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Fred Soyka discovered the effects of ions on health when he was transferred to Geneva from New York by his US company. To his surprise, he devleoped health problems in Geneva, including colds and headaches. These would disappear when he returned to New York. Investigating the possible cause of these effects led him to the discovery of what he called "The Ion Effect" This is an excerpt from his book.
Witches Winds
Perhaps because I now knew that I was not unique, that others were
similarly troubled, I began to voice my belief about the Geneva air
being unhealthy. Astonishingly, friends agreed with me, and some of
them knew of the age old legends of the Foehn, the dry southerly wind
that blows out of the Alps in early spring and fall and is stigmatized
as a Witches Wind. When the Foehn blows, the Swiss and the people of
southern Germany blame almost everything unusual on the wind itself.
Fights at home, suicides, murders, traffic accidents, even plane
crashes - all are said to be part of the Foehn sickness.
In Munich and many other parts of central Europe north of the Alps, surgeons even postpone operations if a Foehn is forecast.
But no one could explain why the wind is evil; why it blows
misfortune and unhappiness as it sweeps across the plains dominated by
the Alpine Mountains.There are scores of so called Witches Winds around
the world. They include the Santa Ana in California, the summer winds
of the desert that stretches from northern Arizona down into Mexico
(they are known in Indian mythology as the Bitter Winds); the Chinook
in western Canada and the U.S.; the Sharav of the Middle East around
Israel. All are infamous, perhaps the Foehn most of all.
In Munich, a good friend learned to fear the Foehn because it
made it impossible for her to sleep. For years she had inexplicable but
occasional bouts of sleeplessness and irritability. By the process of
deduction similar to mine, she realized she slept badly only when the
wind blew from the south, and that wind was the Foehn. Another friend
in Munich, a British born artist, cycles around the city all year -
except when the Foehn blows. "For some reason the drivers all become
either madmen or an accident looking for a place to happen," he says.
"To ride my bike would be asking for trouble.
"Along the Rocky Mountains in the western U.S. and Canada, the
warm, dry Chinook flows eastward out of the mountains for a few days at
a time every year as winter is about to give way to spring. Doctors say
the Chinook coincides with outbreaks of the common cold and other
respiratory ills and I know one successful industrialist who after a
decade or so found the Chinook made him feel so ill (he too, suffered
anxieties as well as colds) that he now carefully schedules his
holidays so that he escapes the area each spring.
In southern California, the hot, dry Santa Ana wind streams out
of the coastal mountains across the plain where cities sprawl into one
another from north of Los Angeles and Hollywood down to San Diego in
the south. The belief that it causes murders and suicides and violence
is so widespread that the Santa Ana is even used as the explanation for
crimes in the private eye stories of Raymond Chandler and Ross
MacDonald. In the Middle East some courts even permit the fact that the
Sharav was blowing at the time a crime was committed to be entered as a
plea of mitigation, while in parts of Switzerland and Italy judges are
often known to be lenient if the local Witches Wind was blowing at the
time certain offenses were committed.
These and others mentioned here are probably among the quarter
or more of the human race who are "weather sensitive" human barometers
whose minds and bodies are thrown violently out of balance in response
to changes in the weather.
It was not until now, however that this kind of folk wisdom had
a scientific explanation. Even though I later found that most of my
problems in Geneva were similar to those of people known by their
doctors to be weather sensitive, it wasn't until 1971 that I finally
made the connection between my "Geneva condition" and air electricity.
At the same time I found that not only weather sensitive people are
affected by electricity in the air. A large slice of humanity is
influenced, most noticeably in the path of the Sharav in Israel, the
Foehn in Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria, the Mistral in
France, the Sirocco in Italy, the Santa Ana in California.
The acutely weather sensitive may go to doctors with an
encyclopedic collection of physical and mental ills ranging from
swollen feet to serious psychiatric problems. Others are equally
affected, and without a sane explanation for their feelings, are driven
to extraordinary acts. In all these areas, both the suicide rate and
number of attempted suicides soar when the Witches Winds blow, and
traffic accidents become almost epidemic. Most people, of course, just
feel low and out of sorts. Admittedly they blame their feeling on the
weather, on the fact that it may be cloudy, humid, or a day of dreary
drizzle. It's when there is no visual change in the weather, as is
often the case with the Witches Winds that these seemingly inexplicable
feelings are most damaging.
In a similar way everyone may be equally a victim of the
man-made twentieth century Witches Winds that we create in cities, in
modern buildings with central heating and air conditioning, and in cars
and other forms of transportation. It is not the weather itself to
which people are sensitive so much as to those electrically charged
molecules of air called ions - that "something electrical about the
air.
