Dirty Electricity: Electrification and the Diseases of Civilization

Milham argues that most of the 20th-century "diseases of civilization" (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and suicide) are not caused by lifestyle alone. In his view they come from "certain physical aspects of electricity itself." His central claim is that high-frequency voltage transients riding on ordinary household wiring are what he calls a "potent universal carcinogen" and a chronic stressor. These are spikes of 2–100 kHz on top of the 50/60 Hz mains, which the utility industry calls "dirty electricity." He says the evidence for this has been sitting in US vital statistics since 1930. The 1930 and 1940 US data show urban cancer death rates 58.8% higher than rural ones, and rural death rates tracked how much of each state was electrified. Nobody investigated, he says. By the time EMF epidemiology began (Wertheimer & Leeper, 1979), the whole population was exposed, so no unexposed control group was left except the Amish.

The book is short, and it is half memoir, half argument. Chapters 1–6 tell Milham's career from medical school to state epidemiologist. They also build his case that epidemiology from vital records can find hidden causes. He gives his own track record as examples: he picked up the thalidomide birth defects early through birth-record surveillance, linked the thyroid drug methimazole to scalp defects in newborns, and found Hodgkin's disease in woodworkers and leukemia in electrical workers and amateur radio operators. Chapters 7–9 are the EMF story. They cover his work as an expert witness after he retired, the 2001 study tying the childhood leukemia age peak to home electrification, and the 2008 study of the La Quinta Middle School teacher cancer cluster. That study is the book's centrepiece: cancer rose with the dirty-electricity level measured in each classroom, but not with 60 Hz magnetic fields. Chapter 9 then extends the argument to heart disease, diabetes and suicide. It also covers a school with a cell tower on campus and a library where filters were installed. Chapter 10 lists hypotheses he thinks deserve study (ALS, cluster investigations, fertility, obesity and diabetes on islands). Chapter 11 gives remedies and policy demands.

Throughout, Milham names the people and institutions he says blocked or blunted this work. These include utility-paid expert witnesses, school-district lawyers, industry-linked consultants, journals that rejected his papers, and "cell phone money". Many of the book's key claims are presented openly as his own hypotheses ("I believe", "I suspect", "my hypothesis"). Several of his central papers came out in Medical Hypotheses after, as he reports, AJE, JAMA and the Lancet turned them down.

A connection to note (from the book's own text): the measuring standard used throughout is the Graham/Stetzer (G/S, later "Microsurge") meter. It was co-invented by Martin Graham and David Stetzer, who, in the book's words, "also manufactured a plug-in filter that could reduce the dirty electricity levels." The book recommends buying the meter and the filters from Stetzer Electric (stetzerelectric.com), both in Chapter 11 and in the Resources list ("'Dirty Electricity' meters, filters, and plug strips are available from Stetzer Electric"). Stetzer personally cleaned up the library in the librarian urine study and co-authored the paper on it (Milham & Stetzer 2012). The book also relays Stetzer's anecdotes about filtering a Wisconsin bank and a Midwestern school. It does not say whether Milham has any financial relationship with Stetzer Electric. Milham himself says removing the offending devices is "a better strategy" than filtering.

Acknowledgments / Preface. The book is dedicated to Eddie O'Gorman of the UK charity Children with Leukemia. Milham credits Court-Brown & Doll, Ausubel & Marchetti, and Graham & Stetzer as the groundwork for his findings. The Preface sets out the whole thesis: - Edison "opened a Pandora's Box." - The 1930 and 1940 urban–rural death-rate gap, and state electrification levels (Mississippi 28% in 1940; 11 northeastern states above 90%). - The smoking analogy: after 1956 the EMF equivalent of a non-smoker no longer existed in the US, apart from the Amish. - The body is "an electrochemical soup" (ECG, EEG, EMG) that evolved with natural electromagnetic fields.

1. The Early Days. Born in Albany, NY, in 1932 to Lebanese/Syrian Orthodox parents. Public schools, state scholarships, Union College pre-med, weekend work running a hospital lab.

