[SteveFish]

Geezer, I think that this situation is comparable to the CO2-global warming issue. The great majority of scientists with the expertise to understand the question all agree (global warming is a problem and power lines are not), while there is a very, very small minority of scientists who deny the consensus, and a collection of self aggrandizing pundits, who are not scientists, who whip up the controversy. As you have observed, there have been quite a few large studies on power lines in response to the hoopla in popular culture. When taken together these studies show no effect. Steve

[LeeE]

Geezer and SteveFish: I said quite clearly that the probability...

...in this particular case is vanishingly small...

so while we all seem to believe that the risk is not worth acknowledging, you both seem to want to insist that the degree of risk is a definitive zero.  Sorry chaps, but you're trying to prove a negative here.

[Geezer]

Lee, so if I told you that wearing cotton socks might increase your risk of developing cancer, you'd have to agree that there is some risk?

[LeeE]

That's a bad analogy Geez.

Whether someone gets cancer from exposure to EMR is intrinsically statistical, for amongst any group of subjects exposed there will be some that do and some that don't.  The fact that some do though, shows there is a clear link.  There's no such link to wearing cottons socks.

[Geezer]

That's a bad analogy Geez.

Whether someone gets cancer from exposure to EMR is intrinsically statistical, for amongst any group of subjects exposed there will be some that do and some that don't.  The fact that some do though, shows there is a clear link.  There's no such link to wearing cottons socks.

Ah! So you are saying there is evidence that low frequency weak field EMR produces cancer. Can you point us at that evidence?

[SteveFish]

To put an even sharper point in this LeeE, I assert that radiation emanating from power lines has a weak protective effect against getting cancer. Using your logic, explain how I am wrong. Steve

[LeeE]

No Geezer, I am not saying that low-frequency EMR produces cancer.

All I am saying is that EMR can cause cancer.

Because EMR is a continuous spectrum, where there is no clear and definitive point between one frequency and another, one cannot say definitively that a higher frequency will always cause it but a lower frequency will never cause it.

SteveFish: have you any evidence to suggest that EMR has a protective effect against cancer?  If there is such evidence then I'd happily give it a qualified acceptance.

Rather than discussing the issue, you both seem to be more intent on winning the argument, even though your argument depends, as I mentioned earlier, upon proving a negative.

Do you both actually acknowledge that your argument depends upon proving this negative?

[Geezer]

Lee,

I think the onus is on you to prove the positive point regarding genetic damage. The energy levels required are well understood, and I don't believe there is any evidence at all that the fields involved come anywhere remotely close to being able to interfere with molecular bonds in DNA. There is no cumulative effect and there is a quantifiable threshold.

The position should be that there is no known scientific evidence that connects cancer with power lines. If you are going to insist that there "might" be, then we are back to my cotton socks argument. You can't disprove I'm wrong about that, because you can't prove a negative either. I think both arguments are equally useless.

[SteveFish]

Geezer, you beat me to it with a better response than I was concocting.

LeeE,the evidence I have for a positive effect of hugging a power line is exactly equal to your evidence for a negative association. For this topic I can't prove a negative affect, but I must accept the null hypothesis.

Steve

[LeeE]

You are both claiming an undisputed fact, but the proof of that fact requires proving a negative, which cannot be done.

The options are a) EMR from overhead powerlines does cause cancer, b) EMR from overhead powerlines doesn't cause cancer, or c) EMR from overhead powerlines may cause cancer.

Option a) is clearly untrue because people do live beneath overhead powerlines without getting cancer.  Option b) though, which is what you are both trying to claim is true, depends upon proving a negative.  Because a) is proven to be untrue, and because b) cannot be proven, I am therefore adhering to option c).

You can both believe whatever you want, of course, but until there's proof it must remain just a belief.

[Geezer]

Lee,

I am not claiming an undisputed fact. My position is simply "there is no known scientific evidence that connects cancer with power lines". That does not say there never will be, it's just the current state of understanding.

You have said EMR (btw - more correctly we are discussing the effects of ELF) "can" cause cancer. If that's true, I'd like to see the evidence and an explanation for the mechanism.

According to Edward W. Campion, M.D. (New England Journal of Medicine, 337:44, July 3, 1997):
 
"there is no convincing evidence that high-voltage power lines are a health hazard or a cause of cancer...18 years of research have produced considerable paranoia, but little insight and no prevention. It is time to stop wasting our research resources. We should redirect them to research that will be able to discover the true biologic causes of the leukemic clones that threaten the lives of children."

[techmind]

It's history now, but Karen didn't say what voltage/power the lines were.

In the UK we have 11000V, and 33000V on overgrown telegraph poles, then 100000, 275000 and 400000V on big metal pylons.

I wouldn't think twice about the 33kV stuff.


The 100kV and upwards does make a nice substantial electic field at the ground, somewhere of the order 900V/m ... (I think the NIRP safety limit is about 10000V/m) but that will almost certainly be screened by any building and won't penetrate to the living area. It's all high-impedance and won't penetrate your body anyway. With UK 100kV lines (rated at about 300A per conductor - typically 2 sets of 3 phases on a set of pylons) you can get substantial magnetic fields (still within NIRP guidelines, but not with much headroom IIRC) - which won't tend to be screened by the building. Right under the pylon, the magnetic field would be strong enough to make a the picture on CRT monitor shimmer, and would be likely to cause hum in audio and TV installations.

