Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover Up Their Threat to Your Health

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Overview

What this book is about

Brodeur argues that continuous exposure to weak alternating-current (60-hertz) magnetic fields is a widespread and largely hidden public-health hazard. The fields come from ordinary neighbourhood power lines, electric blankets and heated waterbeds, and the video display terminals (VDTs, the CRT computer screens of the 1980s). He also argues that electric utilities, the military, the electronics and computer industries and several government agencies spent 15 years playing the evidence down. The book reads as a medical detective story told through its researchers. Nancy Wertheimer, an unfunded epidemiologist, noticed in 1974 that Denver children who had died of leukemia had lived unusually often near pole-mounted transformers. With the physicist Ed Leeper she traced the link to the magnetic field of high-current wires. Brodeur then follows how that finding was dismissed and attacked, and how it was eventually replicated by David Savitz in 1986 in a study commissioned by people who expected it to fail. Throughout, his central claim is that the evidence was obstructed rather than weighed.

The book has three parts. Part One, "Power Lines" (Ch. 1–12), sets out the scientific core. It covers Wertheimer and Leeper's childhood and adult cancer studies, and Robert Becker and Andrew Marino's fight in the New York power-line hearings of the 1970s against 765,000-volt transmission lines. It also covers the Navy's suppressed research on its Sanguine ELF submarine-communication antenna, Samuel Milham's findings of leukemia among electrical workers, Lennart Tomenius's Swedish confirmation, and Ross Adey's laboratory work showing that weak fields can change brain chemistry. Part Two, "Cover-up" (Ch. 13–32), documents how institutions responded. It covers the Air Force's PAVE PAWS radar on Cape Cod, where Brodeur lives, and the laboratory work on cancer promotion, calcium efflux and electric blankets. It also covers the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), stacked National Academy of Sciences committees, paid expert witnesses, the $25 million Houston school-district jury verdict, the New York Power Lines Project's report, and community protests from Quebec to Seattle. Part Three, "Computer Terminals" (Ch. 33–45), applies the same analysis to VDTs. It covers the clusters of miscarriages and birth defects among VDT operators, official denials based on the wrong measuring instruments, and the Spanish, Swedish and Finnish animal studies showing that weak pulsed magnetic fields disrupt embryo development. It ends with the 1988 Kaiser Permanente study, which found an 80% higher miscarriage risk among women who used a VDT for more than 20 hours a week.

The book continues the argument of Brodeur's 1977 The Zapping of America. The earlier book dealt with microwaves and radar; this one moves to power-frequency (ELF) magnetic fields, though several microwave threads recur: the Moscow Signal and Project Pandora, Herman Schwan's heat-only exposure standard, Milton Zaret's cataract cases, and the PAVE PAWS radar. Brodeur says openly that he is taking a side. His final chapter calls for error "on the side of caution" by treating the existing data as valid while a government-funded crash research programme is carried out. He rejects outright the de facto policy that power lines, electric blankets and VDTs are "innocent until proved guilty," which in his words leaves "millions of human beings… test animals in a long-term biological experiment whose consequences remain unknown." He relies heavily on Louis Slesin's newsletters Microwave News and VDT News, and profiles Slesin in the penultimate chapter.

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Key Ideas

The core frameworks and findings

The danger comes from ordinary street wiring, not only giant transmission lines

In the Wertheimer–Leeper study (published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, March 1979), childhood leukemia deaths in Denver clustered at the first two houses served by a transformer. Those houses sat along the "first-span secondary," the stretch of wire that still carries the current for the whole street and therefore gives off the strongest magnetic field. In a test sample of 344 children who died of cancer between 1950 and 1973, set against 344 matched controls, children in "high-current" homes died of cancer at about twice the rate. The risk was highest for children who had spent their whole lives in such homes, and all six children who had lived near wires coming directly from a substation were cancer cases. The authors pointed to the magnetic field, not the electric field. Magnetic fields pass through walls and bodies, and unbalanced "return" current flowing through household plumbing brings them indoors. About one in four or five Denver families lived in a high-current home. Brodeur stresses that the chief hazard is the high-current distribution wiring found on "practically every" street, which utilities, regulators and even citizen protest groups consistently ignored while arguing about high-voltage lines.