The Ion Balance
When I began investigatin the ion effect, I soon found that I was
hardly a pioneer. In fact, I discovered that so much was already known
about ionization and its effects that the astounding thing was not so
much the effect that ions have on us all, but that hardly anything had
been done with the knowledge already available.
It was not unitl the 1890's that scientists found that this air
electricity comes from charged molecules, or ions, of gas. In the
1920's science still knew little about the phenomenon, but researchers
had begun to take seriously the claims of the natural philosophers who
argued that air electricity was in fact a vital part of the process
that creates and sustains life. Only in the past decade, however, have
scientists been able to actually prove that when nature or man starts
meddling with air electricity, life can become insufferable for some of
us, and uncomfortable for all of us.
As is the case with all matter, the air is made up of
molecules. Each molecule has a core, or nucleus of positively charged
protons surrounded by negatively charged electrons. Nature constantly
seeks an equilibrium in all things, and in this case it seeks a balance
in which there are as many electrons as protons so that the positive
and negative charges cancel one another out. This happens in a stable,
or passive molecule of air. But while you may not be able to see a
molecule, scientists can actually weigh its component parts. Since an
electron is 1,800 times lighter than a proton, it is the electron that
is most easily displaced, and when that happens the equilibrium is
upset and a "maverick" molecule, or ion is created.
The active electricity in the air comes from these "maverick"
molecules, those that have lost or gained a negative electron so that
the equilibrium is upset. If a molecule loses an electron it becomes
positively charged, while if that displaced electron attaches itself to
a normal molecule, that molecule becomes negatively charged. In what
nature considers "ideal" environments for living things, that is
relatively clean air over open country, the energy needed to displace
electrons and so create charged molecules comes mostly from the minute
quantities of radioactive substances that are present in the soil and
rocks everywhere, and from the rays of the sun.
Because the earth itself is negatively charged it tends to
repel the negative ions, to drive them away from the area near the
surface where life of all kinds exists. Similarly, it tends to act as a
magnet to positive ions and draws them into this surface area.
Consequently, there are usually more positive ions than negative ions
even on a glorious summers day in the country. The accepted scientific
wisdom is that while there are somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 ions
in every cubic centimeter of air over open land, the usual ratio is 5
positive to 4 negative. It is in this ion ratio, or balance, that life
exists.
Scientists at the University of California grew barley, oats,
lettuce, and peas with a total of only 60 positive and negative ions
and found that growth was stunted and the plants were diseased. The
same experiment in air with more than double the natural number of ions
produced accelerated growth. In Russia, scientists tried to raise small
animals; mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, in air with no ions in it at
all. They all died within days.
James B. Beal, formerly of the National Areonautic and Space
Administration, who came across the ion problem while studying the kind
of environment needed in space capsules, has written: "The human race
was developed in ionized air. Nature used the ions in developing our
biological processes." In Japan, Russia, Israel, Brazil and throughout
Europe scientists have proved that it's not only unhealthy for plants
and mice when the natural ion count is upset, it's just as damaging to
human physical and mental well being. That natural balance of 5
positive to 4 negative ions is another example of nature struggling to
achieve equilibrium: Ions of both charges are presumably vital to
normal life, and the ratio seems to be as important as the total number
of ions in the air.
You can upset the balance one way and do harm, yet if you do it
the other way it seems to do nothing but good. By now there are around
5,000 scientific documents in a score or more languages reporting
experiments with ionization, and all support the conclusion that, an
overdose of positive ions is bad for you while an overload of negaive
ions seems to be beneficial.
Ions in Nature
Although humanity has done the most to produce unhealthy ion levels,
nature itself often produces over doses of both kinds of ion. Positive
ions can be produced by various kinds of friction: between air masses,
between layers of wind, between the air and the ground over which it is
blowing, between the air and sand or dirt particles swept up by the
wind, between the weather fronts that march endlessly across the face
of the globe. Friction tends to knock off the negative electrons and
produce an overdose of positive ions. On a dusty or humid day this
overdose may be massive because the negative ions promplty attach
themselves to particles of dust, pollution or moisture and lose their
charge.
The weather changes when one atmospeheric front is shoved out
of the way by another. If there are rain clouds, the rubbing of the new
front against the old, and of cloud against cloud, commonly causes
thunderstorms because the rubbing sets up a positive charge that
flashes to the negatively charged earth as lightning, destroying the
overdose of positive ions as it does so.
