Computer Network Forced Man To
Quit His Job
EADT 24
Journalist: Juliette Maxam
July 10, 2006
A former furniture worker has told how he has had to give up his
job because a wireless computer network installed by his boss started
making him sick.
Ryan Warne, 35, is one of a tiny percentage of
people in the UK made ill by electromagnetic microwaves emitted by
mobile phones, cordless telephones and other wi-fi equipment.
When
he is in the presence of today's wireless technology he suffers burning
sensations in his head, dizziness and nausea. The headaches can last
for days if he is exposed to it for a long time.
He became electro-sensitive in 2004, when a wireless computer network was installed in the furniture showroom where he worked.
Mr
Warne, of Elmstead Market, near Colchester, started suffering from
burning sensations in his head and dizziness, which he put down to the
radio waves in the wireless network. After taking time off sick, he
eventually had to give up his job and is currently unemployed.
Now Mr Warne avoids contact with mobile phones, wireless computer networks and cordless phones.
The
extent of his symptoms depends on the level of exposure. “If I get a
lot of exposure to mobile phones I get headaches which go on for days
afterwards. If I get short bursts of exposure I have a headache for an
afternoon, it depends on how much I'm absorbing,” said Mr Warne.
“I
had a mobile phone. I mainly used it for texting. I started to notice
when I was using it I started to get a sensation in my head, I was
feeling dizzy and nauseous.”
He added: “My grandfather was dying
of prostate cancer last autumn. I went to see him once at Colchester
General Hospital but I couldn't go back because there's a big mobile
phone mast and I had to say goodbye to him then.”
Now he has no
mobile phone, no cordless text phone and no wireless network. “I've
become slightly worse. I'm starting to react to normal electrical
things like TVs. I had to modify my computer and I can't use it for
very long.”
“I've had to modify my lifestyle. I do hope to try
and reverse things and build up tolerance. I've heard people do get
better and go back to the lifestyle they had before.”
In the
meantime, Mr Warne has joined one of several support groups available
for electro-sensitive people, ElectroSensitivity-UK, which is trying to
inform the public about the problem and campaign for recognition of the
illness.
“I'm trying to raise public awareness of what these
mobile phones potentially are doing to people, not just to highlight my
story, but to make people stop and think,” he said.
Dr David
Dowson, a leading complementary medicine doctor and expert on
electromagnetism sensitivity, said “radiation sickness” from exposure
to electromagnetic emissions used to affect radar operators and
electrical supply workers.
“The increasingly widespread use of
many new electrical devices in both home and workplace at the same time
as completely original technologies based on microwaves have been
introduced has spread this environmental trigger.
“Now a
vulnerable minority of sensitive individuals are presenting with
identical symptoms to those previously only resulting from specialised
circumstances. One to 3% may be affected.”
He said it is a
rapidly increasing phenomenon. “Up until two years ago I'd only seen
about three cases. Now I've seen 10 in the last two years because of
our increasingly polluted environment and the increasing use of mobile
phones and wireless technology.
“The agricultural revolution led
to food sensitivity, the industrial revolution led to chemical
sensitivity, the technological revolution is leading to this.”
A
former Prime Minister of Norway and ex secretary-general of the World
Health Organisation, Gro Harlem, is the most high profile case of
electrical hypersensitivity. She gets headaches from mobile phones and
other wireless technology, including laptops.