Shedding Wires

[grithin]

I had a diffuser I bought a while ago. I had noticed the wire produced an odd field that would pop my earphones if I got without about a foot of it, and that I could sort of feel the field on my forearms when filling the diffuser, but it never produced any sparks. About 6 months later, I noticed that for the entirety of the wire, the wire was shedding these curly threads. I also noticed, having induced a very minor headache earlier from an experiment, that when I got my head within about a foot of the wire, the headache would get much worse.

I tugged at one of these threads to make sure they were indeed coming from the wire, and there was enough resistance before detachment to indicate indeed they spawned from the wire.
A short while after, my hand began to itch. Interestingly, it began to itch not on the spots on the fingers where I touched the wire, but around the knuckles and old scars I had on the hand. I tossed the wire shortly after this fearing there might be some environmental contamination by the shedding, and I did not do any field measurements.

I haven't found any cases of this online, and reddit ask electronics provided no responses. I suppose just one other thing to watch out for in the increasingly toxic environment.