What are the dangers of electricity in the environment?

Answer 1

This is somewhat controversial. Various people have said at various times that living near high voltage transmission lines has some harmful effect but nothing has been proved as far as I know.

Another possible harmful effect postulated is from cell phones held to the ear, affecting the brain. Again I don't think the medical profession has identified anything definite, but I could be wrong.

The trouble is one keeps reading about some group in an obscure university you have never heard of that comes up with a new finding based purely on a statistical survey, and then you never hear of it again.

You make some very interesting points. I would like to contribute to this question. First, common sense has to be applied to all answers. I had a fellow technical type assure me that aspirin was dangerous (hidden dangers). The thing is, they make it in hundred ton lots. If it is damaging the population, where are the wounded, the ill, the dead bodies??

I think there was something to the high tension line scare, but it was not electricity. They found a leukemia bump along some high tension right of ways. Whenever possible, HT lines are strung along railroad tracks, highways, rivers, etc. Much easier than getting an easement agreement from each owner in a suburb. Weeds follow the HT lines, and sprayers of horrible chemicals followed the weeds. In the bad old days, you could spray anything which did not kill the guy doing the spraying before end of shift. I am pretty sure that the leukemia followed the obnoxious chemicals. Today, the chemicals are forbidden, and I have not heard of any recent bumps. For most of these lines, we are talking about fields of less than 250 volts per inch. A heating pad or electric blanket can easily produce a field at the sleeper's skin of 1000 volts per inch. So far, we have no evidence of harm from either electric blankets or heating pads. {It is the field which has effect, not the voltage.}

Some Scandinavian groups came up with concerns about radiation from CRTs. IT people exposed for hours to Alphas and Betas off the tube. No data...just concerns. Well, the CRT is dead, and I assume this topic with it. Finally, there is concern about damage from cell phones or similar creating RF radiation right at the brain. Now this is scary, because we have a whole population which can no longer walk or even sit without a cell phone held to the head. But again: Concerns, yes. Data, no. This growing population should give us some good statistics if there is anything there. If nothing else, insurance people are always looking for predictors.

Answer 2

The dangers of the current electricity is that it can electrocute and therefore lead to death. The other danger is that it may cause death to the person electrocuted.

Answer 3

thay are that animals or rats can come along and mess with the wires and then they'll die from being electrocuted.