Nexus - 0301 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

The hearirigs into the proposed power line from Canada to New _ tion in the quality of life but’which ultimately may affect the York moved from a small-time formality to a full-scale confronta- —_ longevity, for example, of people who are constantly exposed. tion. On the one side, the power companies with their scientists Some scientists feel that underground cables are probably more and their public relations machinery; on the other, Dr Robert —_ important than the overhead cables. If Dr Perry's conclusions are Becker and his co-workers with.their laboratory findings and their — correct—linking higher rates of suicide and depression with power photographs of mice irradiated by low-level electromagnetic cables—there are worrying implications both for those people liv- fields—which showed that, within three generations, the offspring _ing close to high voltage underground cables and for those in were severely stunted. Dr Becker said: high-rise flats. We went in simply as scientists who were drawing attention to Another study in West Germany, for example, looked for sui- what we thought was a public hazard. The utility companies, it _ cides, spontaneous miscarriages or car accidents with different sit- turned out, not only supported themselves amply with money, but uations in the environment, and found a high correlation with the it became evident very early on that the federal government had _ level of electromagnetic fields. an interest in seeing to it that the hearings, if at all possible, did Britain's biggest private house-builders have not been given any not take place; or if they did take place, that the result would be _ indication by the power companies Or local planning authorities an exoneration of electromagnetic fields as having no health haz- that power lines could present a health hazard. It concerns me that ard whatsoever. people are being slow to take notice of this, but I think the mes- The project went ahead. sage will get through in the end. I think we should learn from the The Hoskins family and their ancestors have been homesteaders Russians. House-building under power lines has not been allowed in northern New York State for more than a century. They and _ in the [former] Soviet’Union for over 20 years. their farm had always prospered until the late 1970s when the Recent scientific research also suggests that magnetic fields high-voltage power line became an unwelcome neighbour. Their may not only affect the behaviour of individual cells but also the farm is just outside the 325-foot right of rate at, which they multiply. There is a per- way established by New York State. They th : lab fectly reasonable and well-accepted theory had had chickens there for 50 years, but, | *** IF oral of cancer formation which holds that when the power line was first energised, throughout your lifetime you probably gen- the hens started laying what looked’ like erate a number of malignant tumours that, as scrambled eggs: the white and the yolk these begin (and you have a relatively small were mixed. They now believe that the number of cells involved), the body recog- electric field had advanced the chickens’ nises the presence of these cells which have systems in such a manner that the chicken become abnormal, mobilises its resistance * had started to grow inside the egg before mechanisms (immune hodies—the white the hen had laid it. The birds were housed cells of the blood, and so forth), and destroys , through the winter, and went back to laying the tumour. When the organism is exposed normal eggs; but in the spring, when let out to abnormal magnetic fields—either because again in the yards, they started laying scrambled eggs again. The of the direct effect of those fields upon the growth of these production dropped and the mortality rate increased. tumours so that their growth’ is enhanced, or because the ability of Laboratory evidence that animal foetuses are easily damaged by _ the body to recognise and destroy these tumours is diminished— electric fields comes from a senior Czech scientist, Dr Karel _ one will see a greater incidence of these tumours. We know that a Marha, who now lives in Canada. Laboratory research in Spain good part of the regulation of growth within living organisms is has also shown that the growth of a normal chicken embryo can be __ electrical in nature. severely damaged when exposed to low-level electromagnetic Now, if you are going to expose large numbers of the popula- fields similar in strength to those created by the high-voltage lines _ tion to abnormal electromagnetic fields, and do so, chronically, near the Hoskins farm—where breeding problems were not just every day—and do so not only for one generation but perhaps for confined to their chickens. Pregnant animals pastured under the —_ two or three generations—there could well be a public health line had disastrous results and high calf-mortality. Estate agents — problem out there of maybe catastrophic proportions. who handie property in the US say they already have property In the United States and Sweden, studies have produced evi- . under the power line that they can't sell because nobody wants to dence that both children and adults living near power lines may be “live just near power lines. more likely to get cancer. Other surveys or epidemiological stud- "Professor Ross Adey, a biophysicist working at the Brain ies in Britain and America have also shown that power workers Research Institute in California, says that the question of the and other people whose jobs expose them to electric and magnetic body's ability to maintain the biological rhythms is now under fields are up to twice as likely to contract acute myeloid serious review because the pineal gland, situated almost within the leukaemia. Laboratory experiments which measured the effects of brain (it's on top of the brain) secretes a hormone, melatonin, that electromagnetic fields on the ability of the white blood corpuscles is an essential element in the body's ability to set up its 24-hour (or T-lymphocytes) to prevent cancer from developing, show that cycles; and recent experiments have reported a very clear loss of _ the white blood corpuscles’ efficiency is most affected by precise- the rhythmicity in the secretion of melatonin—of itself of no great ly the frequency of American power lines: 60 cycles per second. * significance, but, carried across a lifetime of most people exposed Officials are going to have to decide if the good achieved by to a variety of power-line fields, one must ask the question _ protecting people against health risks outweighs the costs. It's the. whether it's appropriate to live so close to the field that there may _classic risk-benefit analysis that bureaucrats and officials go be an interference with melatonin secretion. through routinely, In the United States the process takes place on He goes on to say that, given that the biological rhythms may be _a state-by-state basis, and in many states is largely subverted by modified, this in a sense could be the start of a cascade of effects. _ the relationship that exists between the power companies and the One would wonder whether other ‘cycles, for example, sex cycles, agencies the states have for regulating them. But these are politi- sleep and wakefulness and the like, may be disrupted with quite cal questions, not scientific questions. The scientific evidence undesirable effects—which at first are no more than a modifica- _ with regard to the health-risk aspect is clear and convincing—and 44 * NEXUS * DECEMBER 1995 - JANUARY 1996