302
The Body Electric
source in TH-13 Bell copters whose Plexiglas bubbles left them naked to
microwaves.
The Fort Rucker affair and many other instances of military-govern-
mental sabotage of health effects research on microwaves have been im-
peccably documented in New Yorker reporter Paul Brodeur's 1977 book,
The Zapping of America. In the early 1970s, for example, follow-up to a
preliminary finding of excess Down's syndrome among children of
Seattle airline pilots was first supported by the local chapter of the
Air Line Pilots Association, then opposed due to pressure from the na-
tional level.
The stonewalling continues. Grants for serious consideration of elec-
tropollution's dangers have been cut to a trickle in the United States,
but some findings continue to emerge, especially from other countries.
A
1976
survey
of
Hydro-Quebec's
generating-station
electricians
showed a drastic change in the gender ratio of children born after one of
the parents began work in the high-EMF environment. Before, boys and
girls had been born in equal numbers; afterward, there were six times as
many males as females. A 1979 study of Swedish high-voltage substa-
tion workers showed lower birth rates and an 8-percent incidence of
genetic defects in offspring, as compared with 3 percent among children
of a control group. The finding was confirmed in 1983. Since most of
the exposed electrical workers were men, the damage apparently was
done during sperm formation. Most recently, in May 1984, Nancy
Wertheimer presented evidence of a statistical correlation between use of
electric blankets, which emit powerful EMFs, and the occurrence of
birth defects.
Among the most serious recent data are those concerning video display
terminals (VDTs). There have been alarming numbers of miscarriages,
stillbirths, and birth defects among pregnant women working in newly
computerized offices. In one year at the Dallas office of Sears, Roebuck and
Company, for example, only four of twelve pregnancies ended normally.
Among twelve pregnant VDT workers at the Defense Logistics Agency in
Marietta, Georgia, there were seven miscarriages and three cases of con-
genital defects. Four VDT operators in the Toronto Star's classified-ad
department gave birth to deformed children, while three co-workers who
didn't work with VDTs had normal babies. These anomalies must be
compared with the normal 15-percent incidence of spontaneous abortion
and the 3-percent rate of serious birth defects among the population at
large. Writing in Microwave News, an independent newsletter covering
nonionizing radiation,
in 1982 editors Louis Slesin and Martha Zybko
reported on eight such clusters, and workers' groups have documented