- The ARC - California Edition -

Exposures to EMF

In almost every form that electricity flows, it results in electric and magnetic fields being generated. I was an electrical engineer during my working career, and over the years it has become very clear to me that electro magnetic fields (EMF) do have the potential to do serious harm to human beings. My historical personal problem has been that I do not have enough knowledge, nor experience, in order to quantify how much energy of such fields is enough to cause this damage.

For many, many years there have been voices of concern arising. Without a real good basis of knowledge, the concern has almost always fallen on deaf ears. So, there arose an agreement that further investigation is desirable into possible risks of any damage to human health.

Even after this apparently growing awareness about possible problems, laboratory experiments of researchers are still only in the stage of showing that it might be possible to cause changes in living cells. It is still not clear whether these types of changes to cells are of any risk to human health.

What does seem apparent from epidemiological studies is that there is a link between EMF exposures and CHILDHOOD leukemia. One type of leukemia has been found to have a weak relationship to EMF in ADULT workers.

In recent years, the federal government has increased their funding of research into the impacts of EMF. The key federal program is known as EMF RAPID (Research and Public Information Dissemination). They submitted a FINAL report to the US Congress on June 15, 1999.

Their conclusions:
Copies of the report can be found on the EMF RAPID home page:
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/emfrapid
or by obtained by mail: EMF-RAPID Program, NIEHS, P.O. Box 12233, Mail Drop EC-16, Research Triangle Park, NC, 27709.