Barbara Lloyd McMichael

“Dirty Electricity” — Samuel Milham, MD, MPH
iUniverse — 104 pages — $12.95 soft cover

Blame it on Thomas Edison?  
Not quite, but after 50 years of public health research, Olympia physician-epidemiologist Samuel Milham has some strong ideas about the cause of many of our society’s predominant diseases.
In a new book, “Dirty Electricity,” Milham makes the case that some of the diseases that have been the scourge of the last century (cancer, diabetes, etc.) may well be linked to the increasing exposure humans have had to electromagnetic fields (EMF) since the electrification of the civilized world.
Now that we’re in the 21st century, Milham fears that the past decade’s sweeping embrace of technologies such as broadband Internet, cell phones, personal electronic equipment and
Wi-Fi soon will result in an unimaginable epidemic of morbidity for humanity.
Perhaps because he could not convince mainstream publishers to imagine it — at least not in a fashion that satisfied his time frame — the 79-year-old scientist has turned to iUniverse to make his views known.
Despite Milham’s sense of urgency in “Dirty Electricity,” epidemiology is a field that requires patience and exacting attention to detail. It depends on good working relationships with patients, doctors, record-keeping agencies and others.
Over the course of his long career, Milham has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and worked in hospitals from the East Coast to Hawaii. Ultimately he worked for 22 years as an epidemiologist at the Washington State Department of Health, where he investigated multiple myeloma in Hanford Project workers, leukemia and lymphoma in aluminum reduction plant workers and leukemia in electrical workers.
Since retiring from the Department of Health in 1992, he has continued to pursue investigations on his own and he’s become increasingly intrigued and alarmed by the correlation between the presence of ambient, high-frequency voltage and certain diseases.
“We evolved in a complex EMF environment with an interplay of natural … EMF sources from solar activity, cosmic rays and geomagnetic activity. I believe that our evolutionary balance, developed over the millennia, has been severely disturbed and disrupted by man-made EMFs,” Milham warns.
Not only does this “dirty electricity” travel on electrified wires anywhere, it is generated by fluorescent lights, computers, copy machines, TVs and even the spinning of steel-belted radial tires. Milham claims “dirty electricity” is found increasingly in ground currents.
Maybe not everything Milham suspects is a carcinogenic link will prove to be so. But this vociferous scientist asks provocative questions that deserve to be considered and investigated.
Milham concludes his book with practical suggestions for detecting high-frequency radiation in the home or work environment and for mitigating it. He also makes dire predictions regarding wireless technology and many green technologies.
This book makes for unusual reading for the layman. Mil-ham makes difficult concepts understandable and his discussion of epidemiological protocol is downright enjoyable — it would be great to share with teenagers considering a career in medicine. But a few of his ideas seemed rather sketchy to me (suicide rates exacerbated by EMF?), so take it with a grain of salt.
The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.