Electromagnetic Man: Health and Hazard in the Electrical Environment

Recent research suggests that low-level electromagnetic fields and radiation from distribution lines, appliances and other ubiquitous sources may pose a measurable hazard to public health. Such news, if factual, would certainly be inconvenient, and would inevitably be vigorously resisted (as it has already been) by representatives of powerful vested interests; dispassionate discussion of the issue is likely to remain as difficult as it is important. Enter Smith and Best (respectively a British biomedical physicist and a medical journalist), who review the history, evidence and relevant points of scientific fact and principle, but who then muddy the already murky waters by writing about homeopathy, Kirlian photography, pyramid healing, extrasensory perception, electromagnetic radiation and the afterlife, etc. The indiscriminate inclusion of such material, while lending general "interest" to their book, tends to diminish its value as a contribution to the serious debate of an important issue. Nicely produced, with glossary and a detailed bibliography. (NW) Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.