Cancer and Power Lines

Epidemiologists in Denver, Los Angeles and Sweden are asking us to believe that magnetic fields of 2 milligauss from power distribution lines are a serious cause of childhood leukemia. What started as a series of sensational articles in The New Yorker magazine by Paul Brodeur (later collected into a book), bringing the earliest of these studies to the attention of the general public, has turned into a new growth industry. Several government agencies, not to mention the private electric power industry, have already sponsored multimillion-dollar studies of the problem; a number of small companies selling 60-Hz gaussmeters have sprung into existence and are doing a land-office business; and the public concern over this issue has become a bonanza to groups of people doing epidemiological and biological research on the effects of electromagnetic fields. Hastily contrived legislation in a number of states has legalized the status quo for fields from power lines, and the threat of still more ill-thought-out legislation is on the horizon—mandating, for example, warning labels on toaster ovens and television sets similar to those now found on cigarettes.