FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, July 30, 1998
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Bill Grigg
(301) 402-3378
Tom Hawkins
(919) 541-1402
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Report on Electrical and Magnetic Fields Released;
Public Invited to Comment at Regional Meetings
- Tucson, Ariz., Sept. 14 and 15, at the Inn Suites, 475 Granada Ave.
- Washington, D.C., Sept. 28, at the Ronald Reagan Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
- San Francisco, Calif., Oct. 1, at the regional EPA office at 75 Hawthorne St.
- Chicago, Ill., Oct. 5, at the University of Chicago's Gleacher Center, 450 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive.
To register to speak, members of the public should provide their name, affiliation, mailing address, phone, fax, e-mail and sponsoring organization (if any) to EMF/RAPID, Post Office Box 12233, NIEHS Mail Drop EC-16, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 or by fax to (919) 541-0144. Written comments may also be sent to the same address (by Oct. 9) and the full scientific report or a non-technical summary may be requested now by writing to the same address. The scientific report and the non-technical summary are also available via the electrical and magnetic fields button on the NIEHS web site:
"Public and scientific comment is important to us," NIEHS Director Kenneth Olden, Ph.D., said, "as we prepare our own report on the research, as mandated by Congress when it began a six-year program of accelerated studies to try to resolve this issue." Olden said concern over the possible effects of electrical and magnetic fields was set off by a 1979 Denver study which appeared to show that children with leukemia were more likely to have resided within 131 feet of a power line than other children.
More than 13 other similar epidemiological studies have subsequently been carried out to test this hypothesis, with mixed results. But the scientific panel found there is also some data suggesting adults in electricity-intensive industries such as aluminum manufacture may have a slightly elevated risk of chronic adult leukemia.