Science / Medicine : New Study Links Cancer to Electromagnetic Fields

The most comprehensive study to date of childhood leukemia and exposure to electromagnetic fields offers new evidence that proximity to power lines may increase the risk of cancer.

Dr. John Peters and his colleagues at the USC School of Medicine report in the November issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology that children with high exposure to such fields were more than twice as likely to develop leukemia as those with the lowest exposures.

The researchers cautioned, however, that the risks were still very low because only about one out of every 20,000 children develops leukemia each year.

The researchers studied 232 children with leukemia and compared them with a similar number of healthy children. Exposures to fields were estimated from parents’ recall of the children’s contact with electric appliances and from actual measurements of fields in the homes.

An elevated risk of leukemia was particularly associated with two types of appliances: black-and-white television sets and electric hair dryers.