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I'm talking about the ones in neighborhood streets, not the huge ones that run through fields.

There are so many opinions about this issue. See this discussion on Yahoo Answers for instance:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 314AAMIFqa

What do you think?

Just check the leukemia rates near power lines, they are much higher then the norm. EMF radiation is the single greatest threat to mankind next to genetically modified foods and cancer causing vaccinations.

I got Stetzer filters about a year ago and since then the tingling in my legs and generalized mild sunburn I get from spending so much time in front of the computer is totally gone.

Here's an article that perhaps gets to the heart of the matter:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... ectrifying

Electrifying: Is living under power lines harmful to your health?
March 23, 2007

Dear Cecil:

I've always heard that living under or near power lines was harmful to your health. The other day after driving by a community located next to a massive power station with so many cables running out of it that you could actually hear the hum of electricity over the traffic, I got to wondering: is there any truth to this common belief?

— Carlos G., via e-mail

Two ways you can look at this. To judge solely from the amount of research, we're facing the gravest threat to humanity since nuclear war. Over the past 30 years, scientists have published close to 25,000 articles on the health effects of non-ionizing radiation (the kind emitted by power lines). We've had population, occupational, and laboratory studies scrutinizing everything from high-voltage transmission lines to electric blankets. When you look at the results, though, you have to wonder why the fuss. All the investigations to date have yet to produce any clear indication that low-level electromagnetic fields from power lines are a health hazard to the general public. I won't say there's no danger whatsoever, but the perception bears no relation to the threat.

Some background. Magnets and moving electric currents radiate energy into space, generating the invisible aura we call an electromagnetic field (EMF). The stronger the magnet or current, the more pronounced the field. These fields penetrate solid objects with relative ease and produce readily detectable effects, one of the better known of which is the broadcasting industry. Long ago some genius realized: Cheezit, if music moguls can turn teenage minds to mush using nine-volt transistor radios, what deviltry might we be unwittingly visiting on ourselves with a 128,000-volt high-tension line? Thus the busy investigative agenda adverted to above.

The first high-profile study to assert a link between power lines and cancer was a 1979 plotting of childhood leukemia rates against residential distance from power lines in Denver - the closer the cables, the higher the incidence of leukemia. This study didn't actually measure EMF strength in the homes, nor did it control for possible confounding factors such as income levels. (Possibly housing near power lines is occupied predominantly by poor people, whose health is worse overall.) But it did prompt lots of other research, most of which uncovered nothing.

I'll say this, though. Evidence for a link between EMF exposure and childhood leukemia turns up just often enough that it can't be entirely dismissed. Although the vast majority of studies in the U.S., Canada, and the UK have found little connection between leukemia and proximity to power lines, a large 2005 study received a lot of press coverage for showing a modest, if baffling, correlation. This was the so-called Draper study, an examination of most childhood leukemia cases among kids born in Britain between 1962 and 1995. Draper and his colleagues found a clear relationship between the disease and residential distance from high-voltage power lines, even after adjusting for poverty levels. However, the study showed a leukemia increase even at distances where the electromagnetic energy radiated from power lines was much less than that generated by ordinary household wiring and appliances. The researchers conceded, "We have no satisfactory explanation for our results in terms of causation by magnetic fields, and the findings are not supported by convincing laboratory data or any accepted biological mechanism."

Some contend the increase in leukemia is related to that humming you hear from electrical lines and equipment. High-voltage power lines can ionize the air around them, an effect called corona discharge. In addition to buzzing, these discharges create pollutants such as ozone and nitrogen oxides and ionize other airborne pollutants, making them more likely to stick in your lungs when inhaled. A problem with this theory is that ozone and nitrogen oxides aren't especially carcinogenic, and no link has been demonstrated between them and leukemia.

Another conjecture is that some people have "electromagnetic hypersensitivity," or EHS. People claiming to suffer from EHS have a strange assortment of symptoms, including skin disorders, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, heart palpitations, and even digestive problems. However, according to the World Health Organization, EHS doesn't stand up to double-blind testing and could be attributable to anything from poor ergonomics to stress to psychiatric conditions.

Despite the lack of evidence linking power lines to health problems, consumer advocacy groups still urge limits on exposure, and research plods along. Even if a risk is established, it may not be big enough to warrant action. As the British Medical Journal commented following the Draper study, the net negative health effect of power lines in the UK could be five cases of leukemia annually, compared to 32,000 children injured and 200 killed each year in car accidents. Most will surely concede electricity's benefits outweigh a few additional cancer cases, provided they're not one.

— Cecil Adams

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... s/emf.html

The Science

Thus, even though very hard to prove a universal negative, there have been so many studies over two decades that it is virtually certain that any significant hazard would have been discovered by now. The critics make a number of very telling points.

