It was dairy cattle in Wisconsin, and an experiment by her niece, that set Michelle Illiatovitch of Toronto thinking about a new kind of electrical pollution.

It's called dirty power, or on-line noise.

Dirty power seems to produce symptoms similar to what a growing number of people say they get from electromagnetic fields that are created by high-power transmission lines near their homes, or by electrical equipment where they work. They complain of fatigue, headaches, fuzzy thinking, depression, and nausea. Even cancers and miscarriages are sometimes blamed on electromagnetic fields.

But with dirty power, the culprit is not a steady, intrusive electromagnetic field. It is surges in electrical current, the very same surges that people block from reaching their computers with surge protectors.

Surges are a bigger problem than they were in the past because there's so much more electrical equipment being used. Surges can occur when equipment on the same line is turned on or off, or when it has changing demands for electricity.

In Wisconsin, a 1999 study of dairy cattle showed that the amount of milk that cows gave dropped in exact proportion to the increase in electricity surges.

Illiatovitch's niece lives in Wisconsin, and began suffering from chronic fatigue around age 22, when she moved to a farm. She read about the dairy cattle study, and contacted the researcher. As a result, she shut off all the electricity in her home, except for the refrigerator, and immediately felt better.

When she told Illiatovitch, it sparked her interest, because her daughter, Kestra, now 14 years old, also was suffering from chronic fatigue. But in addition she had a range of other symptoms, including hot flashes, nausea, a fairly constant pain in her chest, a frequent sore throat, and, says, Illiatovitch, "her mind was fogged."

Through the Wisconsin researcher, Illiatovitch got filters (technically called capacitors) that plug into normal electrical outlets. Designed by a University of California professor of engineering the filters smooth out the current in a line. When there's a surge, they store the extra electricity, and when there's a demand, they release what they have stored.

Illiatovitch installed 15 around her house, and immediately Kestra's health improved. She then asked whether filters could be installed at WillowWood School, an alternative school that Kestra attends at York Mills Road and Leslie St.

Joy Kurtz, principal and director of the privately run school, said yes, and Illiatovitch paid to have a total of 59 installed. Then she got in touch with Magda Havas, who specializes in electrical pollution at Trent University's environmental and resource studies program. Havas designed a questionnaire for the 49 staff members at the school. It was a blind questionnaire; no one knew why the questions were being asked.

The results were astonishing. Of the 26 who responded, 31 per cent said they were less tired and less frustrated during the period the filters were installed. Fifteen per cent had fewer headaches and were less irritable, and 19 per cent thought they accomplished more.

For her part, Kurtz is withholding judgment. The six week study period covered January and February. She wonders if weather played a role in the results. "I don't have enough information yet to be a skeptic or a believer," she says.

If nothing else, however, the results call for more research as we bind ourselves ever more  tightly to an electronic world.

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