Re: Electric Fields

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

For those of you that don't read it, the following blurb was emailed to 
those of us on the APS email list "What's New".  In light of the recent 
discussion, I thought you might find Bob Park's comments interesting. He
makes it sound like the panel was not as unbiased in their assessment as
one would have hoped.

Mike Baker ... mcbaker@lanl.gov

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What's New by Bob Park
Friday, 03 July 98 Washington, DC

2. EMF: HEALTH PANEL EXHUMES REMAINS OF POWER-LINE CONTROVERSY. 

Exactly one year ago the National Cancer Institute released the results of 
an exhaustive seven-year study that found no link between exposure to EMF 
and childhood leukemia (WN 4 Jul 97) . An editorial in the New England 
Journal of Medicine declared, "It is time to stop wasting our research 
resources." Most government agencies agreed, and cut funding for research. 
Last week, a group of scientific experts, most of whom had staked their 
reputations on such a link, sorted through the detritus and announced 
they had detected signs of life. The panel, assembled by the National 
Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, voted 19-9 to class EMF as 
"a possible carcinogen." While acknowledging the risk to be "quite small 
compared to many other public health risks," the panel chair declared 
that the government should provide research funds for serious-minded 
scientists -- like those on the panel. 
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