Childhood cancer and power lines: Results do not support causal role for electromagnetic fields

doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7517.634-a

BMJ 2005;331:634-635 (17 September), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7517.634-a

Letter

Childhood cancer and power lines

Results do not support causal role for electromagnetic fields

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Editor—Draper et al present findings on the relation betweenchildhood cancer and the distance of birth residence to highvoltage power lines.¹ The study's strengths include the largenumber of case children and unbiased control selection. However,the findings are inconsistent with another UK study, in whichneither proximity nor estimates of dose to extremely low frequencymagnetic fields from power lines showed any relation with childhoodleukaemia.²

The strength of the findings is based on trend statistics, withthe reference group resident over 600 m from the lines. Thishas no sound scientific basis for inferring associations withextremely low frequency magnetic fields, as beyond 200 m theircontribution to exposure can be considered to be "background."³No plausible biological evidence currently links magnetic fieldexposure to childhood leukaemia. Despite this, the paper quantifiesthe likely number of cases "associated" with high voltage lineswhere the main exposure is . . . [Full text of this article]

Sarah J Hepworth, medical statistician

s.j.hepworth@leeds.ac.uk

Richard G Feltbower, senior medical statistician, Roger C Parslow, senior research fellow, Patricia A McKinney, reader in paediatric epidemiology

Paediatric Epidemiology Group, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9LN

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