Posts Tagged ‘electromagnetic fields’

Uh Oh: Salon Is Scaremongering Again

In 2000, Salon asked, “Is your cell phone killing you?” Last year, editors there must have decided the verdict was in when they published this embarrassing piece entitled, “Your cellphone is killing you: What people don’t want you to know about electromagnetic fields.” Rather than waste my time explaining the egregious flaws in that article,…Continue Reading…

When News is Hazardous to Your Health

Earlier this week, ABC News asked: Can wind power be hazardous to your health? Some residents of a Cape Cod town have complained about headaches, nausea and other symptoms that they attribute to noise from wind turbines near their homes. I’ve written about “wind turbine syndrome” a bunch of times, including here at Discover and…Continue Reading…

An Ill Wind

When I first wrote about wind turbine syndrome last year, I was pretty dubious of it. Since then, I’ve periodically returned to the subject to explore the wider implications of its premise. To refresh: Some people who live near wind farms say the noise from the whirring blades is making them sick. There is no good…Continue Reading…

Annals of Amplification in Journalism

In recent years, we’ve seen episodic waves of hysteria over reports of brain tumors and other cancers allegedly caused by cell phones and WiFi. If I had to trace this legacy of electromagnetic fear back in time, I would credit a 1979 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology and a series of  articles in the New Yorker (under…Continue Reading…