DANGERS OF WIRELESS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 8 September 1913, Page 7

DANGERS OF WIRELESS.

The latest in the list of occupational maladies is "wireless-operatore' disease." A German authority says: "Wireless telegraphers are subject to anaemia, in which the number of red blood globules, as well as their content of hemoglobin, is diminished. This! malady has certainly various causes: in the first place, the defective sanitary conditions of the stations, especially on board ship. It is equally probable that the strong ozonisation of the air, due to the use of alternating currents of high frequency to send the messages, play an important part. Similar troubles, such as paleness, headache, loss of appetite, aud bad digestion, have often been noted among the electrical workers employed in high-tension plants, such as those at Niagara. The. future will show us whether electric waves have any physiologic effects. A Viennese physician, Dr Beer, has noted the. production of subjective glows when a powerful electro-magnet is brought near the head. . . . An American electrical engineer named Collins has mad© experiments on a sleeping cat, and asserts that, under the influence of electric waves the animal leapt into the air as if an alternating current had been setit through it. Collins concludes that powerful electric waves may cause characteristic accidents, possibly fatal ones. Nevertheless, no absolutely conclusive proofs have yet been obtained."