SECTION: Vol. 19, No. 40

LENGTH: 488 words

HEADLINE: Leaked Report Sees Link Between EMF and Diseases

BODY:
The final report of a contested eight-year, $7 million study soon to be released by the California Department of Health Services is expected to provide new fuel to the argument that power lines adversely affect human health, according to the online news service Wired News. "To one degree or another, all three of the DHS scientists are inclined to believe that EMFs (electric and magnetic fields) can cause some degree of increased risk of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig s disease and miscarriage," states a leaked copy of the final report from the California EMF Program, a study begun in 1993 on behalf of the California Public Utilities Commission.

"The DHS scientists are more inclined to believe that EMF exposure increased the risk of the above health problems than the majority of the members of scientific committees convened to evaluate the scientific literature" by several national and international organizations, the report adds. But the authors of the 500-plus-page final report a trio of professional epidemiologists with backgrounds in physics, medicine, and genetics also wrote that they were not convinced of a connection between EMFs and many other health problems, ranging from cancer to suicide.

The report has been a bone of contention for years. A lawsuit filed last year by the California First Amendment Coalition and Citizens Concerned About EMFs, charged the department with suppressing the report. The DHS subsequently published a draft version of the report on its website containing much of the data presented in the final report.

The final version contains not only the more strongly worded executive summary, but a chart of the authors personal degrees of certainty on each issue, removing the guesswork of who thinks what. While acknowledging the possibility there may be no connection between EMFs and any of the various illnesses, all three estimated the probability of a cause-and-effect relationship at above 50 percent for the four medical problems implicated. Two of the authors have since left the program, but Department of Health Services spokesman Ken August said the report was "going through the normal review process" and would be released in coming months.

The report focuses on epidemiology and makes no recommendations for reducing health risks from power lines. But another recent report for the CPUC detailed the high costs of potential fixes, estimating that a $5 billion investment to reduce EMFs from distribution lines running to homes and businesses would save a thousand lives over the 35-year lifetime of the equipment.

While most sources said it was important to put the information in front of the public to permit informed decision-making, all agreed that probable ranges of certainty could be a tough message to convey to an audience that wants yes or no answers. [RM]

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 2002