How long you are exposed matters more than how strong the field is, which is why the appliance argument misleads

Appliance fields are strong only within inches of the casing and are used briefly. Wertheimer and Leeper found whole-body exposure from normal appliance use "rarely exceeds two milligauss," whereas fields from outside wiring can persist "for hours or days." The magnetic fields in homes with raised cancer risk averaged only about 1–2 mG, against a typical Denver–Boulder background of about 0.5 mG. For years the Navy, its contractor IITRI, EPRI and utility witnesses cited appliance readings taken with a tiny probe against the casing, such as "25 gauss" from a hair dryer (about 25,000 mG). Wertheimer's reply was that this reading applies to the tip of a finger touching the dryer. IITRI itself corrected the figure in 1984. Brodeur singles out the chronic sources: electric blankets, dial-face electric clocks, neighbourhood wiring and VDTs.

Independent replication

Tomenius in Stockholm (716 children; published in Bioelectromagnetics, 1986) found cancer about twice as often in homes near 200,000-volt lines and in homes with fields of 3 mG or more. Savitz's replication for the New York State Power Lines Project (announced 20 November 1986) used new cases, coded the wiring blind, measured fields inside homes and adjusted for parental smoking, X-rays and similar factors. It found a significant association with all childhood cancers, and a risk more than five times that of controls for some very-high-exposure groups. In Congress Savitz reported a 40% increase in cancer among children living with fields above 2 mG, with "strong associations" for leukemia, lymphoma and soft-tissue tumours. The Power Lines Project panel estimated that, if the association is causal, 10–15% of all childhood cancer would be attributable to magnetic fields. David Carpenter of the New York State Health Department told an industry audience: "We are where we were with cigarette smoking and cancer twenty-five years ago." A negative Rhode Island study, which the FDA and utilities cited for years, had biased controls. When Wertheimer and Leeper reanalysed it, it showed the same trend, and its authors declined to respond.

Workplace exposure

Samuel Milham (New England Journal of Medicine, July 1982) analysed 438,000 deaths among men in Washington State. Leukemia was raised in 10 of 11 electrical occupations and was twice the expected rate in aluminium-smelter pot-room workers, who work in massive DC magnetic fields. Among amateur radio operators, acute and chronic myeloid leukemia was nearly three times the expected rate. Similar findings followed from Los Angeles, England and Wales (McDowell, The Lancet), New Zealand and Canada. By early 1986, 15 of 17 surveys of electrical workers showed a link, and brain-tumour studies from Maryland (1984) and East Texas (1988, with a 13-fold risk for electric-utility workers) pointed the same way. Milham suggested that fields may weaken the immune system, since non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is typical of immune impairment.

Adults, and a bed-heating interaction

Wertheimer and Leeper's adult study (International Journal of Epidemiology, 1982; 1,179 case–control pairs) found a dose–response pattern that was clearest for cancer before age 55, covering the nervous system, uterus, breast and lymphoma. The authors explained that a small added risk is easiest to see where background cancer is rare, which is why it shows most clearly in children. When they reanalysed Battelle's negative Washington leukemia study, they found a significantly higher risk in people who both lived in high-current homes and used electric blankets, mattress pads or heated waterbeds. By their estimate, 25% or more of that type of leukemia could be attributable to the combination if the link is causal.

Electric blankets, heated waterbeds and miscarriage

Wertheimer measured 10–20 mG next to an electric blanket at any setting and 5–10 mG six inches away, which is the field a sleeper lies in. The current in the blanket's S-shaped wiring is unbalanced at the edges. Heated waterbeds gave about 5 mG. In an unfunded but fully blind study of 1,806 Denver birth announcements (1,318 families reached), users of electrically heated beds had more miscarriages in the cold months and fewer in summer. Non-users showed no seasonal pattern. The excess peaked from September to January, as settings were turned up. Wertheimer and Leeper (Bioelectromagnetics, 1986) concluded that electric bed heating "may have a direct effect on fetal development," and Wertheimer told a 1985 National Academy committee that fetuses conceived in electrically heated beds grew slightly more slowly. Heat could have been a confounder, since excess heat harms sperm. To remove it, Wertheimer repeated the design in Eugene, Oregon, with ceiling-cable electric heating, which produces strong fields without raising body temperature, and found the same cold-season excess of fetal loss. She suspected that strong fields cause some susceptible embryos to be lost early. The FDA's 1989 consumer guidance still told people there was no reason to stop using electric blankets; Brodeur criticises it for omitting the miscarriage study.

