Given that humans have existed for well over 150,000 years, electrical and wireless technologies are very recent developments. We became able to generate and manipulate electricity only two hundred years ago. Yet our global economic, medical, educational, utility, military and other systems now depend on digital electronics. Most people who are alive now cannot imagine life without them or a mobile phone.
Electricity, electronics, and wireless devices have created profound benefits for humanity. They have also created hazards for our health and for wildlife. Consider this book a forum that introduces vocabulary, personal experiences, scientific studies, questions, and solutions about electrosmog. Consider me a student of things electric and the forum’s moderator. While physicists, biologists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, and citizens may speak apparently different languages and rarely with each other, we begin to communicate here. People who give testimony may disagree with each other or give conflicting reports. Sometimes, information is simplified in a way that renders it slightly inaccurate. I have aimed to encourage discussion about what we can and cannot control around electrical issues. As you read, please write down your questions and research them. We need many researchers and many forums. May every person be recognized as the expert in their experience. May we all recognize that every action affects the whole.
My sincere thanks to every person who joins this roundtable.
About the book’s title: Before the marine biologist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, few people understood the consequences of spraying a backyard, a farm, or recreational park with pesticides. Her book inspired the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and led to generations of environmental activism.
We all stand on the shoulders of Rachel Carson. May this book’s title serve to attract the attention that its issues deserve. In the stories that follow, some names and identifying char-acteristics have been changed to protect peoples’ privacy.
Katie Singer
February 2014
