Harmful Levels of Magnetic field exposer?

[ThomasEdison]

I am an electrician and I have never heard of any other electrician, even people in the trade for 40 years continously, having any health issue related to EMR.

I've worked at distribution centers for large worksites ( like Intel or large water treatment facilities (places with a huge power demand)) where the hum from large transformers nearby was so loud everyone had to shout to hear each other. Corridors where there are thousands of large x-formers humming away closely packed together and your work is about 1-2 feet away from one of these live monsters or you need to work in a confined space with one and your back is touching the outer case of one of these beasts and you are vibrating along with it and feel the heat of all that power on your back. I have never had any concern over stray emf harming my cells. I would expect that the most damage a body can receive in that regard comes from sunbathing. I do get concerned about overexposure to sunlight on days I have to work outside or exposure to particulates such as drywall dust or smoke from cutting steel but never EMR from an artificial electrical source.

The only problematic factor for me has been from the loud humming sound of vibrating electrical gear which is sometimes loud enough to nullify earplugs. This is often from improper install someone else did. On even a perfect install the windings can unnintentionally act similar to solenoids and vibrate and are loud or usually the case is too loose. In new x-formers there is often a pad inside at the bottom with bolts which must be loosened to dampen noise and many installers are under time deadlines and simply ignore that minor detail. The humming can get really annoying.

 

[Andy]

I heard that electro magnetic fields where bad for your sperm.

 

[S_G_B]

I am an electrician and I have never heard of any other electrician, even people in the trade for 40 years continuously, having any health issue related to EMR.

How would you identify a health issue related to EMR? To put it another way, if chronic exposure does indeed increase a person's risk for developing, say, certain cancers/tumours, neuropsychiatric disorders and less serious things like insomnia and fatigue, how would you be able to tell if any of your fellow electricians who may be chronically overexposed to ELF (extremely low frequency) magnetic fields (these are the magnetic fields that are of concern; it's not just the power of the field but the extremely low frequency, which overlaps with the frequency of some of our bodies' electrophysiological processes) who have developed any of these conditions (surely some of them have) might owe it, in part, statistically, to their exposure to ELF magnetic fields?

The research so far only suggests that chronic overexposure to ELF magnetic fields may be a risk factor - a permissive cause - for a variety of health issues, like saturated fat and heart disease. It's not a 1:1 correspondence.

FWIW, here's what WHO says about the subject:
"Many studies published during the last decade on occupational exposure to ELF fields have exhibited a number of inconsistencies. They suggest there may be a small elevation in the risk of leukaemia among electrical workers. However, confounding factors, such as possible exposures to chemicals in the work environment, have not been adequately taken into account in many of them. Assessment of ELF field exposure has not correlated well with the cancer risk among exposed subjects. Therefore, a cause-and-effect link between ELF field exposure and cancer has not been confirmed." (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs205/en/)