How weak fields could act on the body without heating it (Adey, Bawin, Blackman)

At UCLA, Ross Adey and Suzanne Bawin exposed chick brain tissue to a 147 MHz radio signal modulated at 6–20 Hz. Calcium outflow rose about 20%, peaking at 16 Hz, while the same signal unmodulated had no effect. The response appeared only within narrow "windows" of frequency and intensity. The same changes appeared in living cats, and with 450 MHz modulated at 16 Hz, close to the pulse rate of the PAVE PAWS radar. Monkeys exposed to 7 Hz electric fields of only 10 V/m misjudged time intervals, and their brain rhythms followed the external field ("entrainment"). Carl Blackman at the EPA confirmed the 16 Hz window and then found that the effect depended on the strength of the local geomagnetic field (a cyclotron-resonance-like relationship), which could explain why some experiments fail to replicate. Chicks incubated in 60 Hz fields of 10 V/m, a level found in virtually every home, had brain tissue that responded differently from chicks incubated at 50 Hz. Rutger Wever's underground-bunker experiments showed that a 10 Hz field of 2.5 V/m shifts human circadian rhythms. Both Adey and Blackman propose a three-step process: a tiny trigger at the cell surface, a cascade that amplifies it, and a change inside the cell.

Promoting cancer rather than causing it

Brodeur relays Adey's view that weak fields probably act as tumour promoters, like phorbol esters (from croton oil), PCBs or DDT, which speed the growth of cells already damaged by X-rays or chemicals, rather than as initiators that damage DNA. The supporting studies: Milham used the same "promoter" reading to explain Arthur Guy's rat results (see Key Idea 10).

Evidence from animal development and reproduction

Marino and Becker exposed three generations of mice to fields like those beneath a 765 kV line and found them stunted, with higher death rates. Battelle's miniature-swine study for EPRI, at 30 kV/m, found almost twice as many birth defects in the offspring of exposed females. EPRI held back publication for nearly four years, which led its principal investigator, Richard Phillips, to resign. A Battelle rat study found a threefold increase in malformations that did not recur on repetition, along with reduced melatonin in the pineal gland. At an industry conference in Toronto in 1986, Richard Phillips said he would not buy a house next to a high-voltage line even at a $25,000 discount.

Standards built on heating alone, and pulsed radiation

The 10 mW/cm² microwave limit was proposed by Herman Schwan in 1953 on purely theoretical heating grounds, and was 1,000 times the Soviet occupational limit. The Air Force averaged PAVE PAWS's pulses over time so that readings appeared a thousandth of the standard. Sceptics called this the "English muffin standard": radiation counts as harmless as long as you don't turn brown. The contrary evidence Brodeur cites: Karel Marha adds that pulsed fields are more biologically potent than continuous ones.

VDTs emit 60 Hz magnetic fields, not only VLF

The CRT's vertical-deflection coil produces 60 Hz magnetic fields, and these are the dominant waveform the screen gives off. The flyback transformer and horizontal coil add pulsed very-low-frequency (VLF) fields of 15–20 kHz. Manufacturers ignored the ELF fields, and NIOSH measured in mW/cm², a unit that cannot capture them. Measured levels: Brodeur notes that these are the same levels found in the Denver homes where children died of cancer. Fields are often stronger at the sides and back, so neighbours can be more exposed than the operator. Metal cases do not block magnetic fields (IBM shielded against interference and eavesdropping under Project Tempest, not for health), and lead aprons are useless.

VDTs and pregnancy

Brodeur lists at least 11 clusters from 1979 to 1984: The experimental evidence: A large Montreal survey found an excess of miscarriage among VDT users but attributed it to "recall bias," an explanation Brodeur rejects.

