BARRHEAD, Alta. -- Without warning, Walter Nadrofsky falls to his kitchen floor, a seizure stiffening his body and restricting his throat so much he's gasping for air. He squeaks out a request for his wife, Simona, to turn the furnace off.

A short time later his body is seized again and he spasms on the floor, set off by what Nadrofsky and several Canadian doctors say is an allergy to electricity, also known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

"I become like a capacitor, a battery," said Nadrofsky in his isolated home near Barrhead, 90 minutes northwest of Edmonton, where the unplugged lamps in his living room are just for show.

"My body collects electricity, radio frequencies and radiation from the sun," says the 57-year-old. "It took a long time to figure out."

Many remain skeptical that electromagnetic hypersensitivity even exists, saying the disease is psychosomatic and set off by a mind convinced that our world, filled with cellphones, computers and buzzing street lights, is polluting the body.

The World Health Organization is co-ordinating worldwide studies on the issue and, while it says the "symptoms are certainly real" and "can be a disabling problem for the affected individual," it states that electromagnetic hypersensitivity isn't a medical diagnosis.

The organization says the majority of studies indicate people who claim to be sensitive to electricity can't detect its presence any better than others.

Yet Sweden recognizes electromagnetic hypersensitivity as a physical disability, just like blindness.

Some hospitals have safe wings, and houses have been built where people can stay for several weeks to recuperate and detoxify from electricity and radio frequencies.

Dr. William Rea, a surgeon who in 1974 founded the Environment Health Center in Dallas, Texas, says his centre sees between 20 and 30 electrically sensitive people each month. Rea treats his patients by "plugging" them into the ground and treating their mineral imbalance problems.

Other doctors advocate boosting immune systems or putting filters in a home to clean up "dirty" electricity to treat the hypersensitive.

Nothing has worked for Nadrofsky, who has largely removed himself from society.

"(He) has worsened to (the) point that he has to live like a hermit," wrote his family doctor in Ottawa in December 2005.

Another doctor wrote in a March 2006 letter to the Workers' Compensation Board: "Mr. Nadrofsky most definitely is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation. . . . The best thing that he can do is to avoid electromagnetic fields."

Nadrofsky's sickness became so severe in humid Ontario (electricity travels faster in moist air) that he had 30 seizures some days, prompting the Nadrofskys to flee to rural, dry Alberta. They left behind an unsold house and 30 years of marriage memories and now live down a dead-end gravel road in an old trailer.

"We closed the door and walked away like refugees," Nadrofsky said.

Nadrofsky said his electricity allergy began in 2003 when he was a welder and working around a plasma cutter.

The machine uses high-voltage electricity and is supposed to be isolated, Nadrofsky said, but he worked near it all day cutting sheet metal.

His problem worsened in November 2004 when he received a 600-volt electric shock during a work accident.

Nadrofsky visited neurologists and family doctors who put him on drugs for epilepsy or diagnosed fibromyalgia and arthritis. Only when a Calgary doctor said the welding was making Nadrofsky sick, did things fall into place.

But with no treatment, Walter became hostage to electricity. He stopped working in July 2005 and hasn't received any compensation. His Wife Simona works two part-time jobs to help with the bills, and she does most of the driving in a diesel vehicle, since Nadrofsky can't be in a car with electronic ignition.

Life for the couple has changed dramatically. When Simona does the laundry or fires up the furnace for a prolonged amount of time, Nadrofsky heads outside. The Home Hardware employees in Barrhead serve Nadrofsky outside the building.

Nadrofsky says the nearby hospital turned him away when he asked for treatment in the parking lot for a cut finger.

"The doctor refused to come out to see him," Simona says. Instead, the couple drove to the local drop-in clinic where staff waited until the slow lunch hour, turned off all the lights and stitched Walter's finger by flashlight.

"I worry about coming home one day and finding him on the floor," Simona said. "You can't dwell on what's going to happen, what could happen, because then you'll go nuts."

(EDMONTON JOURNAL)

© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2007