Advertisement
Sue Kammel
Sue Kammel was feverish, and her legs felt like wood. The 52-year-old La Crosse woman said she had a lot of pain at her nerve endings and was diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
“I always felt worse when I got up in the morning, and I was very tired, ” Kammel said.
She heard about dirty electricity and filters from a daughter’s friend. Her house was tested with a meter that measures energy determined by the voltage and frequency. The readings were quite high, Kammel said. Kammel said she installed filters, and within a few days, she was feeling much better.
“I noticed a big change,” she said. “My headaches have gone away, and I feel so much better. I can’t understand it or explain it, but I’m better.”
Linda Nelson
Linda Nelson of Whitehall, Wis., thought she was affected by the fluorescent lights at her workplace.
“When I went to work, my brain went to mush,” she said. She said she had trouble walking up and down steps due to pain in her knees. She also had back pain. So when she read about dirty electricity, Nelson put filters in her home in March.
Within three days, the pain in her knees and back was gone.
“I was kind of skeptical, but the filters made a big difference,” Nelson said. “The best part was my husband and I were so foggy in our thinking at times, and we noticed a big change.”
She had a hard time believing how much better she felt physically and mentally.
“I’m not pulling out my filters,” she said.
Nelson said her diabetic mother put filters in her room at a nursing home in La Crescent, Minn., and saw improvement in her control of blood sugar.
She thinks dirty electricity has an impact on the body’s nerve endings. Nelson notices that her symptoms return when she goes shopping. “It takes me a day to get back to normal,” Nelson said. “I’m no longer skeptical, but it’s a strange deal. I think people are skeptical because you can’t see it.”
Catherine Kleiber
Catherine Kleiber of Waterloo, Wis., was sick for four years with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Kleiber thought she might have a problem with her electricity after reading about stray voltage. When she shut off her power, she noticed her symptoms would go away for two days. She started shutting off her power at night. “It was 100 percent noticeable, but I was not 100 percent well,” she said. “Still it was marvelous, and I was ecstatic. I felt like I hit a brick wall when the power was on.”
One night she said her husband forgot to shut off the power, and when she awoke in the morning she felt terrible again.
“I was not able to think, I couldn’t read a book and follow across the page,” Kleiber said. “I had trouble walking and doing my gardening.”
So she installed filters in her home.
“The filters definitely helped, and I wouldn’t be without them,” she said. “The utility company doesn’t want to fix the problem, and it has tried to convince me that I’ve been misled.”
Kleiber has started a Web site about the problem, www.electricalpollution.com.
“As long as I’m at home and the power is not horrendous, I do OK,” Kleiber said. “Even if this affects a small fraction of people, the effect on society is really huge.”
Marcie Fry
Marcie Fry woke up every day exhausted and slept all the time. The Madison woman said she had anxiety, chronic fatigue, headaches and body aches. “I had so many things wrong with me I couldn’t get up in the morning,” Fry said.
She said doctors didn’t believe her. Fry had counseling, and her therapist didn’t think she was depressed but that she had chronic fatigue syndrome.
Fry said she had high levels of dirty electricity in her home, so she had filters installed.
“I got better with the filters, but I didn’t heal,” Fry said. “I’ve become really concerned about this issue and the harm caused to people.”
Fry said she testified about proposed state legislation introduced by State Rep. Barb Gronemus, D-Whitehall, to require utilities to fix the problem. The legislation was introduced twice by Gronemus but died in committee.
“There were so many devastating stories told at that hearing, but the committee never voted on it,” Fry said.
Fry began a group, Moms with Meters, and she goes out to homes for free and measures dirty electricity. “I decided I had to do something, but there’s only so much I can do,” she said.