Conflicts of interest are the book's organising theme

The main instances:

Regulators hedged

In 1978 New York's Public Service Commission set a 1,600 V/m edge-of-right-of-way limit for 765 kV lines. The figure simply matched existing 345 kV lines, whose risks society had supposedly "implicitly accepted." In 1988 it proposed an interim magnetic-field limit of about 100 mG and declared that information on biological effects "will not be considered." That limit is 30–50 times the 2–2.5 mG linked to childhood cancer. The World Health Organization task force chair, Michael Repacholi, considered public power-line fields up to 2,000 mG safe. At a 1981 congressional hearing, Albert Gore Jr. asked the FDA's radiation chief why it was reassuring that a "nonexistent standard" was not violated. Milton Zaret called the reasoning "idiotic."

Courts, liability, and what Brodeur proposes

In 1985 a Houston jury found that Houston Lighting & Power had acted with "reckless disregard" in running a 345 kV line past three schools, where fields of 5–25 mG and more were measured or projected. It awarded $25 million in punitive damages, later reversed. The appeals court upheld the finding of "clear and convincing evidence" of potential health hazards, and the utility moved the line at a cost of more than $8.5 million. Brodeur predicts product-liability exposure for utilities, bed-heater makers and the computer industry, and prescribes the precautionary principle in two senses:

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Chapter by chapter — click to expand

§ Part One — Power Lines ▾

§ 1. An Unfunded Study ▾

Nancy Wertheimer drives Denver's alleys (1974) with a list of children who died of leukemia and notices pole transformers. Ed Leeper builds "the gadget," a homemade gaussmeter.
The field is strongest along the first-span secondary; the wiring configuration code; 344 cases against 344 controls; twice the cancer rate; ground currents in plumbing; the appliance caveat; the 1950 occupational data. The 1979 paper appears in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

§ 2. Early Warning ▾

Robert O. Becker's background: the current of injury, salamander regeneration, geomagnetic storms and psychiatric admissions, stress and immunity (Selye). ELF of 1–30 Hz overlaps the earth's natural band; d'Arsonval's magnetophosphenes (10–100 Hz fields seen as flashes of light).
The Navy's Project Sanguine and its 1973 advisory committee: triglycerides raised in 9 of 10 human volunteers, behavioural and growth effects. The report was suppressed. Becker writes to New York officials about PASNY's 765 kV Massena–Marcy line.

§ 3. Speaking Out ▾

The New York PSC hearings. Becker and Marino testify without pay. Marino's rats, and three generations of stunted mice; 14,000 pages of testimony. Exposing people to the fields is framed as experimentation without informed consent.
Utility witnesses Schwan (Operation Paperclip, author of the 10 mW/cm² standard), Michaelson and Miller are cross-examined into admitting they do not know. The Soviet 100-metre setback rule for 750 kV lines.

§ 4. Some Conflicts of Interest ▾

The National Academy's Seafarer committee includes the three utility witnesses. The Navy's plan for secret human ELF experiments on 52 volunteers. The 1977 Academy report clears Seafarer and is silent on power lines.

§ 5. Some Widely Accepted Risks ▾

Merrill Eisenbud: "Scientists should attack the press." Marino's amicus brief proposes a 100 V/m limit.
The judges' 1,000 V/m recommendation. The PSC's 1978 "widely accepted risks" decision (1,600 V/m) and Commissioner Harold Jerry's dissent. The $5 million New York State Power Lines Project.

§ 6. Retaliation ▾

Perry, Becker, Marino and Reichmanis: suicides linked to power-line fields (590 suicides against 594 controls; Health Physics, 1981).
Becker's grants are cut and his lab closed; Marino leaves. Hastings calls them "quacks," and Handler threatens Saturday Review with a lawsuit.

§ 7. Obfuscation ▾

Wertheimer is refused NIH funding for the adult study and does it with her own money, with a blind-coded check sample.
EPRI's Robert Kavet visits and lists "We can do nothing" as an option. The IITRI and Navy appliance readings taken against the casing; Wertheimer and Leeper's letter to Congress.

§ 8. In a Bind ▾

Morton Miller's letter blaming appliances. Kanu Shah's Sacramento critique; the flawed Rhode Island study (Fulton) and the reanalysis. "The power companies are really in a bind if they agree that magnetic fields might be harmful."

