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shadow zone. This is 55 percent more than the 4.5 cases statistically
expected for this population, and there may have been more cases I
didn't know about. Obviously, in such a small and unscientific sample
the results could have been due to chance, but the ominous implications
demanded some more extensive surveys.
The first one came in 1979, when Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper
of the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver published a
study of childhood cancer and power lines. The researchers studied 344
deaths from childhood cancer between 1950 and 1973. The address of
each of the victims was paired with the address of the next baby born in
the area, to provide a matched series of controls. If the family had
moved before the death, both birth and death addresses were used in
the experimental group. The wiring of each house and its distance from
the nearest transformers were studied. It proved possible to divide the
houses into two groups: those with high-current wiring configurations
producing strong magnetic fields, and those wired in a low-current ar-
rangement producing much weaker magnetic fields. After certain other
variables—such as economic class, family risk patterns, traffic, and ur-
banization differences—were factored out, the childhood death rate from
leukemia, lymph node cancer, and nervous system tumors in the high-
current homes was more than double the rate in low-current homes.
Three years later S. Milham, director of occupational health and safety
for the state of Washington, found that adults who worked in strong
electromagnetic fields also had a leukemia incidence significantly higher
than the norm. The link appeared in statistics for generating-station
operators, high-voltage-line maintenance workers, aluminum smelters,
and several other categories of laborers.
Besides the investigation itself, another thing was noteworthy about
Milham's paper: the reaction of the scientific establishment. Another
paper quickly appeared in the same periodical, the New England Journal of
Medicine, citing many other studies to prove Milham wrong. However, all
of them involved controlled exposure to microwaves alone, while the jobs
studied by Milham were in the real world, where microwaves and power-
frequency fields mix. The editors declined to publish my letter pointing
out this obvious flaw in the critique, but still it was momentous that such
a prestigious publication ran Milham's paper at all.
Soon confirmatory reports appeared. Wertheimer's and Leeper's find-
ings were duplicated in Stockholm by a group who correlated childhood
leukemia with actual
measurements of magnetic fields. The strongest
statistical link was found with 200-kilovolt power lines running within
200 yards of the stricken child's home. Milham's work was vindicated