Health Risks Associated with Living Near High-Voltage Power Lines

As I mentioned earlier the potential hazards of emf have been argued back and forth for years. EMF apparently does have an effect at the cellular and molecular levels.



http://www.pnas.org/content/106/14/5708.abstract

Emphasis mine

No Adverse Health Effects Seen from Residential Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields
WASHINGTON -- No clear, convincing evidence exists to show that residential exposures to electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) are a threat to human health, a committee of the National Research Council has concluded in a new report. After examining more than 500 studies spanning 17 years of research, the committee said there is no conclusive evidence that electromagnetic fields play a role in the development of cancer, reproductive and developmental abnormalities, or learning and behavioral problems.

"The findings to date do not support claims that electromagnetic fields are harmful to a person's health," said committee chair Charles F. Stevens, professor and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "Research has not shown in any convincing way that electromagnetic fields common in homes can cause health problems, and extensive laboratory tests have not shown that EMFs can damage the cell in a way that is harmful to human health."

Extremely low-frequency electromagnetic fields disrupt magnetic alignment of ruminants
Abstract

Resting and grazing cattle and deer tend to align their body axes in the geomagnetic North-South direction. The mechanism(s) that underlie this behavior remain unknown...

I have never heard this asserted. Is this some kind of well known, undisputed phenomenon, you's see in evidence in any herd of grazing ruminants, or is it more obscure?

A list of ruminants from wikipedia:
cattle, goats, sheep, giraffes, American Bison, European bison, yaks, water buffalo, deer, camels, alpacas, llamas, wildebeest, antelope, pronghorn, and nilgai.

We demonstrate by means of simple, noninvasive methods (analysis of satellite images, field observations, and measuring “deer beds” in snow) that domestic cattle (n = 8,510 in 308 pastures) across the globe, and grazing and resting red and roe deer (n = 2,974 at 241 localities), align their body axes in roughly a north–south direction. Direct observations of roe deer revealed that animals orient their heads northward when grazing or resting. Amazingly, this ubiquitous phenomenon does not seem to have been noticed by herdsmen, ranchers, or hunters

It was therefore a bit of a surprise when Sabin Begall from the University of Duisberg-Essen, Germany, and her colleagues from the Czech Republic reported that Google Maps show a previously undescribed tendency in cattle: they align their bodies predominantly north–south (or, as the head is not easily distinguishable in the satellite images, perhaps south–north). It is such a surprise, in fact, that other explanations – confounding factors such as wind or sun direction – immediately spring to mind. But, when the best possible account is taken of these by considering prevalent wind directions across the world and measuring sun direction from shadows, they don't explain the observed north–south alignment bias.

As I mentioned earlier the potential hazards of emf have been argued back and forth for years. EMF apparently does have an effect at the cellular and molecular levels.



http://www.pnas.org/content/106/14/5708.abstract

Emphasis mine

Keep in mind this is the same concept as is used in MRI. If MRIs were causing cancer, I think they'd be a lot less popular as a diagnostic tool.

Ok, so the cattle don't align north south. Is this affecting their health and giving them cancer? Obviously, not. So why did you bring this up?

There may be epidemiological validity to findings of higher rates of certain cancers among populations living near power lines, but that doesn't mean the power lines are the causation. Usually, because power lines are unsightly, they are undesirable locations for homes, and therefore the property values much lower near them. There are a lot of risk factors associated with low SES, including things like worse healthcare, more common tobacco and alcohol abuse, occupational exposures at blue collar jobs, more obesity, etc.

Isn't it possible to find this out by comparing the results to the general population with same living conditions?

Only to show that emf can effect an animal. OK so you explain how it effects the animals. No one else seems to know, but you in your infinite wisdom must explain it.

I did not say that emf causes cancer, but I do remember that neither did cigarettes during their first 20 year period of scientific study.

You only told that the effect had not been studied. That does not mean that the effect does not exist.

Are you sure you are reading what I posted. I never said the effect had not been studied. I said, the effect does not exist because studies showed that. Cut out the nonsense or go away.

I read the 65 page NIH study and it said exactly nothing about it. It should at least say that this effect does not exist. Instead it says absolutely nothing, which is why I'm not convinced.

In 1995, the American Physical Society (APS) spoke out on the question of power-line EMFs and health effects. The APS policy statement reads, in part: "The scientific literature and the reports of reviews by other panels show no consistent, significant link between cancer and power line fields. While it is impossible to prove that no deleterious health effects occur from exposure to any environmental factor, it is necessary to demonstrate a consistent, significant, and causal relationship before one can conclude that such effects do occur. From this standpoint, the conjectures relating cancer to power line fields have not been scientifically substantiated." (See APS Policy Statement 95.2.)

In 1999 the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council (NRC) published a review of the evidence from the EMF-RAPID program and concluded: "An earlier Research Council assessment of the available body of information on biological effects of power frequency magnetic fields (NRC 1997) led to the conclusion ‘that the current body of evidence does not show that exposure to these fields presents a human health hazard. . . .' The new, largely unpublished contributions of the EMF RAPID program are consistent with that conclusion. . . . In view of the negative outcomes of EMF RAPID replication studies, it now appears even less likely that MF's [magnetic fields] in the normal domestic or occupational environment produce important health effects, including cancer." (The NRC reports are accessible by searching for EMF at the NAS Web site.)

They can not say that the effect does not exist. They can only relate their information. If perchance it turned out that such an effect does exist they would look rather silly.