But the electrical distrubance moves faster than the weather
front, so that in the hours or days before the arrival of an electrical
storm the air is overloaded with positive ions. It is these that cause
animals to be restive and insects to erupt suddenly with an explosion
of energy and become a plague instead of just a nuisance. It is part of
the lore of humanity everywhere that if livestock is restless and the
bugs begin to bite more than usual, then a storm is probably on the
way. Scientists studying the incidence of insect activity in
laboratories have now provided the scientific reason why: Positive ion
overdoses affect the body chemistry of all creatures.
When the storm has passed, however, the air is fresh and clean
and invigorating. Most of us feel vigorous and refreshed and at peace
with the newly washed world. The reason seems self-evident; The storm
has passed. But again, scientists have demonstrated that the storm's
passage has cleared the air of positive ions. What is left in the wake
of the storm is a gloriously tranquilizing overdose of negative ions
that eases tension and presures and leaves us full of energy.
There are also circumstances in nature that create overdoses of
the negative ions that are good for you. In certain hill and mountain
areas, for instance, a combination of the sun's rays, cleaner air, and
rock strata that are more radioactive than most of the earth's surface
can produce high concentrations of both kinds of ions, with the balance
swinging heavily in favor of negative ions. In part this is because in
the mountains there is less dust in the air to consume the negative
ions. It is no coincidence that throughout history mankind has gone to
hilly areas to rest and recuperate, particularly from respiratory
diseases.
The energy in moving water also generates a lot of negative
ions. As water breaks up, the positive charge remains with the larger
drop and the negative charges flies free with the fine spray, forming
negative ions. By the seashore, where waves bounce on beaches or hiss
and sputter against rocks, there are always more negative ions than
positive ions. Waterfalls, too are surrounded by a beneficial load of
negative ions created by the same process. The easily measurable
negative charge in the air of Yosemite Valley is said by physicists
from Stanford Research Institute to be due to the famous waterfall
there. Niagara Falls where the negative ion count exceeds 100,000 per
cubic centimeter, is the most stupendous negative ion generator in the
world. This is why a shower in the morning is so refreshing; the man
made mini waterfall produces a massive overdose of negative ions.
Although humanity has done the most to produce unhealthy ion
levels, nature itself often produces over doses of both kinds of ion.
Positive ions can be produced by various kinds of friction: between air
masses, between layers of wind, between the air and the ground over
which it is blowing, between the air and sand or dirt particles swept
up by the wind, between the weather fronts that march endlessly across
the face of the globe. Friction tends to knock off the negative
electrons and produce an overdose of positive ions. On a dusty or humid
day this overdose may be massive because the negative ions promplty
attach themselves to particles of dust, pollution or moisture and lose
their charge.
The weather changes when one atmospeheric front is shoved out
of the way by another. If there are rain clouds, the rubbing of the new
front against the old, and of cloud against cloud, commonly causes
thunderstorms because the rubbing sets up a positive charge that
flashes to the negatively charged earth as lightning, destroying the
overdose of positive ions as it does so.
But the electrical distrubance moves faster than the weather
front, so that in the hours or days before the arrival of an electrical
storm the air is overloaded with positive ions. It is these that cause
animals to be restive and insects to erupt suddenly with an explosion
of energy and become a plague instead of just a nuisance. It is part of
the lore of humanity everywhere that if livestock is restless and the
bugs begin to bite more than usual, then a storm is probably on the
way. Scientists studying the incidence of insect activity in
laboratories have now provided the scientific reason why: Positive ion
overdoses affect the body chemistry of all creatures.
When the storm has passed, however, the air is fresh and clean
and invigorating. Most of us feel vigorous and refreshed and at peace
with the newly washed world. The reason seems self-evident; The storm
has passed. But again, scientists have demonstrated that the storm's
passage has cleared the air of positive ions. What is left in the wake
of the storm is a gloriously tranquilizing overdose of negative ions
that eases tension and presures and leaves us full of energy.
There are also circumstances in nature that create overdoses of
the negative ions that are good for you. In certain hill and mountain
areas, for instance, a combination of the sun's rays, cleaner air, and
rock strata that are more radioactive than most of the earth's surface
can produce high concentrations of both kinds of ions, with the balance
swinging heavily in favor of negative ions. In part this is because in
the mountains there is less dust in the air to consume the negative
ions. It is no coincidence that throughout history mankind has gone to
hilly areas to rest and recuperate, particularly from respiratory
diseases.
The energy in moving water also generates a lot of negative
ions. As water breaks up, the positive charge remains with the larger
drop and the negative charges flies free with the fine spray, forming
negative ions. By the seashore, where waves bounce on beaches or hiss
and sputter against rocks, there are always more negative ions than
positive ions. Waterfalls, too are surrounded by a beneficial load of
negative ions created by the same process. The easily measurable
negative charge in the air of Yosemite Valley is said by physicists
from Stanford Research Institute to be due to the famous waterfall
there. Niagara Falls where the negative ion count exceeds 100,000 per
cubic centimeter, is the most stupendous negative ion generator in the
world. This is why a shower in the morning is so refreshing; the man
made mini waterfall produces a massive overdose of negative ions.
