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HEADLINE: CANCER LINK FORCES U-TURN ON POWER LINES NEAR HOMES

BYLINE: Jeremy Watson

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POWER lines will have to be built at least 150 metres from homes or even buried to minimise the health risks to people living nearby, under a new recommendation to the government.

The National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) is to issue the tough new guidelines amid growing evidence of the health risks posed by high-voltage cables and the electromagnetic fields they produce.

If the government adopts the new standards, some existing high voltage power lines will have to be raised to increase the distance between them and homes below. The NRPB proposals are the first tightening up of the rules on placing power lines for almost a decade and have reignited the debate over the link between electromagnetic fields and cancer clusters.

In one group of houses closest to the power lines on the Shortlees estate in Kilmarnock, nine people have died of cancer in the past 15 years.

The safety limit is expected to be drastically lowered under the NRPB proposals from 1,600 microteslas - the unit in which electromagnetic fields are measured - to just 100.

Last night, lawyers said the toughened guidelines could prompt a renewed flood of legal actions from cancer victims and their families.

Solicitor Martyn Day, who attempted to take the power companies to court on the issue in the 1990s, said the lowering of the limit suggested the previous level of 1,600 was not safe.

"It will certainly lead me to reopen files and reconsider the strength of these particular actions," he said.

"There are potentially hundreds of families around who might have a case."

The NRPB recommendation has been given fresh impetus by evidence from its own medical advisory committee last year that children living near power lines are at double the risk of developing leukaemia.

Research in both Britain and the US has since produced evidence that women who live near overhead power lines are five times more likely to suffer a miscarriage.

The Electricity Association, which represents power companies, claims the fields generated by most existing high-voltage lines in the UK already fall below the 100 microteslas limit so would not have to be moved.

But Dr John Swanson, the association's scientific adviser, said there were "scenarios" in which changes would have to be made if the new limit was set.

Up to 12,000 miles of high-voltage transmission cables criss-cross Britain with around 3,000 miles in Scotland. They run directly over or close to around 27,000 homes, and 600,000 people live within 100 metres.

Health campaigners will seize on the NRPB proposal to demand the eventual burial of all power cables.

But the electricity companies will resist this because every mile of underground cabling costs nearly GBP 16m to install, whereas overhead cables cost about 800,000 pounds for the same distance.

LOAD-DATE: October 30, 2002