iBurst (Pty) Ltd. a wireless ISP in South Africa has tried a new strategy in overcoming tower installation objections due to claims of electromagnetic hypersensitivity. They turned the tower off completely without telling the neighbors for over a month and observed as the complaints of EHS continued. This proves conclusively, to anyone capable of the most basic critical thinking, that the tower is not the cause of the reported symptoms.
Unfortunately the neighbors still want to try to have a court shut down the tower showing that the neighbors aren’t thinking logically. The company did what is considered the gold standard in EMI/EMF effect testing by every regulatory agency, standards organization and decent engineer. Once you turn off the power to any transmitter, bringing the power output to zero, anything still happening is clearly not from that transmitter.
This incredibly simple and essentially infallible disconnect test is about as good as it gets. Many people should be familiar with this type of test from their own experience. The most common example I can think of is when you’re sitting in a parked car and hear a noise that seems to be coming from the engine. You turn off the engine and if the sound goes away the engine is the culprit, if the sound remains it’s not the engine. No functional human being should be able to deny the results of this test and the radio transmitter variation is just as reliable.
It is clear that EHS is a very real disorder but it is also very likely to be a psychogenic illness. Many studies and tests of EHS have been made over the past decades and the evidence points squarely at this being psychogenic. Sadly, as this iBurst case so clearly demonstrates, no matter how good the evidence is, some people refuse to believe and instead fall back on standard pseudoscience tactics.
Links to some full free access journal articles on this topic: