Re: Question: EMF Researcher Made Up Data, ORI Says (Science, 2 July, 1999)

["Richard L. Hess" <lists@richardhess.com>]

At 12:44 AM 08/19/2002 -0400, RuthWeiner@aol.com wrote:

> I
>
> don't want to repeat everything. 


Neither do I.


> However,
>
> exposure must include exposure distance.  A person in a house is, I
>
> would guess, 40 to 50 meters from and overhead power
>
> line


That's a minimum. I'm suggesting 150 meters solves everything that we

even THINK happens--at least based on some "average" currents

that I've seen. I'm not suggesting that we need to discuss kilometers by

any means. Burying the lines is uneconomical but certainly would improve

vistas!


> and
>
> is  electromagnetically shielded by, if nothing else, the electrical
>
> wiring in the house and the metal gutters and chimney and skylight
>
> flashing. 


Not at all. This is an area I know something about and none of these come

close to being magnetic shields. They are not even electrostatic shields.

A steel building with steel walls will provide some magnetic

shielding.


> A
>
> person using an electric appliance (and just to get away from that hair
>
> drier, let's include the vacuum cleaner, the various fan motors, 
>
> blender, hedge trimmer, etc),  is a meter or less from the appliance
>
> and is unshielded.   


True, we don't yet have firm data on these (not that it doesn't exist,

its just not been introduced into this discussion and I don't have it at

my fingertips). You're getting me closer to buying a 3-axis magnetic

field probe that will work with a general-purpose digital

voltmeter.


> (How
>
> about the starter solenoid in a car? the motor that raises and lowers car
>
> windows? the generator light on my bicycle?)


These are all presumably DC and do not incessently shake things back and

forth 60 times a second.


> One
>
> of the papers on the website (Beale) et al, gives powerline exposure
>
> inside a house as 0.57 to 19.4 mG with an average of the Beale et al
>
> quintiles being about 4 mG.  A hair drier is 13 to 35 mG, and I
>
> would guess a vacuum cleaner would be about the same.  So about 4
>
> hours per day exposure to appliances with motors would be about the same
>
> kind of exposure as from a powerline.  My own exposure to household
>
> appliance motors today was actually about 3 hours, and I do not use, or
>
> even own, a hair drier,  So the exposures seem to me to be
>
> comparable. 


Three hours of exposure? Were you trimming hedges? Watching your washer

and dryer?


> I
>
> did read the peer revierwed articles available on the web site. 
>
> These are studies that take a putative environmental insult -- exposure
>
> to magnetic fields from powerlines -- and look for health effects that
>
> might be correlated.   
>
>
> In the cited article by Li et al:  Table 2 of the paper shows that
>
> 18% of the women with maximum exposure >16 mG miscarried, but
>
> only 10% with maximum exposure <16mG miscarried.  However, when
>
> the total exposures (field*exposure time) were compared, there was little
>
> difference between the three bins: 160-1079mG-sec: 17.5% miscarriages,
>
> 1080-4759 mG-sec: 18.1%,>4759, 19.7%.  The paper claims to have
>
> corrected for all confounding factors but gives no details of the
>
> correction method.  Also, Table 1 of the paper shows that the
>
> reported rate of previous spontaneous miscarriage (before the study) is
>
> 20% for both the <16mG and the >16 mG group.


So if it's so weak how did it get reviewed and published? I like real

science not junk science. I feel woefully lacking in my ability to

understand statistics properly. Maybe in my older age I'll take a

statistics course.


> The
>
> Beale, et al, paper claims a "weak association" between chronic
>
> illness, asthma, Type-II diabetes and powerline exposure, and discusses
>
> variations and reversals in the trend at some length.  (On a
>
> personal note:  my husband was diagnosed with Type-II diabetes, and
>
> we can't figure out if it is a disease or if he has it, and there is no
>
> good agreement on the diagnosis). 


So does he exercise like you?


I thought there were stronger links in the papers, but it's too late to

go back and read them. 


I KNOW I'll be safe if I keep my tape recorders and shortwave radios

happy. They are probably more critical than I <smile>. In this

case, I'm not actually worried about MY safety as I don't think there is

an issue with my exposure.


Thanks again!


Richard