1. The fields produced by power lines are very small. Power lines produce both electric and magnetic fields. The electric field is greatly reduced in magnitude within the human body, because the body is an electrical conductor. In fact, power lines produce electric fields inside the human body that are much smaller than the electric fields that normally exist in the body. The magnetic field is not significantly shielded inside the human body, so the only realistic possibility of health effects come from the magnetic field. The magnetic fields from power lines are rather small. Typically they are about 2 milliGauss. By comparison, the earth's field is typically 300-500 milliGauss, with the exact value depending on the location on the surface of the earth. Magnetic fields from power lines are therefore hundreds of times smaller than the magnetic field from the earth. If the relatively weak magnetic fields from power lines had significant adverse health effects, you would expect the much stronger magnetic field from earth to be devastating. Yet no such effect has ever been found. In experiments on animals, mice have lived for several generations in 60 Hz magnetic fields as high as 10,000 milliGauss, thousands of times higher typical power line fields, without any adverse effects.

It is well known that fluctuating magnetic fields give rise to an electric field by the Faraday effect in physics. Yale physics professor Robert Adair demonstrated that these electric fields are very small in comparison with the naturally occurring electric fields arising from thermal fluctuations [12]. This is a good benchmark to indicate that the powerline magnetic fields can't be important.

Actually, the opposite is true.

The amount of electromagnetism needed for the human body to run is minuscule compared to the huge burden added in the past 80 years by electricity...an 80 years that has seen a huge spike in cancer rates and Hodgkins Disease, which is considered to be specifially related to electromagnetism.

The body runs on 0.01mGauss where an improperly wired room (or a room under a high tension wire) will often be at .2mGauss or more. A baby will go insane at .2mGauss or more (crying all night) and eventually has a good chance of developing leukaemia.

High tension wires are the least of our problems because it has been obvious since the 1980s to get the Hell away from them (I include feeder cables that serve more than one household approaching a building at the point where you live).

If you live with such feeder cables (serving more than one house) dangling over your ceiling, there should be no argument about having to move away from your apartment Winston. You must not live under high tension wires that feed multiple homes.

I asked you to please take the baby and live elsewhere. Take up a collection here if you have to but please move.

There is a reason why the cheapest apartments are under high tension wires. People with enough money prefer to live. As more over EMF becomes known, the poor will be left to suffer and die in the most dangerous places. There is tons of evidence that cancer clusters exist in low income areas where people just don't take the hint.

http://www.jointlinepoint.com/download/ ... -eBook.pdf

Having said the obvious that nobody in their right mind should live under high tension wires, here is more info:

What is really dangerous are the following, which can be easily measured with a $150 device:

1) Feeder cable into an entire apartment building reaches its distribution point inside your ceiling floor or wall. This will make an entire room a "sick room". Have you ever preferred to sleep in the living room of an apartment you rented while avoiding the bedroom? This may be why.

2) Electric Blankets and Bedside Alarm Clocks and any cord plugged into the wall near your bed regardless of whether they are attached to items that are turned on or not.

3) Behind your head and through a thin wall in the apartment next door, is a refrigerator or stereo or TV plugged in permanently and thus always on even if seemingly turned off.

4) Wiring installed before World War Two can make entire rooms too magnetic to live in. This is a problem in Russia.

All the above will cause you headaches in the morning and make you feel generally bad. If you keep your bed in the same position for years like this, you will get cancer eventually.

Thankfully, most Americans move around.

I did not not mention the most important thing: There are natural death traps, often above underground streams and bodies of water, where electromagnetism is high and you will eventually get cancer if you live above them constantly.

Note that with power lines, underground bodies of water and your neighbors putting TVs and refrigerators up against YOUR wall...there is little to do but move.

Otherwise you can install a demand switch by the fuse box that shuts off all power at night so your walls are not radiating from the wiring inside them when all you need to power at night is your refrigerator.

The real estate industy does not want all this known. The electrical utilities are spending millions of $ to make sure they will never be sued. That is why they pay people to say EMF is harmless.

I would pay people to condemn IMBRA. The feminists pay people to praise IMBRA. And the tobacco companies paid people to say tobacco was harmless. Now the real estate and electrical utilities are doing the same thing, paying people to speak in their interest.

Moscowsummernights, what do you think of this report that concluded that EMF had no adverse health risks? Supposedly, the scientists were objective and in the middle of the issue.

http://www.ehib.org/emf/RiskEvaluation/ExecSumm.pdf

Here's a response from one of my advisors that contains good common sense and practical reasoning:

"Between the state or federal government and conspiracy sites, I think I'll take my chance with the government. The government's findings are not perfect and subject to corruption, but statistically it's still far more accurate than some conspiracy advocate on the web.

Can electric/power lines, EMF, microwave, cell phone, radar, radio frequency, etc. make people sick? Yes, if it's in large enough dosage, or if you're hypersensitive to it.

Active Denial Weapon (ADS), aka "Microwave pain ray", coming to your local police soon:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

The radar on the Soviet/Russian MiG-25P Foxbat interceptor, "Smerch-A" (NATO: Foxfire) use vacuum tubes and produce 600 kw power. Soviet pilots would flip on the radar and literally nuke rabbits sitting near the runway to death with the radar beam, then pick them up later for dinner.

If you stick your head in front of a 600 kw beam, it'd probably fry yoru brain too. But let's be realistic here, 90% of the US households have Microwave ovens, and well over 99% are on power grids. 3.3 billion people on this planet use cell phones. How many are dying from brain tumors?

Just as some people are allergic to certain foods, there is a small % of the population who are hypersensitive to EMF's. I'm allergic to shell fish and mites, you're allergic to pears and pineapples. "