Continuing Coverage: District posts LQMS test results online

DSUSD calls it junk science, a theory based on no scientific facts or evidence.

“We are experiencing a barrage of baseless allegations,” said Dr. Gary Rutherford, superintendent of the Desert Sands Unified School District.

“We did a study, peer-reviewed, and it shows the cancers in the teachers were directly related to their exposure to dirty electricity. I stand by my work and he’s wrong,” said Dr. Sam Milham, a physician-epidemiologist who specializes in the health effects of electricity and high frequency electrical pollutants.

Milham is published in more than 100 peer-reviewed science and medical journal reports.

He says if DSUSD wants to scientifically refute his 2008 American Journal of Industrial Medicine report, it will have to prove that exposure to high frequency voltage transients, a form of radio-frequency radiation, doesn’t exist at the school site and doesn’t predict cancer rates.

“They measured the wrong thing,” Milham said.

At Tuesday night’s board meeting the district pointed to its website to find the tests conducted on La Quinta Middle School between 2004 and 2007, as well as one test done as a result of our News Channel 3 investigation in February.

Two of the tests presented on the site were conducted on low-frequency magnetic fields at the school and deemed it clean. (See EMF study conducted by Hygienetics Environmental Services and ELF Magnetic Field Mitigation Report by Field Management Services Corp.)

“We didn’t measure magnetic fields. We measured high frequency voltage. Electric field transients. It’s a different animal,” Milham said.

Milham also claims the equipment used in the testing presented by the district is insufficient, based on his knowledge on the field of electricity, electromagnetic fields, and high frequency voltage.

One of the firms contracted by DSUSD is FBA Engineering. We spoke with a representative for the company over the phone, who told us FBA didn’t use equipment at all.

The Orange County firm said it did a “visual assessment” of the school site in 2006 and “observed” whether switchboards and transformers were in good condition.

FBA said it did no testing because it wasn’t in their line of expertise, and because it didn’t have the tools or equipment. We sent that representative the document posted to DSUSD’s website for review and are waiting for response.

Meanwhile, the district also posted the results from internal testing done in February by district personnel, once again looking at magnetic fields. That test was conducted by a district operations manager and district maintenance worker.

“Voltage is electric fields and they’re looking at magnetic fields that don’t go above 1,000 cycles a second so you can’t expect them to work,” Milham said. The cycles per second in high frequency voltage transients (spikes in excess energy) are in the thousands in certain classrooms at LQMS, according to Milham and his colleague, Lloyd Morgan.

Milham says the meters the district used can’t measure high frequency electric fields which, according to the World Health Organization induce electrical currents in the human body.

Milham says those levels are off the charts in parts of La Quinta Middle School and over time can wreck someone’s immune system. He says the school never analyzed whether there was an increased rate of cancer in classrooms that had high readings of high frequency electric fields (what Milham refers to as dirty electricity).

“The rate of change of voltage over time. That’s what the meter measures and that’s what correlates with the cancer,” Milham said, referring to the oscilloscope he used to measure the classrooms at La Quinta Middle School when a teacher helped him gain access to the school after hours.