2. Albany Medical College (AMC) - Medical school from 1954. - Rejected psychiatry (disliked electroconvulsive therapy). - Thought obstetric inductions were mostly for doctors' convenience and cesarean rates too high. - Found pediatrics heartbreaking because all childhood leukemia was then fatal. - Gilbert Beebe's rule that a properly questioned patient "would always tell you the diagnosis." Milham later applies it to people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity, whose doctors don't believe them.

3. Internship - US Public Health Service hospital in Boston. - Found jaundiced, depressed newborns linked to one practice's heavy "twilight sleep" narcotics, and was told to keep quiet. - Clinical lessons (a cat-bite illness misdiagnosed as lymphoma; a chronic complainer with fatal colon cancer). - His plantar warts disappeared after he electrocauterized a different wart. He guesses the current affected his immune system. - Prevention over treatment: John Snow, Panum, Goldberger.

4. Residency - Public health residency in Rochester: Sabin oral polio vaccine trials, a diphtheria immunity study, a milk-borne strep epidemic that no one traced. - Johns Hopkins MPH, with Abraham Lilienfeld: "The problem with epidemiology is the controls." Milham applies this to cell-phone/brain-cancer studies where only about 50% of controls take part. - Reviewed Wertheimer's early EMF paper. - A clash with his PHS director, then back to the New York State Department of Health with statistician Alan Gittlesohn.

5. New York State Department [of] Health - Birth defects: 8,000+ brain and spinal-cord defects in 2.5 million births, down 50% from 1945 to 1959 (he credits folic acid in foods). Recurrence in siblings was about 16 times expected. - Rome, NY childhood leukemia cluster (later linked in his mind to radar). - Birth-defect surveillance that picked up the thalidomide limb defects early and the effects of German measles. In Washington it later found methimazole causing scalp defects, which led to an FDA drug-label warning. - Twins: 21,128 pairs studied, leading to his theory that pituitary hormones (FSH/LH) drive fraternal twinning, later confirmed. - Leukemia is not contagious between spouses. - Hodgkin's disease twice as common in woodworkers.

6. University Of Hawaii And The Washington State Department Of Health - Occupational mortality system: 161 causes of death across 219 occupations; the tables are published online. - Hanford: myeloma in plutonium workers; no harm found among the "downwinders." - Aluminum reduction plant workers: leukemia and lymphoma. Kaiser's medical director cooperated; industry blamed coal-tar fumes; Richard Doll was retained, and was later revealed to have been paid by Monsanto. - Leukemia in electrical workers (NEJM 1982). - Amateur radio operators: leukemia and lymphoma, with a gradient by license class. - Kaiser Tacoma immune study: abnormal T4/T8 cell counts. - Multiple sclerosis and vitamin D: MS was more common in indoor than outdoor workers and falls with hours of sunshine. He recommends 3,800 IU a day in dark climates and notes one hour of tropical sun gives about 10,000 IU. The Lancet rejected the idea, which he says was later confirmed. - Radial tires: fields above 20 mG at the car seat, about 10 Hz at 60 mph. Standard research meters (the Emdex) miss frequencies below 30 Hz and above 300 Hz. "A child sitting in a baby seat over a rear tire could get a higher magnetic field exposure in an hour ... than in twenty-four hours at home." - Typewriters and typists' breast cancer. - Demoted in downsizing; resigned at 60 in 1992.

7. On My Own - Expert-witness work against power-line siting: the "deck was always stacked against the little guys"; utility experts paid with ratepayers' money. - Male breast cancer in an Albuquerque office and at Camp Lejeune. - Cancer in firefighters (RF from radios, cell towers at fire stations). - More daughters born to fathers working in aluminum smelters (EMF and heat) or flour mills (a pesticide). - The office-worker cancer cluster above transformers. - Bioelectromagnetics Society and industry influence; Russian and Eastern European standards. - The University of Washington microwave rat study (18 vs 5 cancers, immune changes, pheochromocytomas) and the rise in pheochromocytoma hospital discharges. - The childhood leukemia age-peak study: "politically challenging," rejected by major journals, published in Medical Hypotheses. The same data showed adult cancers, including female breast cancer, rising with electrification.

