An Evaluation of the Possible Risks From Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMFs) From Power Lines, Internal Wiring, Electrical Occupations and Appliances 

CALIFORNIA EMF PROGRAM / Final Report Jun02

Prepared by
Raymond Richard Neutra, M.D. Dr.P.H.
Vincent DelPizzo, Ph.D. GDE
Geraldine M. Lee, Ph.D.

Executive Summary

WHY AND HOW THE EVALUATION WAS DONE:
On behalf of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), three scientists who work for the California Department of Health Services (DHS) were asked to review the studies about possible health problems from electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) from power lines, wiring in buildings, some jobs, and appliances. The CPUC request for review did not include radio frequency EMFs from cell phones and radio towers. 

• Reviewer 1, Vincent Delpizzo, Ph.D., is a physicist and epidemiologist; 
• Reviewer 2, Raymond Richard Neutra, M.D., Dr.P.H., is a physician epidemiologist; and 
• Reviewer 3, Geraldine Lee, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist with training in genetics. All three have published original research in the EMF area and have followed the field for many years. They were assisted in their reviews by DHS toxicologists, physicians, and epidemiologists.

THE CONCLUSIONS AFTER REVIEWING ALL THE EVIDENCE:
· To one degree or another, all three of the DHS scientists are inclined to believe that EMFs can cause some degree of increased risk of childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and miscarriage. · They strongly believe that EMFs do not increase the risk of birth defects, or low birth weight. · They strongly believe that EMFs are not universal carcinogens, since there are a number of cancer types that are not associated with EMF exposure. · To one degree or another they are inclined to believe that EMFs do not cause an increased risk of breast cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression, or symptoms attributed by some to a sensitivity to EMFs. However, · All three scientists had judgments that were "close to the dividing line between believing and not believing" that EMFs cause some degree of increased risk of suicide, or · For adult leukemia, two of the scientists are "close to the dividing line between believing or not believing" and one was "prone to believe" that EMFs cause some degree of increased risk.

HOW AND WHY THE CONCLUSIONS DIFFER FROM THOSE OF OTHER RECENT REVIEWS:
        While there are important differences between the three DHS reviewers’ conclusions, the DHS scientists are more inclined to believe that EMF exposure increased the risk of the above health problems than the majority of the members of scientific committees convened to evaluate the scientific literature by the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences Working Group (NIEHS) in 1998, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2001, and the British National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) in 2001. These other committees all assessed EMFs as a “possible” carcinogen for childhood leukemia. Thus, like the DHS panel, these other three panels were not much swayed by theoretical arguments of physicists that residential EMFs were so weak as to make any biological effect impossible. NIEHS additionally assessed EMFs as a possible carcinogen for adult lymphoid leukemia and NRPB assessed a possible link with Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The three DHS scientists differed in that they had a somewhat higher degree of belief that EMF is linked with these three diseases and gave credence to evidence of a link to adult brain cancer and miscarriage that the other panels either didn’t consider or characterized as “Inadequate.” There are several reasons for these differences. The three DHS scientists thought there were reasons why animal and test tube experiments might have failed to pick up a mechanism or a health problem; hence, the absence of much support from such animal and test tube studies did not reduce their confidence much or lead them to strongly distrust epidemiological evidence from statistical studies in human populations. They therefore had more faith in the quality of the epidemiological studies in human populations and hence gave more credence to them.
        With the exception of miscarriage, which is common, the other diseases for which EMFs may be a contributing cause (childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer, Lou Gehrig’s Disease) have low incidence, with rates between 1/100,000 and 1/10,000 a year. Even doubling such rates and accumulating them over a childhood or a lifetime leaves accumulated lifetime risks between 1/1,000 and 1%. Thus the vast majority (99%–99.9%) of highly exposed people would still not contract these diseases. Furthermore, calculations suggest that the fraction of all cases of the above-mentioned conditions that one could attribute to EMFs would be no more than a few percent of the total cases (if any). However, if EMFs do contribute to the cause of these conditions, even the low fractions of attributable cases and the size of accumulated lifetime risk of highly-exposed individuals could be of concern to regulators. Indeed, when deemed a real cause, estimated lifetime risks smaller than these (1/100,000) have triggered regulatory evaluation and, sometimes, actual regulation of chemical agents such as airborne benzene. The uncommon, accumulated high EMF exposures implicated by the evidence about these conditions come from unusual configurations of wiring in walls, grounded plumbing, nearby power lines, and exposure from some jobs in electrical occupations. There are ways to avoid these uncommon accumulated exposures by maintaining a distance from some appliances, changes in home wiring and plumbing, and power lines. However, to put things in perspective, individual decisions about things like buying a house or choosing a jogging route should involve the consideration of certain risks, such as those from traffic, fire, flood, and crime, as well as the uncertain comparable risks from EMFs.
        While rodent and chicken egg studies provide little or no support for EMF effects, some studies on early-model higher emitting video display terminals (VDTs) and two new epidemiology studies in humans suggest that EMFs might cause a substantial proportion of miscarriages. Miscarriages are common in any case (about 10 per 100 clinically diagnosed pregnancies) and the theoretical added risk for an EMF-exposed pregnant woman might be an additional 10 per 100 pregnancies according to these two studies. If truly causal this could clearly be of concern to individuals and regulators. However, the type of EMF exposures implicated by these two new epidemiological studies (short, very high exposures) probably come from being within a few inches of appliances and unusual configurations of wiring in walls and grounded plumbing, and only rarely from power lines. Since the majority of people come into contact with non-obvious sources of these fields on a daily basis, it may not be possible to avoid the majority of such exposures in modern life, even if we avoided the obvious sources like some appliances.
        Seventy-five percent of the women in the studies had at least one of these brief high exposures during a given day. Even one exposure a day, if experienced regularly during pregnancy, seemed to increase the risk of miscarriage. Nonetheless, the majority of pregnant women with such exposures did NOT miscarry.

