Friday, July 27, 2007

New Study Shows "Cell Phone Tower Allergy" All in the Mind

I have two relatives who believe that electromagnetic fields are having a deleterious effect on their health.

Although I doubt this new study will convince them, it's still relevant. Elaine Fox, of the University of Essex, studied 44 people who claimed they were sensitive to cell phone towers and 114 normal people. They then exposed them to signals from the mast, sometimes telling them when the tower was on or off, and sometimes not telling them.

When the subject did not know whether the tower was on, they were not able to decide any better than chance whether the tower was on or not. When they knew, the sensitive people exhibited significantly more symptoms than the ordinary people.

This establishes with reasonable certainty that "cell phone tower allergy" is all in the mind. Their symptoms may be real, but they're due to fear and hysteria, not the signals.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Big surprise there. This is just like that power-line scare back in tthe 90s.