Re: ESS: Environmental Somatization Syndrome

["Jerry Cohen" <jjcohen@prodigy.net>]

Bjorn,
    I was unaware of ESS, but it certainly makes a lot of sense. I've often
suspected that LNT, ALARA, and similar concepts are a major cause of
radiophobia.Thank you for bringing ESS to our attention.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bjorn Cedervall <bcradsafers@hotmail.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Date: Saturday, February 03, 2001 12:42 AM
Subject: WHO: Need $2M for DU !? :-( ESS: Environmental Somatization
Syndrome


>>UN health agency seeks $2 million to fund work on depleted uranium
>1 February ­ The World Health Organization (WHO) today appealed for close
to
>$2 million to examine the possible health effects of depleted uranium,
which
>was used during conflicts in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans.
>----
>There is a built-in dilemma here:
>
>One one hand it is probably "politically correct" (and almost necessary
>politically) to investigate possible health effects in this case. Otherwise
>there will be accusations - "look they don't care - they are all bad guys -
>the military, UN, various authorities - and even the politicians don't want
>to know about all the health effects").
>
>The other side - which is the main point here - is the fear and stress that
>any such a program may induce. I recently listened to an interesting talk
>related to this aspect - the attention was brought to "ESS" - The
>Environmental Somatization Syndrome (original article is probably C-J.
Gothe
>et al. in Psychosomatics, Vol. 36, Number 1, Jan-Febr. 1995:1-11).
>
>This article (and a few others) describe the mechanisms of ESS epidemics
>that occur when various large health (or measurement/monitoring) programs
>are initiated. The symptoms of the resulting diseases (often called by a
new
>name that does not occur in medical textbooks) are often diffuse: Headache,
>dizziness, concentration & memory problems, fatigue, sleep disorders and so
>on. These symptoms are usually the same regardless of what the suspected
>causing agent is. These epidemics typically exhibit non-consistent patterns
>(clusters) in time and geography and are often transient in character. The
>cause is psychogenic in character (mental contagiousness) and the
>transmitting vector is often the massmedia. The victims are often well read
>about the believed causing factor.
>
>(I may mention that Sweden seems to have an unusually high incidence of
>people claiming that they are allergic to electricity - some even live far
>out in the forests with the worst conditions - to stay away from any
>technical gadget that may have magnets or electric features (like
cars...)).
>
>There are many examples of ESS in the litterature - Goethe et al. begin by
>describing the fear of steel nibs on ink pens that were introduced around
>1830, lamp shades, carbonless copy papers, keyboards, VDUs and so on.
>
>Now as I write this - it should be pointed out that ESS has nothing to do
>with any other diseases which may or may not occur. The point is just that
>ESS seems to be a phenomenon and could result as a biproduct of any large
>scale health or monitoring investigations.
>
>For the seriously minded scientist/investigator - it is of course important
>- from a more principle point - to sort out and try to understand what the
>underlying mechanisms are so that any non-psychologically caused diseases
>won't escape attention.
>
>My reflections (and the ideas of Goethe et al.) only,
>
>Bjorn Cedervall    bcradsafers@hotmail.com
>
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