Does Where You Live Matter?
Does where you live matter to your health and well being? This is a question a lot of people ask concerning their health and the answer is of course it matters.
To live in a smoky, polluted city environment has been shown to shorted your lifespan by several years.
Whereas living in a rural setting where the air is cleaner, there are no intensive farms where cocktails of poisons are sprayed and there are no large industrial installations nearby has been shown to lengthen your lifespan by several years.
Any number of environmental factors combined can affect your state of health in any n umber of ways, be they positive or negative.
Environmental Factors
Of course, there are many other factors that come into play when it comes to an individual's life expectancy - too many to go into here.
But there is one additional factor that I'd like to highlight in this particular post as it is one that blights an otherwise wonderful place to live.
I'm talking about overhead high tension power cables.
The Electricity Grid
These things hang high in the sky draped from hilltop to hilltop supported by huge metal pylons that hum loudly when the weather is damp and sit there quietly but certainly not benignly at all other times.
When they cut swathes through otherwise unspoilt countryside they are an ugly contusion on the landscape.
But when they are draped above large areas of housing, there is a problem that no one wants to face, until it comes up and bites you in the backside. Or more correctly in the bloodstream.
Do Overhead Power Lines Affect Health?
It has been proven that living in close proximity to high tension overhead power lines has links to outbreaks of leukemia, especially in children.
This is due to the high levels of electric and magnetic fields (EMFs). The safe recommended distance from these lengthy killers is set at around 200 metres (220 yards) by whatever supposed authority is supposed to keep our interests safe.
Not far from where I live (thankfully outside this so-called danger zone) there are several hundred homes sitting right beneath a bunch of these horrors.
Most of them are very close, I'd say less than 100 metres and plenty are closer than that. Some of these homes are very expensive villas with swimming pools and Mercedes parked in the drives.
Do the occupants, I wonder, have any idea what they might be subjecting themselves and their children to? Would they have paid the exorbitant prices for these homes had they known of the dangers in advance?
I doubt it very much.
Local Authorities
Yet the powers that be, the local authority where I live does nothing. Re-routing and placing power lines underground is a big job that costs a lot of money.
Many local authorities will be quick to tell you they don't have the available funds to spend on such things (don't get me started on what we all know they do spend a lot of our money on).
More homes are built right underneath these power lines as the greedy developers eat up more and more land to build their ugly blocks of apartments to line their pockets (and no doubt those of certain officials who grant them permission to build in these areas).
That is not something I want to get into here, as this is an alternative remedies and natural health site and not a political one.
Ok, I'm getting a little personal here, because this is very close to home. But it applies to anyone anywhere in the world who lives very close to power lines.
If you do, check out the information that your local government officials have on these things. There's probably not much you can do about it unless a whole lot of people get together and lobby your local official to get the power lines moved underground where they are much safer.
As a last resort, move away.
For more in-depth information about the dangers of living in close proximity to overhead power lines and the EMF radiated from them, check out this site: EMFs.
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Posted on Wed, 05 Sep 2007 in Health | 0 Comments