§ 9. The Electric Power Research Institute ▾

Soviet switchyard workers; Swiss railway engineers retired at 40. EPRI cancels Gann's dog study; IITRI's reassuring review.
Marino's "Hershey" jibe (an independent study group based in Hershey finds chocolate the perfect food). The Roth reanalysis draft is sent to New York officials 14 months later.

§ 10. The Workplace Connection ▾

Milham's NEJM letter; aluminium pot rooms; linemen, projectionists, ham radio operators; confirmations from Los Angeles, England and Wales, and elsewhere; brain-tumour studies.

§ 11. Partial Confirmation ▾

The Tomenius Stockholm study (3 mG threshold). New York's health commissioner dismisses the Hoskins dairy farm's sick herd beneath the Massena–Marcy line.
The adult cancer paper (dose response, clearer under 55). Crocetti's review for New York recommends replication, and the Savitz and Battelle contracts follow.

§ 12. Pioneer ▾

W. Ross Adey's career: Elul's cell-membrane strands; calcium; Project Pandora and the "Moscow Signal" (microwaves beamed at the US embassy).
Monkeys under 7 Hz fields; 147 MHz modulated at brainwave frequencies; the 16 Hz calcium "tuning curve"; frequency and intensity windows; the ocean-wave analogy.

§ Part Two — Cover-up ▾

§ 13. "Who Is My Enemy?" ▾

Adey moves to Loma Linda; 450 MHz modulated at 16 Hz alters the brains of living cats. The PAVE PAWS phased-array radar (420–450 MHz, pulsed at 18.5 Hz) is built on Cape Cod without an environmental impact statement. At a Sandwich forum a mother asks, "Who is my enemy?"; the lawsuits; the controversy over the beam angle.

§ 14. Answering the Question ▾

The National Academy committee; SRI's draft impact statement. The omitted studies: Susskind's leukemic mice, the squirrel monkeys, fetal deaths near Eglin Air Force Base.
At the 1979 hearing the Air Force flight surgeon admits, "I do not know." Brodeur himself questions SRI's scientist from the floor.

§ 15. The Best Possible Face ▾

The final impact statement quotes the Academy's "improbable" selectively. Lilienfeld's study of the Moscow embassy (cancer among female staff). The Academy concedes possible effects on the central nervous system. Judge Tauro dismisses the suit.

§ 16. A Grave Lack of Good Judgment ▾

Adey's letter ("a grave lack of good judgment" in choosing the Cape site) and his public criticism. Lyle's T-lymphocyte suppression and Byus's protein kinase results.
The Guy and Chou rat study (18 tumours against 5). Szmigielski's Polish military cancers. The Cape Cod Times stays silent.

§ 17. Under the Light Bulb ▾

Upper Cape cancer excess: women's leukemia 23% higher; liver, bladder and kidney cancer 61% higher. Toxic dumping at the Otis base is a major confounder, which Brodeur acknowledges.
The Air Force's "like sitting under a light bulb" and its time-averaged readings. A PAVE PAWS radar in Georgia had to be kept away from aircraft because its pulses could set off electro-explosive devices.

§ 18. A Question of Promotion ▾

Initiation versus promotion; phorbol esters and protein kinase C; the gap-junction theory; ODC rises with microwaves and with 60 Hz fields. A field of 0.1 mV/cm, the level present in the tissue of a person standing under a power line, raised ODC fivefold.

§ 19. Corroboration ▾

Carl Blackman (EPA) replicates the calcium windows; hula-hoop Helmholtz coils; geomagnetic field dependence; Liboff's lithium resonance in rats. Eggs incubated at 60 Hz versus 50 Hz; Wever's bunker circadian experiments.

§ 20. The Electric Blanket Connection ▾

The 1985 National Academy advisory committee is unimpressed. Wertheimer's blanket and waterbed field measurements; the seasonal-miscarriage study design; the Eugene ceiling-cable follow-up.

§ 21. Something Is Happening ▾

Battelle's miniature-swine birth defects and EPRI's delay; melatonin suppression. Savitz's measurements validate the wiring code. Jerry Phillips's cancer cells.
Richard Phillips's "I would not buy that house." Savitz's confirmation (20 November 1986). Wertheimer: "It is time to accept that something is happening."

