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- Newsgroups: sci.electronics
- Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!sgiblab!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!csus.edu!netcom.com!nagle
- From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
- Subject: Re: EM radiation from power lines
- Message-ID: <1992Nov12.162425.17242@netcom.com>
- Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
- References: <1992Oct29.135558.1672@nrcnet0.nrc.ca> <1992Nov3.021632.22139@ke4zv.uucp> <Bx5DxG.IHF@news.iastate.edu>
- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 16:24:25 GMT
- Lines: 26
-
- There have been articles on this in IEEE Spectrum and EPRI Journal.
- Information remains inconclusive, but EPRI admits there may be a problem.
- They now have a "dosimeter" for EM fields, and various power workers
- around the country are wearing them to gather data. They also tried
- some telephone workers, and discovered that central-office telephone
- workers have low exposure except for some working in older electromechanical
- offices.
-
- So far no study based on field measurements indicates increased
- risk with higher fields, at least for field ranges seen in residential
- areas. There is apparently some increased risk to workers in very high
- field environments such as electric furnaces used to melt metals.
- The residential studies that show a correlation are based on visual
- observations of distance to power lines and location of pole transformers.
- But the geometries that should produce the strongest fields aren't those
- associated with the highest levels of cancer. And the cancer levels seen are
- very near the normal level of occurence.
-
- There are reports of some cellular effects that take place in modest
- electric fields. But it's not clear that this has any relation to cancer.
-
- The biggest exposure is observed with electric blankets:
- sizable current, close to the body, used for long periods, used regularly.
- There are now some low-field electric blankets with twisted-pair wiring.
-
- John Nagle
-