Pylons and cancer. Is there any link???

JohnnySideburns

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone is aware of any reports either confirming or denying that living near pylons increases a persons chances of cancer. If you have your own opinions on this, please state what evidence you're basing it on.

Thanks in advance

p.pete

JohnnySideburns wrote:

If you have your own opinions on this, please state what evidence you're basing it on.

Yes, The Distinguished Gentleman.

DrIndy

There is laboratory evidence that radiofrequency electromagnetic waves affect laboratory animals, there have also been reports of clusters of childhood leukaemias surrounding high tension electric pylons. But nothing is definite and nothing that really goes above normal error limits can be justified as causing harm.

Michael Collins

There's no harmful effects ever been found, even after subjecting people to fields much larger than those experienced around power lines. As for cancer specifically, with our current understanding it's just not possible for power lines to be carcinogenic since the fields in question are not ionising.

Here's some info from the ESB:
http://www.esb.ie/main/environment/electric_magnetic_fields.jsp

Although recently there has been some consideration as to the secondary effects of EM fields near power transmission lines. Namely, an EM field will attract charged particles from the eveniroment around it. Since the majority of dust particles in the atmosphere have a slight charge, people living close to high voltage lines may experience more dust partciles in the air they breath which obviously is not a good thing...

JohnnySideburns

p.pete wrote:

Yes, The Distinguished Gentleman.

Thank you for that. If it's in a film, it must be true!!!!!!

JohnnySideburns

Michael Collins wrote:

There's no harmful effects ever been found, even after subjecting people to fields much larger than those experienced around power lines. As for cancer specifically, with our current understanding it's just not possible for power lines to be carcinogenic since the fields in question are not ionising.

Here's some info from the ESB:
http://www.esb.ie/main/environment/electric_magnetic_fields.jsp

Although recently there has been some consideration as to the secondary effects of EM fields near power transmission lines. Namely, an EM field will attract charged particles from the eveniroment around it. Since the majority of dust particles in the atmosphere have a slight charge, people living close to high voltage lines may experience more dust partciles in the air they breath which obviously is not a good thing...

Thank you very much for the info. The only problem is that the report will be biased to the ESBs advantage (lies, damn lies and statistics). If anyone out there could point me to something more independent that would be appreciated.

In relation to the attraction of dust particles, would you have any idea of what distance around the pylon that dust particles will gather. (eg a few feet or a few miles).

The_Conductor

There is a new field of thought that exposure to low level EM fields can actually be beneficial to you. In laboratory test conditions low level EM was shown to promote regrowth of damaged teeth and accelerate the knitting of broken bones. There is an article on this- and a diatribe on people's concerns about EM fields, in last weeks New Scientist magazine.

The theory is that low level exposure preps your immune system and makes it far more likely to be able to repair damage to cells that might otherwise be left unrepaired.

They also did a survey on exposure to sources to radiation (both naturally occurring and also to those living in proximity to nuclear power plants). Conversely they found that the closer one lived to a source of high Beta radiation the lower the risk they were of developing cancers. This was the opposite to what they expected to find. They are also hypothesising that a prepping of the immune system is the key to this unexplained phenomena.