Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) or electrosensitivity is a no-man’s-land disorder that is not just considered a disease by medical or health authorities, but that affects the lives of many people, especially those who live in large cities. They can hardly use electrical appliances or electronic devices.
The problem is real for the people who suffer from it. Some affected have quit their jobs because they cannot use a computer. Others live confined and have transformed their homes into authentic Faraday cages to stay ‘safe’ from electromagnetic fields.
Now the photographer Claudia Gori has wanted to get closer to her reality, portraying how some people with EHS live (or who claim to be electrosensitive ) in their country, Italy. For this reason, he has created a project called The Sentinels. The images show how these individuals try to shield their homes or shield themselves using special compartments, special saunas, and other home-made gadgets.
“ Some of them lose their families and friends, because nobody believes them . People think they are crazy or depressed, that they have psychological problems, ”says the artist. “They say that what they feel now, everyone will feel in the coming years,” he adds, referring to the arrival of 5G and the new data networks.
Gori says that “the people I have met started having symptoms when they started using a lot of electronic devices, especially after WiFi was developed. They began to feel disturbed by the screens of their computers or smartphones ”.
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity, according to WHO
The World Health Organization (WHO) determines that there is no evidence to show that exposure to radio frequency fields below those that cause tissue heating can cause harmful effects on health.
The WHO does not quite recognize that it is a disease . It emphasizes that some effects that are linked to it may be due to poor indoor air quality, stress, pre-existing psychiatric conditions or visual problems. However, he explains that EHS would resemble MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities), a disorder linked to low-level environmental exposures to chemicals.
Some of the symptoms supposedly associated with electromagnetic hypersensitivity would be fatigue, concentration difficulties, nausea or digestive discomfort.
The organization also highlights that the highest incidence of the disorder would occur in countries such as Sweden, Germany and Denmark above others such as the United Kingdom, Austria or France. Thus, the symptoms associated with EHS would have been reported more frequently in Scandinavian countries.
Although it does not consider it a disease, the World Health Organization does indicate that “the symptoms are certainly real and can vary widely in severity. Whatever its cause, EHS can be a disabling problem for the affected person . “
