in a sudden manner, the motion will set up micro-currents in the brain, which can cause the perception of things like metalic taste sensations, or flashes of light.

Maybe the effect while on hallucinogenic drugs is related to this, but on a much lower power level? In other words some type of coupling of the AC field to the human body which results in small random electrical currents in the body, and inside the brain as well. Normaly these minor effects would be screened out by the perception limiting circuits of the mind, but in an altered state these small signals could maybe creep into perception?

I am not going to live under power lines unless someone could figure out a simple way to couple power from them, in enough quantity to run my house? Maybe something like a Dynamitron concept with its capacitive coupling, could be made to work via a special metal roof. Then it could potentialy become desirable to live under them :)

I am sure someone has tried this by now, I just have never read about any attempts to do so, which did anything beyond lighting a fluorescent tube.

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