Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Students Removed From Classroom Over Electromagnetic Concerns : Education: Children will finish school year in the library. Technicians detect fields with high exposure.

Worried about electromagnetic fields so strong a teacher said they magnetized steel objects in a second-grade classroom, administrators of the school in this small mountain community moved the children out of their classroom Tuesday and into a library for the rest of the year.

The feeling was, “let’s just play it safe and get the kids out of there,” said Robert Cowan, father of two students, including a second-grader.

“Nobody knows if it’s going to affect your kids down the road or not.”

A majority of studies suggest a link between electromagnetic fields or EMF--which surround functioning electrical equipment from toasters to dynamos--and childhood leukemia or other cancers. Other studies, however, have concluded that there is no link.

The state Department of Education, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, Public Utilities Commission and the state Department of Health Services have not adopted regulations regarding acceptable levels of electromagnetic exposure.

Although there is no agreement on what magnetic field exposure is dangerous, some experts have pegged the acceptable level as low as one milligauss--about the reading that would be detected about one foot from an electric toaster, a Southern California Edison spokesman said.

In April, however, Edison technicians detected magnetic fields as high as 29 milligauss in the classroom of teacher Kari Christensen.

Although the cause was uncertain, there is some speculation that it was linked to recent work on a transformer next to the affected classroom. Mike Harris, superintendent of the Hughes-Elizabeth Lakes Union School District, said the district upgraded its transformer and installed new wiring and conduit to meet growing electricity demands. The district in the mountains northwest of Palmdale has only one school, with fewer than 500 students.

Christensen said she knew something was awry in January when she discovered a handful of nuts and bolts left in her classroom had become magnetized, which she believed was due to exposure to electromagnetism. Christensen said a conduit containing many electrical wires is located in a corner of the room.

The school safety committee arranged for a Southern California Edison engineer to measure EMF in Christensen’s classroom and in April, technicians found two corners of her room with high levels of EMF.

Since electromagnetic fields dissipate rapidly with distance from the source, Christensen at first simply cordoned off the high-EMF areas, reducing her usable classroom space by about 25%.

After Christensen continued to be concerned about the fields and parents become increasingly aware of it, the district again called out Edison technicians. A meeting was held this week and the school staff agreed to move the students.

Since Edison did its EMF readings, Cowan and his wife, Debi, have used an Edison gaussmeter to measure the magnetic fields in the 20-room school. He said most classrooms registered fields of one milligauss or less, but in some areas of Christensen’s room, he found fields registering as high as 300.