I’ve always heard that living under or near power lines was harmful to your health. The other day after driving by a community located next to a massive power station with so many cables running out of it that you could actually hear the hum of electricity over the traffic, I got to wondering: is there any truth to this common belief? –Carlos G., via e-mail
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Two ways you can look at this. To judge solely from the amount of research, we’re facing the gravest threat to humanity since nuclear war. Over the past 30 years, scientists have published close to 25,000 articles on the health effects of nonionizing radiation (the kind emitted by power lines). We’ve had population, occupational, and laboratory studies scrutinizing everything from high-voltage transmission lines to electric blankets. When you look at the results, though, you have to wonder why the fuss. All the investigations to date have yet to produce any clear indication that low-level electromagnetic fields from power lines are a health hazard to the general public. I won’t say there’s no danger whatsoever, but the perception bears no relation to the threat.
I’ll say this, though. Evidence for a link between EMF exposure and childhood leukemia turns up just often enough that it can’t be entirely dismissed. Although the vast majority of research in the U.S., Canada, and the UK has found little connection between leukemia and proximity to power lines, a large 2005 investigation received a lot of press coverage for showing a modest, if baffling, correlation. This was the so-called Draper study, an examination of most childhood leukemia cases among kids born in Britain between 1962 and 1995. Draper and his colleagues found a clear relationship between the disease and residential distance from high-voltage power lines, even after adjusting for poverty levels. However, the study showed a leukemia increase even at distances where the electromagnetic energy radiated from power lines was much less than that generated by ordinary household wiring and appliances. The researchers conceded, “We have no satisfactory explanation for our results in terms of causation by magnetic fields, and the findings are not supported by convincing laboratory data or any accepted biological mechanism.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
