- The Guardian,
- Thursday December 2 1999
The possible cancer-causing properties of power lines have disturbed the public for 20 years. Today the epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll will present the findings of the UK childhood cancer study. Over eight years it investigated the exposure to electromagnetic fields of 2,226 children in the UK with cancer and the same number without.
Cancer specialists hope the study, organised by the UK coordinating committee on cancer research and of a magnitude that is unlikely to be repeated, will put an end to speculation and scares. The Cancer Research Campaign gets more calls about power lines than anything else, from parents and those worried about the value of their homes.
But yesterday Denis Henshaw, a professor in Bristol university's human radiation effects group, got in first with his own research, claiming to have found a way in which high voltage electricity cables could indeed cause cancer.
He said corona ions created by the power cables, which caused the familiar crackling noise, attached themselves to large pollutant particles. These landed on the skin and were inhaled, passing into the bloodstream. He believed they could cause skin and lung cancer and leukaemia.
"We're possibly talking about a 30% increase in skin cancer and a twofold increased relative risk of leukaemia," he said. "This is a can of worms being opened."
Professor Henshaw, whose study is published in the International Journal of Radiation Biology, claims that epidemiological evidence already exists of an increased rate of childhood leukaemia among families living under power lines. Others dispute this, and Sir Richard's work today is billed as the definitive study.
But Prof Henshaw claimed that Sir Richard was looking at electromagnetic fields and not specifically at power lines.
He said his work was not intended to be "a scare story". "Childhood leuakaemia is thankfully very rare." The normal incidence in children under 15 was about one in 600.
If he was correct, this would rise to two in 600 under power lines. But he said risk analysis would suggest that the US policy of not building homes under power lines - initiated because people did not like the crackling - was well founded and suggested that the UK government might like to consider its position.
The Electricity Association, the industry's trade body, said Prof Henshaw's claims were "unsupported by his own data" and urged the public to wait for Sir Richard's results today.
Its scientific adviser, John Swanson said: "All the effects [Prof Henshaw] describes are well within the range encountered in everyday life. They have been discussed and described in the scientific literature and appear to have no significant health consequences."