The magnetic field would still be weaker than you might experience right next to a domestic vacuum cleaner or lab power supply (or the corridor/office next to the switchgear at your workplace) - but you'd experience it everywhere in the house, almost 24/7.

With the UK configuration of cables, the magnetic field decreases rapidly with distance, and (eg for 100kV/300A cables) much reduced even just 30 metres away from the centreline.

[Geezer]

Thanks Techmind. That's a lot of useful information.

When they do these calculations, do you happen to know what sort of assumptions they make regarding magnetic field cancellation? I'm also assuming the resultant magnetic field is, to some extent, a function of how well balanced the phases are and that the amount of imbalance has some impact on the numbers.

[Airthumbs]

Having walked underneath high powered cables suspended between pylons, I have heard the buzzing noise they make. Personally I would not care to live within such close proximity to something that makes that kind of noise.  Also I would be very dubious of anyone that sais that there are no effects from living in such close proximity to these structures, the simple reason being it would be very easy to conduct research on this topic. 

When someone also sates that the emf in a house is stronger then that produced by these cables I would ask them to place a fluorescent light bulb anywhere in the home and see if it lights up by itself.   

As for the cables underground, well if they also emitted emf at the same strength that the overhead lines do then why don't site surveyors use fluorescent bulbs to detect where these cables are when they need to find there whereabouts?

[SteveFish]

Aaron:

You say- "Also I would be very dubious of anyone that sais that there are no effects from living in such close proximity to these structures, the simple reason being it would be very easy to conduct research on this topic." This is true and the research has been done over and over, and there are no affects.

I don't know what you are up to with the fluorescent lamps. Have you tried this around anything but a Tesla generator?

Steve

[Geezer]

I don't know what you are up to with the fluorescent lamps. Have you tried this around anything but a Tesla generator?

You might even be able to produce a brief but similar effect by charging a party balloon. I've never actually tried it though.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I can cause an unpowered CFL to flash when I take off my clothes. (I wonder if it thinks I'm flashing it?  [])

I wonder if it's possible to get some light out of a fluorescent tube simply be rubbing the glass at one end of the tube. A bit like the old "amber and cat's fur" experiment.

(More important information here http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Static_electricity)

[Airthumbs]

Well I am way out of my depth on this one but I was making a reference about fluorescent lights and the picture of them all lit up underneath the electric pylons, is this fake then?

As for the research well I must take your word on that.  Would it be similar to the research done in America with regard to the Aluminium industry and Fluoride I wonder :-)

[Geezer]

Aaron - Sorry - I added a bit more info to my post above.

You are quite right. Nobody wants to live anywhere near the things, and I can't say I blame them.

However, despite numerous studies, there does not seem to be any hard evidence that proves there is a connection between disease and HT power lines.

There are lots of ways to make fluorescent lights emit a bit of light without going anywhere near HT power lines. Humans and fluorescent light tubes are very different electrically. You and I have a rather low impedance (roughly similar to electric resistance) to the electric field produced by power lines, so the voltage produced across our bodies is very small.

Fluorescent tubes have a very high impedance, so the voltage across them (if they are vertical) can be enough to make them emit some photons. If you make a fluorescent tube a bit more like a human by providing any sort of conduction path between its ends (a bit of humidity might be quite sufficient) it won't light up under these conditions.

[yor_on]

Sorry Geezer, that's not entirely right, in Sweden we have a lot of statistical studies over all sorts of things possible Mostly due to the way we use the system of 'person-nummer' allowing us to statistically treat a lot of information anonymously. We have a tradition of that kind of studies. I found two studies by a Google search. the first is from 1992 'närboendestudien' and another study of cancer for those working with it professionally. The first study looked at children's leukemia, adult leukemia and braintumors for people living less than 300 meters from 220 och 400 kV-high-voltage wires. They found a significant connection between where you lived, and children's leukemia when exposed over 0,2 μT  and later studies show the same for grown-ups at 0,2 μT per year. (Feychting och Ahlbom 1992, 1993).

The other study, for those that was working in electro magnetic fields, also from 1992-93, (Birgitta Floderus m.fl. 1992, 1993) showed similar results 0,2 – 0,3 μT. with a slightly weaker correlation between magnetic fields and brain tumors. There are also two Danish studies made that point in the same direction although not statistically proven/significant, Olsen (1993), Johansen (1998). But our Swedish studies are statistically impeccable

But it's not that popular a science, and the results are not popular with power companies and considering the telecom industry?
==

1994 an American-Finnish study was presented in where it was found a statistic correlation between Alzheimer and  having a electrical profession .. Sobel m.fl. (1995a, 1995b).. It have been followed by several other studies looking at other health problems as ALS (Avanipour m.fl. 1995), but it's hard to find the reasons, and you will need a lot of animal testing to prove it without doubt.

So I think I'll join LeeE here

[Geezer]

Yoron,

I would not argue with the Swedish data (and I'd have a bit of problem reading the papers  []) but, how did they manage to discount other potential socioeconomic variables? I suspect the fact(?) that nobody really wants to live under HT lines could easily skew the data.

If there is a simple relationship between field strength and disease, it surely would not be very difficult to reproduce the effects with much more controlled experiments involving lab animals for example, or even farm animals both under, and not under HT lines. I wonder if there were any such studies?

Wasn't it Sweden that created a great stink about low frequency RF emissions from electronic equipment - particularly CRTs if I remember correctly? I'd be interested in seeing any follow-up studies that were conducted to prove the efficacy of the measures that all the CRT equipment manufacturers implemented to comply with the Swedish requirement.