Electric Fields May Not Cause Cancer

(WebMD)  Electromagnetic fields may not increase cancer risk, a Danish study shows.

The study included more than 28,000 workers at 99 utility companies in Denmark.

The researchers included Christoffer Johansen, MD, of the Danish Cancer Society's Institute of Cancer Epidemiology in Copenhagen, Denmark.

They used Danish medical records to track new cases of leukemia, breast cancer, or brain cancer among the utility workers over nearly 23 years, on average.

Johansen's team noted whether the workers had normal, medium, or high levels of on-the-job exposure to electromagnetic fields.

The researchers found "no compelling evidence" of links between cancer and the workers' exposure to electromagnetic fields.

The vast majority of the workers didn't develop leukemia, brain cancer, or breast cancer during the study period.

On-the-job exposure to electromagnetic fields apparently didn't affect cancer risk in the 70 men who developed leukemia, the 188 women who developed breast cancer, and the 110 men and women who developed brain cancer, the study shows. Since there were so few cases of women who developed leukemia and men who developed breast cancer, the researchers did not include them in the study analysis.

"The results do not support the hypothesis of an association between occupational exposure to magnetic fields in the electric utility industry and risks for leukemia, brain cancer, and breast cancer," write the researchers.

Their findings appear in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed by Louise Chang
© 2007, WebMD Inc. All rights reserved

[rasuth]

'Accepted Fact' is more of a political descriptor than 'Scientific Fact', which supports an opinion with critical justification through tested and verified 'facts'.

Accepted facts tend to be those facts a specific interest group or individual would like to be a fact, so are packaged through an appropriate PR campaign to make it appear to be a fact.

The article above would tend to debunk the unsupported 'accepted fact' that electromagnetic fields contribute or cause cancer. Though I must note, that similarly to the Cyclamate campaign, if you use gargantuan doses of anything you can get adverse effects.

[martin9p2]

Just remember that the most recent study is not the same as "accepted fact". Meanwhile, this is a pretty weak article because it doesn't give examples of why electric fields were ever suspected in the first place, how or in what way the findings might be significant, etc.