Possible health risks
Suggestions that EMFs can cause cancer or other health risks
For most of the 20th century there were few if
any suggestions that fields could be harmful below the levels known
to produce effects through induced
currents. However, in the 1960s suggestions came from Russia
that electric fields experienced in substations could be harmful.
These achieved little credence and were replaced as a focus for
public concern and scientific investigation with the suggestion
in 1979 that low levels of magnetic fields could cause childhood
cancer.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s the focus stayed
on magnetic fields, and the range of diseases investigated widened.
Electric fields were again suggested to be involved alongside magnetic
fields.
Any suggestion of a risk to health must always be taken seriously.
When considering issues of diseases and what causes them, it is
important to look at what the scientific research reveals. There
are three main types of research we
can do to try to find out whether EMFs cause disease: epidemiological,
theoretical, and biological. For most diseases that have been linked
with EMFs, the generally accepted position is that there are some
suggestions from epidemiology but there is little
support from theory or from biology. In the absence
of support from theory or biology, the epidemiology would have to
be a lot stronger than it is to establish that there actually is
a health risk.
The diseases and outcomes where links to EMFs have
been suggested include:
back
|
