High Voltage Power Lines Are Cancer Risk

In a study published in the Internal Medicine Journal researchers from the University of Tasmania and Britian's Bristol University reported some disturbing findings for people living near high-voltage power lines. In reviewing a database of 850 people diagnosed with lymphatic and bone marrow cancers between 1972 and 1980 the researchers found those living near these high-power lines for an extended period of time may increase the risk of leukemia, lymphoma and related conditions later in life.

It was found that those who lived within 328 yards of a power line up to age 5 were five times more likely to develop cancer. Those who lived that close to a power line at any point in their first 15 years of life were three times more likely to develop cancer as an adult.

Electromagnetic fields do indeed have biological consequences on the human body. Those fields are especially a potential risk to young children and teenagers whose body's are in a growth and development stage. The effects on the immune system seem to be the most serious and the most obvious. From studies like these we understand that it takes many many years before a condition such as cancer becomes diagnosed. When decades have passed it then becomes very difficult to connect the cancer, or any other disease, back to a previous exposure to electromagnetic radiation in childhood. Consequently, we don't establish a causal relationship and therefore the problem never gets addressed or corrected.