The more I listen to AM radio, the more I list to the right when I walk.....



"N2EY" wrote in message
om...
Heavy Hitter wrote in message
. ..
Is AM Radio Harmful?
By Stephen Leahy

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,64579,00.html

02:00 AM Aug. 16, 2004 PT

Korean scientists have found that regions near AM radio-broadcasting
towers
had 70 percent more leukemia deaths than those without.

Do they define "near"? How do they control for other factors? Do they
look at many diseases or just a few?

The study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the International
Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, also found that cancer
deaths were 29 percent higher near such transmitters.

Same questions. How much does, say, smoking increase the cancer risk?

Two years ago an Italian study found death rates from leukemia increased
dramatically for residents living within two miles of Vatican Radio's
powerful array of transmitters in Rome.

How dramatically? 10 times? 100 times?

The Koreans looked at the death rates in 10 regions with AM
radio-transmitting towers broadcasting at more than 100 kilowatts and
compared them with control areas without transmitters. The substantially
higher cancer mortality in those who lived within two kilometers of the
towers led researchers to conclude that more investigation was needed.

Of course more is needed.

However, they also said their study did not prove a direct link between
cancer and the transmitters.

Indeed!

"There have been many studies like these, and they aren't very
convincing,"
said Mary McBride, an epidemiologist at the British Columbia Cancer
Agency.
Many other factors could have contributed to those cancer rates, said
McBride, who has headed a number of similar studies and found no direct
link.

Which means they didn't have a big enough study, nor adequate control
group.

Equally important is that studies in the lab don't show how radio waves
can
produce cancers, she said.

Debate continues over the health effects of radio waves from
transmitters,
both large and small, and other forms of electromagnetic fields,
including
power lines and microwaves.

Sam Milham, a Seattle-based epidemiologist and a pioneer in
electromagnetic-field research, is convinced there are health effects.
"Lots of research papers from around the world show increased cancers
near
transmitters, although TV and FM transmitters are more often implicated."

Implicated but not proved. Have controlled animal studies been done? I
think not.

Moreover, many lab studies show low-frequency EMF disrupt living cells,
Milham asserts. Critics like McBride say such results are often difficult
to reproduce at other labs. Milham says that's because of differences in
the Earth's magnetic field and stray EMF.

We're all sitting in 500 milligauss field from the planet...

In an attempt to settle some of this, California's Department of Health
Services reviewed all the current studies of EMF risks from power lines,
wiring and appliances in 2002. It found no conclusive evidence of harm.
However, links to childhood leukemia, adult brain cancer and Lou Gehrig's
disease could not be ruled out.

Of course they cannot be ruled out because you cannot prove a
negative.

"I'm convinced that politics and corporate interests are behind denials
(that say) there are no health effects," said Milham.

Nobody who understands science says there are no health effects. What
they do say is that no health effects have been scientifically
demonstrated. BIG difference.

Meanwhile, the FDA and the World Health Organization are urging more
studies, especially of radio waves from cell phones.

A good idea - if they are real scientific studies.

Some years back, there was a "study" done on cause-of-death of hams
reported in the Silent Key column of QST. Researcher looked up the
cause of death for a pretty large number of West Coast hams, and found
somewhat higher frequency of death from certain cancers and leukemias.
There was quite a buzz about it.

I did some digging and found a *bunch* of holes in the study:

- it compared West Coast hams to the general population, not to the
West Coast population

- it looked only at hams reported in the SK column of QST

- it did not compensate for differences in age, occupation, or other
environment factors like smoking that would have a big influence on
disease. Nor did it research what sort of hamming the amateur did, or
for how long. (The ham who did a little QRP for a few years as a
senior citizen got as much weight in the study as the ham who'd run
high power since teenage years and worked his entire career at a
broadcast station, etc.)

- it found only minor elevations in the named diseases

- (this is the biggie) it found that there were some cancers and
leukemias that were *less common* causes of death in the studied
group. That little factoid was conveniently ignored in most media
reports

- Most of all, the study repeatedly stated that it was not conclusive
and that much more work needed to be done.

But we rarely hear "the rest of the story"..

73 de Jim, N2EY