Fridge killed my baby? Mag-field radiation from household stuff 'boosts miscarriage risk'

Amish and technology. Seems chainsaw is OK.

http://amishamerica.com/amish-technology-friendliness/

Sawing

> but the obvious health benefits of using an axe over a chainsaw (a good workout, no fumes, no horrible noise, fewer unscheduled amputations) are a happy bonus.

The manual alternative to a chainsaw is usually a bow saw, which is also less dangerous for the user than an axe. But felling trees and sawing logs with it is really hard work, and slow. I have done it occasionally, and most certainly would not be able to make a living that way! It really is very educational, shows what a huge productivity increase even simple power tools enable.

To the link providing info on the technological friendliness of modern Amish people, I'll add:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-life-expectancy-of-Amish-people

"health benefits of using an axe over a chainsaw (a good workout, no fumes, no horrible noise, fewer unscheduled amputations)"

My chainsaw is electric, so no (local) fumes, not really noisier than a hedge-trimmer and pretty safe when clamped to its pivot on my log horse. Less of a workout than a manual saw, but moving heavy logs around and then splitting the cut bits with an axe afterwards,leaves me pretty exhausted!

Re: MF - EMF

"It's the emf (electro-magenetic fields) that the researchers seem to be worried about."

In this particular article? The topic of interest here seems to be magnetic fields. There's a strong hint in the units in which field strength is stated, and in the words in the text.

Re: MF - EMF

According to Wikipedia, the earth magnetic field is between 250 and 650 mG.

Admitted, rather constant.

MF - EMF - WTFMF

They measured magnetic field exposure with a 'Emdex lite' device. The data sheet gives a frequency range though, so they are really talking about electromagnetic fields.

I browsed the paper and, boy, do they have a lot off caveats on how they split up the exposure groups, and how they ascertained that the single measurement day was 'typical'. I am almost willing to bet that the effect will vanish in the upcoming Big study where someone will look at a large population (for better statistical significance). There is also always the possibility that certain lifestyles lead to higher exposure and higher stress -- and therefore crate correlation without causation.

I have worked in labs next to Serious magnets. We considered that running the NMR was one of the safest things a pregnant synthetic chemist could do. Let's see if that changes. I guess we all know that EM radiation can cause skin cancer if you forget to put on the sunscreen. Let's see where this one goes, it's a big Nature paper, so it'll be properly scrutinized.

Re: MF - EMF

EMF??? Unbelievable.

Re: MF - EMF

"emf (electro-magenetic fields) that the researchers seem to be worried about."

I'm glad you specified that. For a moment I thought you were warning about a certain band from Epsom.

Re: study highlights major issue

Very good points. I find the fact that they find a threshold effect very curious. That is not what I would expect from simple physics. I am also always deeply suspicious of binning data into groups (<2.5mG; 2.5–3.6mG; 3.7–6.2mG; and ≥6.3mG). Why these groups? The ranges are not evenly distributed, which makes me wonder if they were chosen to have the same number of subjects in each group. Did this lead to one group differing fro the others? Were there other life-style differences between the groups? Why not do regression analysis?

I am not saying there is no effect, but I do wonder about the way the analysis has been done. I have had many run-ins with medics about their tendency to classify things into distinct groups, when in reality there is a continuous spectrum. It took me a while to convince dermatologists I was working with that hand eczema should not be classified into 6 distinct classes ranging from 0 (clean) to 5 (very severe), but that it is a continuous scale, so I should not design a classifier for them, but do regression analysis instead (which might indeed say the severity was 4.5).

Re: study highlights major issue

Hasn't humanity been awash in manmade EMF since we invented electricity? Talking about fridges sounds like correlation as much as anything else. TVs used to be great generators of EMF…

The miscarriage rate correlates reasonably to the age of the woman and delaying pregnancy is a key aspect of modern civlisation, especially for women with a degree.

Re: study highlights major issue

It all hangs on getting comparable cohorts that differ only in EMF exposure.

Otherwise it's one of those classic papers comparing air-traffic controllers and Bhuddist monks and concluding that exposure to CRTs causes stress

Re: Let's not have an irresponsible attack on science and scientists

"as if to immunize airlines from lawsuits: "If you are exposed to cosmic ionizing radiation and have these health problems, we can’t tell if it was caused by your work conditions or something else."

Given:

1: The sheer number of aircrew

2: Their exposure over a career

3: 55 years of high altitude civilian travel

The fact that they're not dropping like flies (and in fact seem to have cancer rates no higher than any other occupation) should tell you a lot about the reality of the dangers of exposure to ionising radiation below undefined "threshold" levels (hint: Life on this planet evolved in the presence of much higher rad levels than we consider normal today)

I'll also point you at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRL7o2kPqw0 - the people who DO get the highest radiation exposure might surprise you

Re: Is that absolute or relative risk?

Twitter is a Cancer

especially when POTUS rants.

Re: Is that absolute or relative risk?

Miscarriages are much more common than generally thought. About 1 in 3 women have a miscarriage after knowing they are pregnant. And I believe* that about half of miscarriages happen in the first couple of weeks so the woman never even knows about it as it seems like part of the usual monthly cycle.

So probably more like 1 in 10 then 1 in a million, and 900 subjects should be quite enough to have statistical significance

* I seem to remember reading, but can't rmember where, so please correct me if I'm wrong

Re: Correlation vs Causation

This study reminds me of one I heard of many years ago (1970's?) that discovered that there was a significant correlation between malignant melanoma, which was then on the increase, and spending long periods in areas illuminated by fluorescent lighting. Initially, the UV output of fluorescent lamps was suspected of being responsible, despite the obvious fact that the melanomas were typically occurring on parts of the body not normally exposed to the fluorescent lighting.

We now know of course that the real culprit was sunlight, and the link to fluorescent lighting was that people who worked in large offices, which typically had fluorescent lighting, were generally paid more than other types of worker, and so they could afford to go and irreparably damage their skin by over-exposing it to the sun on foreign beaches.

Re: One study means very little

There may be very small effects. Some warming from some sorts of em radiation... but by that point of power output, the device it's self is probably burning you to the touch! :P

The other problem is correlation to *other* things linked to the em radiation. Such as "going outside in the sun", gives more radiation, but it's the soot from the city powerplant, not the radiation that is the cause. So correlation is not the whole picture.

Re: Danger...

I've just opened up my computer and tipped out all the ohms.

They are now homeless. Homeless ohms.

Sounds like a case for the great electrical detective, Sherlock Ohms.

Sorry.