Does your smart meter make your nose bleed?
Are you terrified of your microwave?
Have you installed am anti-brain cancer thingy on your cell phone?
Welcome to the world of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and their alleged harmful effects.
For the last ten years or so, people have been worrying about EMFs, along with the increase in the use of electronics. And even though scientific data obtained so far is reassuring about the effects of EMFs on human health, a lot of people are still scared.
It took almost a year to create this comic. After all, the topic is mind-blowingly complex and, as a pharmacist, I am not at all qualified to speculate about it. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to work with two awesome collaborators from the very beginning:
Jérôme Poulin (Ph. D) is a physicist and researcher in optical physics. His Ph.D thesis was about cold atom guidance in a hollow-core photonic cristal fibre using a blue detuned hollow laser beam (Olivier’s note: I have no idea what that means… I think it’s about building the next Death Star or something). He was also part of the Electro-Urban Brigade, a team of scientists who measured the daily exposure to electromagnetic fields of citizens in the province of Quebec, Canada.
Michel Trottier-McDonald (Ph.D) is a physicist and data scientist. He namely worked on the ATLAS experiment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN in order to find the Higgs Boson (Olivier’s note: yeah, that big thing).
None of us are experts on the effects of EMFs on health and we don’t pretend otherwise. Fortunately, scientific knowledge on the matter is advanced enough for us to relay conclusive evidence to you.
The 5 key messages of the comic go as follows:
- Certain types of electromagnetic radiation can break the molecules of the body, others cannot;
- Until proven otherwise, mobile/radio/Wi-Fi fields do not pose a threat to human health;
- Every day, we are exposed electromagnetic radiation that is hundreds, if not thousands of times below the international standards deemed safe;
- Symptoms experienced by people who identify as “electrosensitive” do not appear to be caused by electromagnetic fields;
- So-called experts and companies that pretend otherwise may not be trustworthy, or even qualified to discuss EMFs.
But hey, you should to read the comic before disagreeing…
So cover your head with aluminium foil, make holes for your eyes, turn off your router & 4G and read this right away!
P.S. As always, scientific references for this comic are listed in the first comment.
Translated by Patricia Rainville; edits and proofreading by Robyn Penney.
Posted in Comics
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Stress and anxiety are helpful in life.
Imagine you’re hiking in Alaska, and you suddenly find yourself in front of a Kodiak bear that’s fresh out of hibernation and looking for his first meal. You can actually see drool coming out of his mouth, and the only defense you have is a spoon…
…Okay, bad example.
Let’s say you’re allergic to wasps. Stress is what tells you to be careful when they’re nearby. When you see a wasp, anxiety is what drives you to move in the opposite direction. These are normal defense mechanisms, and they’ve allowed human beings to evolve.
However, with evolution, the causes of anxiety changed in modern times: work, family, money, health, and so on. Cavemen didn’t care about all of that… but today, these are the things that stress us the most.
Today I’m going to talk about Generalized Anxiety Disorder, like I did before with depression. Although it’s a really common disorder, few people easily accept it or feel comfortable talking about it.
Note: You might need a little effort and imagination to get into this comic strip… but you’ll definitely appreciate it more if you try to go along with my unusual analogies. Enjoy!
Translated by Ellie Rieber with edits by Patricia Rainville; proofread by Stéphanie Alcaraz-Robinson.
Posted in Comics
Tagged amygdala, anxiety, anxious, back, balance, body, book recommendation, brain, brakes, can't breathe, career, CBT, chemical, cognitive-behavioural therapy, collar, concerns, depression, diagnosis, diarrhea, doctor, electric, everyday life, evidence-based, exaggerated, examined, exams, experiment, family, feelings, focus, GAD, generalized anxiety disorder, get rid of, going to die, health, healthy, heart problems, help, homework, hope, hurting, imaginary, keys, legs, locks, loved ones, mechanism, medical file, medication, metal, missed opportunities, money, muscles, neck, neurotransmitters, pain, panic, panic attacks, prefrontal cortex, prisoner, professionals, psychological, psychologist, psychotherapy, real world, reassuring, restless, self-help, serious, shock, sick, sleep, stiff, stomachaches, stress, stressful, symptoms, tense, test, therapist, thought patterns, tired, uncontrollable, unlocking, work, worried, worries