8. Cancer At The La Quinta Middle School - The 2004 Desert Sun article; the registry epidemiologist's claim of "no cluster." - Teachers built the staff roster from yearbooks. - Lloyd Morgan and the Graham/Stetzer meter; oscilloscope traces. - The Hydro-Québec lung-cancer clue. - February 2005 measurements, followed by the district's trespass letter (citing even Homeland Security) and a reprimand for a teacher. - Complaint to Cal/OSHA; Raymond Neutra of the California health department measured with the G/S meter; Gary Marsh confirmed the analysis. - Findings as above. Neutra's report: "prone to doubt this hypothesis but I am not virtually certain that it is not true," while conceding an excess "associated with circuit vibration." - A "cease and desist" letter ("We cry Enough. Enough, Dr. Milham, Enough!"). - Cancers among former students. - Background on Graham (UC Berkeley electrical engineer, dairy-farm stray voltage cases) and Stetzer (a power-quality electrician from Wisconsin). Magda Havas's filter work in a Toronto school and her proposed "third kind" of diabetes. - Dirty electricity would explain melanoma in indoor workers and on skin never exposed to sun. The only other agent that raises this many cancer types is ionizing radiation.

9. The Diseases Of Civilization - The 1930/1940 urban–rural mortality analysis, with graphs of heart disease, cancer and diabetes trends. - The New Delhi study; economic cycles and mortality; the Amish. - Vista del Monte school with a cell tower (the filter and behavior anecdote; a diabetic teacher whose blood sugar normalized after he retired). Cell-tower power supplies as dirty-electricity sources. - A dairy herd a quarter mile from a filtered school gave 10 lb more milk per cow per day. - Urinary neurotransmitters in librarians. Female librarians in Washington had higher death rates from cancers of the tongue, breast, ovary and brain, and from Alzheimer's.

10. Future Investigations - ALS and electrotherapy (TENS, diathermy, electroconvulsive therapy, electro-acupuncture). - The Fallon, Nevada childhood leukemia cluster (17 cases in a town of 7,500) and the Loran C antenna / ground-current theory. - Powerful transmitters: PAVE PAWS and Nantucket cancer rankings. He predicts Nantucket's rates will fall now its antenna is off. - Polycythemia vera (La Quinta; Tamaqua, PA near a coal-waste power plant; Friedman's 1981 microwave clue). - Other cancer clusters (the San Diego State Literature Building and its elevator fields; Acreage FL; Cameron MO; Clyde OH). - Fertility and electrification. - Testicular cancer from radar guns. - Brushed generators and motors; islands with obesity, diabetes and asthma; De-Kun Li's pregnancy studies; generator power in Iraq and Afghanistan.

11. What To Do - A physics primer (wavelength, frequency, energy). - US limits consider heating only. Smooth 60 Hz fields are relatively inert; pulsed or modulated fields are more bioactive. Therapeutic devices prove weak fields act on the body: "Anything that can stimulate cell division and growth is a potential carcinogen." - High Dirty Electricity Levels: the worst readings, above 20,000 against a recommended 50, were at a lamp store, hospital emergency rooms, an oncology clinic, and businesses near cell towers. - Remedies: covered under Practical Takeaways. - Long-Term Solutions: end wireless communication; stop broadband over power lines, smart meters, CFL mandates, and dirty inverters on solar and wind; rebuild the grid so return current doesn't go through the earth; clean up motors. - Conclusion: a possible 21st-century epidemic from high-frequency fields. "Good science alone is never enough to force sensible public policy. Only citizens can do that."

Appendix / References. - Biography and CV. - Resources: Microwave News, Magda Havas, the BioInitiative Report, Catherine Kleiber, the EMR Policy Institute, Stetzer Electric (meters, filters, plug strips), the Tri-Field meter, Less EMF Inc, and a $15 Radio Shack AM radio as a detector. - Recommended books: Becker & Selden's The Body Electric, Brodeur's The Great Powerline Coverup, Havas & Reese's Public Health SOS, Blake Levitt's Electromagnetic Fields, and Sugarman's Warning, the Electricity Around You May Be Hazardous. - About 45 references.