I have, for a long time, been the proud possessor of some very fetching silver net jackets which I had made when my electrosensitivity was particularly rampant and which I still wear when I think I am going to find myself in a particularly electrosmoggy atmosphere. The idea is that the silver net creates an mini Faraday cage around you off which all incoming radiation bounces. It is not totally successful as electromagnetic radiation is crafty stuff and will creep in through any cracks or crevices that it can find, but it is certainly helpful.
(I had my jackets designed and made for me by a university friend of my son’s but you can buy shielding fabrics to make your own clothes, and some ready made ones, from EMFields. I found that even just a very simple tabard/vest either under or over my ordinary clothing did reduce the amount of radiation I got hit with even though it did not protect me entirely.)
However, my protection pales into fairy cobwebs compared with what the Yamamoto Corporation has just come up with to protect its workers still labouring to contain the radioactive waterleaks at Fukushima.
Admittedly, in the short term at least, the mobile phone masts and wifi signals that I am trying to protect myself against are a good deal less lethal than the stuff coming out of Fukushima – and my jackets a great deal more flattering! But, as the general concern over the dangers of excess radiation from whatever source increases, I can see a latter day Alexander McQueen coming up with some lead-based little numbers which will protect us all!
For more on the Yamamoto nickers see this article in the Telegraph or their press release.
And, while on the subject of dangerous radiation…
There was a time, way back in the ’70s and ’80s when microwaves and microwave cooking was all the rage – so quick, kept the food so moist, you did not boil away all the goodness of your veg in the water… But how safe are they really?
There is a strong anti-microwave lobby (well represented on the internet) which claims that microwaves are, effectively, lethal. See, for example the post on Gust Environmental, from Lawrence Gust, an environmental consultant and member of the International Institute for Bau-Biologies and Ecology. However, five minutes Google research bring up just as many pro-microwavists who maintain, for starters, that the Soviet Union never banned microwave ovens (as claimed by the anti-microwavists) and that Professors Hertel and Blanc, who claimed to have found that microwaving food caused changes in blood chemistry that could lead to cancer, did not know what they were talking about. See, for example, IEEE Global History Network.
However, while there seems to be a lot of passion expended on both sides of the argument, there seems relatively little hard research offered on either side in which I would put that much faith. Given my own pretty negative experience with excess, man-made radiation however, I would tend to err on the side of caution on the basis that even if the proof of harm is currently a bit sparse that is no proof that harm is not being caused. So while I do still have a microwave, its only use these days is for heating the wheat bag that I use when my back is complains that is has spent too long seated in front of a computer – and I am even wondering about that.
17/12. PS If you want a really scary take on what is actually happening at Fukushima right now read Harvey Wasserman On EcoWatch.