FOR PURPOSES OF POLICY ANALYSIS, HOW DID THE THREE SCIENTISTS EXPRESS THEIR JUDGMENT THAT THE ABOVE DEGREES OF RISK MIGHT BE REAL?
        The EMF Program’s policy analysis required each of the three DHS scientists to express in numbers their individual professional judgments that the range of added personal risks suggested by the epidemiological studies were “real.” They did this as a numerical “degree of certainty” on a scale of 0 to 100. For the conditions with the most suggestive evidence of EMF risk, the three scientists each came up with a graph that depicts their best judgments with a little “x” and the margin of uncertainty with a shaded bar: The differences in certainty between the three reviewers arises primarily from how sure they were that they could rule out study flaws or other explanatory agents and how much the evidence on one disease influenced certainty in the findings for other diseases.

WHAT ASPECT OF THE “EMF MIXTURE” WOULD NEED TO BE MITIGATED (IF ANY)?
        A variety of electrical phenomena are present in the vicinity of power lines, in-home wiring, plumbing, and appliances. These include EMFs with a variety of frequencies and orientations, stray currents from contact with grounded plumbing, and air pollution particles charged by electric fields. The epidemiological studies primarily implicate the magnetic fields or something closely correlated with them. Some researchers think that associated high- or low- frequency stray contact currents or charged air pollution particles are the true explanation rather than magnetic fields. The actions one would take to eliminate the fields are not always the same as one would take to eliminate the currents or the charged particles. There are some situations where different costly measures would be required to address the above-mentioned three possible explanations. There are other situations where one or more inexpensive avoidance actions will address all three. This additional uncertainty about what aspect of the mixture might need to be mitigated will thus provide a challenge for policymakers. The California EMF program funded policy projects to explore options that could be pursued in the face of these uncertainties (see www.dhs.ca.gov/ehib/emf). These are available to guide CPUC and other state agencies in policy formation. DHS is making no recommendations at this time.

WHAT RESEARCH GAPS EXIST?
        Determining whether stray contact currents or charged air pollution particles are really common enough to explain the epidemiology would be highly policy relevant. Certain suggestive test tube and animal studies await replication. Epidemiology of common conditions which could be studied prospectively, like miscarriage and sudden cardiac death, would be policy relevant and could give a better understanding of what aspect of the EMF mixture might be biologically active.

California EMF Risk Program
1515 Clay Street, 17th Floor
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 622-4500 phone
(510) 622-4505 fax

source: http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ehib/emf/RiskEvaluation/ExecSumm.pdf 28oct02
Index Page: http://www.dhs.ca.gov/ehib/emf/RiskEvaluation/riskeval.html