Why are pylons dangerous

Substations close to the house make properties harder to sell unless they are proven safe. Learn about how you can determine your safety level by enquiring about our EMF Surveys. Your email address will not be published. EMF detection can be a confusing subject. Get in touch with one of our advisors for a friendly, no pressure conversation. We'll be happy to answer your queries! What are the health risks of living near pylons?

Quick Navigation. Again, the issue is EMFs. As we said…. Yet the unpublished by study by Dr Alan Preece of the university's oncology department, described on BBC radio on September 21, claims that electrical cables can have effects at up to m distance. He has found evidence of a 29 per cent increase over the expected rate of lung cancers in people living near pylons in the south west of England.

But the mortality only occurs in those people living downwind of the pylon. These findings provide support for a theory proposed by Professor Denis Henshaw of the department of physics at the same university. He believes that the fields cause changes in the properties of pollution particles in the atmosphere which increase the likelihood that they are deposited on the surface of the skin and lungs. Their decision, announced yesterday, was welcomed by some British experts, but sparked renewed argument over a subject that has lingered on the fringes of scientific proof for 20 years.

After ten days of discussions to consider evidence from studies all over the world, a member panel of the prestigious National Institutes of Health NIH voted by 19 to nine that electric fields such as those around power lines should be considered possible human carcinogens.

Only one of the nine dissenting panel members thought the evidence was against a link; the other eight said the conflicting evidence left them undecided. Professor Denis Henshaw, a British scientist who first suggested a possible mechanism by which overhead high-voltage cables could cause cancer, said yesterday that the decision will be important for the 23, people in the UK who live within 50 metres of a pylon.

We should look to countries like Sweden which have a policy of avoidance of putting homes next to pylons. But Dr Michael Clark, a spokesman for the National Radiological Protection Board, the Government's radiation adviser, said the evidence was not convincing: "We continue to support research in this area, but our view is that there is no firm evidence of a cancer risk.

On the back of 83 epidemiological studies he appealed for a tightening of current regulations by a factor of Such a move would have wide-ranging ramifications, the biggest of which could be the scuttling of Transpower's controversial KV pylon project on the grounds that it would be uneconomic.

Opponents say the current 65m-wide easement proposed by Transpower is too narrow to ensure the safety of public health. They believe the corridor across km of Waikato farmland should instead be expanded to m. Dr Smart, speaking on behalf of anti-pylon lobby group New Era Energy, said the New Zealand standard regulating electric and magnetic field exposure to microtesla was "a joke".

He believed exposure should be limited to 0. The Ministry of Health and Transpower, along with the Government, were using a standard that was so high that in effect there was no limit on human exposure to power lines, Dr Smart said.