POWER LINES AND CHILDHOOD CANCER

I have now read the report funded by the N.Y State Power Lines Project [AtE Sep 87] as submitted to the Amer. J. of Epidemiology. The study "adds to the concern" that cancer deaths in victims under 18 years of age could be correlated with exposure to magnetic fields from power lines, but the five authors do not find the evidence conclusive and point to uncertainties that need to be resolved.

It is a serious study, not at all in the same category as the preced- ing shoddy work by Wertheimer and Leeper (whose conclusions about high-voltage power lines are contradicted here), let alone in the category of political scare tactics using a perfectly natural phenomenon as a bugaboo: an unconnected fluorescent light will light up when held under a high-voltage power line. [I go by con- tents, not the authors, but it so happens that I have personally known one of the authors, F.A. Barnes, for 24 years as a man whose scientific integrity is beyond question.]

There is, however, one aspect of the "Power Line Peril" that seems to have escaped the corporation baiters and social engineers.

The hypothesis that finds some support here is that childhood cancer may be correlated with comparatively strong magnetic fields. But a magnetic field is determined by (1) the current (not the voltage), and (2) the distance from the conductor. And where is the distance to low-power/high-current conductors small? Only in the home.

The corollary is that high-voltage lines, which are always far away (compared with electric heating blankets, for example) would have no such effect; and indeed, the study found no evidence of any link between cancer and high-power magnetic fields or electric fields which are found near high-voltage transmission lines carrying power to somebody else.

What that means is that if the suspected correlation exists (and this has not yet been demonstrated even for the very small level of supposed risk), there is a very simple remedy: just disconnect the electricity, man, and read by candle light.

For the hypothesized effect (if any) belongs in the same category as food irradiation, microwave ovens and seat belts, all of which are personal choices inflicting possible consequences only on the chooser. It is a category quite unlike nuclear power or political office, which is a choice by a majority (alas, not always informed) that is imposed on everybody.

The attitude to the items in the first set highlights the difference between genuine safety concern and social engineering. If safety is not legislated, claim the coercives, people will crowd the ambulances and hospitals, for they do not know what is good for them. Indeed, the use of seat belts is compulsory, and food irradia-tion prohibited, in states and countries that regard the consequences of a private act not as a free choice made by a self-responsible individual, but as a burden on The State, The Society, and The Collective.