ES-UK has grown out of the need recognised at a workshop organised by The Electromagnetic Biocompatibility Association (EMBA) at The Royal Society of Medicine at Wimpole Street on September 17 2003. The question dealt with at the workshop was ELECTROSENSITIVITY: REAL OR IMAGINED? Representatives of differing disciplines and professions contributed including physicists, medical consultants and GPs, architects ,biophysicists, electronic engineers, homeopaths, legal experts, independent scientific risk consultants, medical writers and journalists. ES sufferers made a particular impact so the question was unanimously answered in the affirmative. Our organisation is a consequence.
We are a collective of (so-far) unpaid scientifically enlightened individuals formed initially around Cambridge, choosing to come together as a concerned group with no axe to grind except truth. A foundation meeting of trustees, administrator and scientific consultant was held in Bristol on December 16, 2003. Application was made to the Charity Commission and we became a certified charity ElectroSensitivity-UK,(ES-UK), registered number 1103018 on April 2, 2004. Our formal objects (aims) as recorded in our Declaration of Trust with the charity commission are;;
1) To promote and protect the physical and mental health of sufferers of electrosensitivity, also known as electrical hypersensitivity (EHS) in the United Kingdom through the provision of support, education and practical advice.
2) To advance the education of the general publicin all areas relating to electrosensitivity.
Our intention is to be a voice of and for sufferers of electrosensitivity and based on scientific reason and rationality. Completely independent of the huge and wealthy commercial operators in this modern economic arena. Specifically our concerns are around electricity and particularly its threatening and quite unintended and usually unrecognised by-products, the electromagnetic fields which surround and penetrate our brains, bodies and vital systems and organs. Like the mineral extraction and industrial revolutions which preceded our electronic age leaving their unintended legacy of lead and chemical pollution throughout the land to sicken us, so with its unintended by-products such as unwanted and mostly unexamined electromagnetic fields and microwave pollution the same unrecognised consequences are happening today.
This electromagnetic/radiofrequency area is dominated by a handful of huge players from commerce and a few rather pushed around politicos and technologists either employed by or easily swayed by the power and imperatives of these mighty industrial and commercial players. Most scientific input is made from calculated perspectives and commercial objectives and so designed to justify a project, a point of view, or spin rather than examine important relevant questions. A recent edition of The British Medical Journal has an article by two tireless campaigners for the better use of scientific evidence, Dave Sackett and Andy Oxman. They show thirteen methods for getting the results you want with a spoof company called HARLOT standing for How to Achieve positive Results without actually Lying to Overcome the Truth. Dangers are belittled, ignored and brushed under the carpet. Unfortunately real people are suffering real injuries and ignoring this neither helps resolve it nor cures or alleviates the effects.
Our mission, for indeed like the Blues Brothers in the film of that name, that is what we are on, is to represent those electrically injured, the suffering oversensitives, providing an understanding focus and voice for their complaints. We value their usually painful personal experience and welcome their support and membership of ES-UK.
It is being handled better abroad, especially in Sweden where an association for the electrically injured is well into its second decade of activity( see FEB under Links). Their authority is increasingly respected, their warnings are heard by government as well as industry and health and safety institutions. We intend to emulate them.