Early Power Line Safety Studies

The following sections are an excerpt from the section on early electric power lines safety studies from Chapter 8, Man Made Electromagnetic Radiation Fields, of the book "Cross Currents: the Perils of Electrical Pollution" by Robert O. Becker.

Early Power Line Studies

While these events were going on, we started a study in my own lab to look for potential effects of chronic exposure to 60-cycle power fields.  We exposed rats continuously to a 60-Hz electric field for three generations, and we determined the infant mortality rate and average body weight of the offspring from each generation.  We found obvious, significant differences between experimental and control animals in each generation, with the exposed animals having higher infant-mortality rates and lower birth weightts than the unexposed controls.  These results were identical to those found in rat populations that were continuously subjected to stress.

During this time, I received an interesting letter from Dr. F. Stephen Perry, who worked for the British national Health Service as a family-practice physician in a relatively rural area of England.  He had observed that his patients who lived near electric-power lines appeared to have a higher incidence of mental disturbances and suicide.  When he mentioned this to various authorities in Britain, he was not well received.

He contacted me for advice on how to proceed with his own study.  My colleagues and I ultimately collaborated with Dr. Perry in an epidemiological study that showed a significant relationship between power line field exposures and suicide in his area.  We published the results of the first study in the scientific literature in 1976, just as the public hearings on the power lines were beginning.  A second study with Dr. Perry, in which the strength of the field from the lines was measured, was published as the hearings ended in 1979.

In the meantime, Dr. Nancy Wertheimer, an epidemiologist at the University of Colorado, was examining the possible relationship between the magnetic field from electrical lines (not the high-voltage power-transmission lines, but the connecting lines that are strung on poles along every street). She made a startling discovery:  60-cycle magnetic fields with strengths of only 3 milligauss (three-thousandths of a gauss) were statistically significantly related to the incidence of childhood cancers.  This filed strength is many times smaller than the Earth’s normal magnetic field strength, and it is far below the average strength of 100 milligauss at the distance of approximately fifty feet from the standard transmission line.

Wertheimer published her data in 1979.  Bother her paper and our two papers were immediately subjected to bitter criticism, on the basis that they simply could not be true; there was no physical link possible between such extremely week 60-Hz fields and living organisms.