Ions in Our Cities
When man upsets the ion balance he does so totally and permanently.
Pollution, for instance is not seasonal. Besides which, man builds
cities and covers the land with asphalt and concrete. That prevents the
normal generation of ions, so there would be fewer ions in an urban
area. But then man creates pollution and that makes things worse.
Negative ions are more active than positive ions, scientists describe
them as "zig-zagging around at great speed" and more readily attach
themselves to submicroscopic particles of pollution. These newly
charged particles cluster together and eventually fall to the ground as
dust. Thus the bigger the city the lower the total ion count, and the
greater the pollution the greater the imbalance in the ratio leaving a
predonderance of the more harmful positive ions. Buildings with air
conditioning and hot air central heating systems suck in this already
unbalanced air and make things worse.
Today an estimated 60% of the population in North America
spends about 80% of it's time in cities and urban areas where the total
ion count and balance is hopelessly and perhaps permanently depleted
and destroyed. Not until the past century was mankind required to adapt
to a totally man made environment with polluted urban areas and sealed
centrally heated and cooled buildings in which most men and women spend
most of their time. Over open country air contains around 6,000
particles of pollen, perhaps dust per mililiter of air. In the
industrial cities of North America and Eruope the particle count soars
to several million particles per mililiter. And particles of dust
destroy negative ions which attach themselves to them.
Measurements reported by scientists show that at main
intersections in Leningrad, Paris, Zurich, Munich, Dublin and Sydney
the ion count is reduced to an average of between 50 and 200 at midday.
Scientists in Zurich and in Munich took an ion count in the downtown
areas at noon one sunny day and found only 20 ions per cubic
centimeter.
Indoors the situation is made worse by the action of air ducts
in trapping further ions, principally negative ones and by the effects
of people breathing in a confined space. Smoking provides a further
source of condensation nuclei. The net effect is that large numbers of
city workers spend their days breathing air with typically just 200 to
300 positive ions and 150 negative ions per cubic centimeter as
compared with between 1,000 and 2,000 of each in clean country air.
The driver of a car is in a similar condition. The steadily
increasing city traffic presents an increasing number of stresses in
addition to often raising the carbon dioxide and exhaust gas content of
the atmosphere over the permissable lever. To make a bad thing worse,
meterological influence is often also present in the invasion of warm
air masses producing a prevalence of positive ions. If this influence
is superimposed on the adverse conditions of the rush hours, the
accident hazard will increase abruptly. Budapest traffic police
statistics proved that when the warm southerly air was present, the
average accident rate increased from 1.6 an hour to 2.6. The tests also
demonstrated that even at mid morning on a winters day the positive ion
densities in built up areas reached what any ion scientist would
describe as alarming proportions.
There is overwhelming evidence to prove conclusively that in
the past half century man has, with some good intent and considerable
ignorance, meddled with the environment so much that the ion balance
has been distorted and in places destroyed, so that the minds and
bodies of almost all city and urban residents and workers are to some
extent affected, You can't ride a bus, drive a car, or even buy a new
suit or dress made of synthetics without being in one way or another a
victim of the ion effect. The staggering reader response to that story
in the Ottawa Journal in Canada shows that we are all conscious that
something is amiss with our living and working environments.
Clearly there are both long term and short term solutions to
the way we are currently damaging ourselves through ion depletion and
positive ion poisoning. In buildings, ionizers able to generate
"healthy" levels of ions can be installed. People are as we have seen
already using ionizers effectively in many parts of the world and they
are healthier and happier because of them. There is the evidence of a
quarter century of research throughout the world that proves one thing
conclusively: There is no harmful consequences from the artificial
generation of negative ions except perhaps, that they may keep you
alert and awake for longer than you need be. There is no apparent
reason why we should not straighten out the ion imbalance in offices,
apartments, schools, houses, factories, and other places where we live
and work by using negative ion generators.
[Editors Note: Negative ions can be created with Air Ionizers. A number are availale on the market, including the Mountain Breeze units that use carbon fibres rather then needle for the ion discharge, which is more efficient and does not cause a build up on the needle points.
A good, simple and inexpensive air ionizer is a recent design that uses water in a way that is similar to how ions are generated in nature. It has the added advantage that it does not blacken the walls and you can optionally add drops of aromatherapy essential oils to freshen the the environment.]
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