§ 22. Project ELF ▾

Reagan revives the antenna. Judge Crabb's 1984 injunction cites Adey, Blackman, Battelle and Wertheimer, and the appeals court overturns it. Becker resigns from the literature review because of its bias; the AIBS report finds harm "unlikely."

§ 23. Saving the Honeybees ▾

Hannon Graves's Florida commission: the only hazards found are pacemakers and honeybees. His $75,000 report for Victoria, Australia revives the appliance argument; Wertheimer, Becker and Jerry Phillips rebut it. WHO's "3,000 mG" comparison. Graves goes on to chair EPRI's research panel.

§ 24. Buried Heads ▾

Guy and Foster's Scientific American article downplays the rat tumours and proposes criteria for ending research. Slesin's rebuttal: 9 endocrine malignancies against 2. Adey and Sheppard: "bury your head in the sand (i.e., statistics)."

§ 25. The Free Exchange of Thought ▾

The closed-door Hot Springs seminar (1982) leads to the Electromagnetic Energy Policy Alliance (AT&T, GTE, Motorola, Raytheon, IBM, the broadcasters). Lawsuits are called "a new form of terrorism."
Carpenter's warning to the 1988 meeting; Carstensen cites 12–18 mG under an electric blanket; Philip Cole of the "naysayers."

§ 26. The Uncertainty Factor ▾

EPRI's record: the EPRI Journal articles; Sagan says "not… overly concerned"; spin on the swine and rat studies. EPRI's late grants to Peters and Savitz. Savitz's "59-cent device" remark set against his congressional testimony.

§ 27. Adverse Witness ▾

Houston Lighting & Power v. Klein Independent School District. The utility's expert Carstensen measured on a cool Sunday at a third of peak load. Chatkoff's 5–25 mG projections. Wertheimer calls it "indefensible to expose those children to that experiment"; Jerry Phillips; Harris Busch's metronome.

§ 28. Verdict ▾

A utility engineer concedes that distribution lines near homes produce fields of the same order. The jury finds "reckless disregard": $104,275 actual damages, $25 million punitive (later reversed), and a relocation cost of $42 million. The line is removed and a brain-tumour suit follows.

§ 29. Not Readily Translatable ▾

The final report of the New York Power Lines Project: 12 of 17 projects found significant effects, yet it spoke of "no effects of concern." Its 10–15% childhood-cancer estimate. The PSC task force's "dance of denial," with a 100 mG interim limit "not directly related to biological effects."

§ 30. Testimony ▾

The October 1987 House hearing: Becker, Jerry Phillips, Savitz and Adey against EPRI's Sagan. The Marcy South "cancer corridor" suit; the eight expert witnesses paid about $350,000; Adey's complaint to the NIH about NCI scientists.

§ 31. Protest ▾

Opposition in Fort Covington, Minnesota, Montana, Quebec and Maine (to Hydro-Québec lines), and Bridlewood, Ontario. Persinger measures 18.8–22.5 mG on playground climbing bars and projects 5–100 mG inside the school.

§ 32. Reason Not to Trust ▾

Seattle City Light's Highline lines. Its own impact statement estimates more than 500 homes above 5 mG from existing distribution wiring. The toaster and mixer comparisons; the state refuses on safety and liability grounds. The coming liability for distribution wiring, radars, electric bedding and 30 million VDTs.

§ Part Three — Computer Terminals ▾

§ 33. A Unanimous Decision ▾

How a CRT works: flyback transformer, horizontal scan at about 15 kHz, vertical scan at 60 Hz; X-rays absorbed by the glass. Swedish eye complaints (1977).
Two New York Times copy editors develop cataracts (Zaret's diagnosis). NIOSH measures with the wrong instruments ("We don't particularly give a damn"). Bell Labs declares the terminals safe.

§ 34. The Expected Unexpected ▾

The Toronto Star, Air Canada, Sears (the CDC's "expected-unexpected"), Marietta, Surrey Memorial, the Solicitor General's office and Pacific Northwest Bell clusters. Official denials, with no measurements taken. Canada's task force recommends optional transfer for pregnant operators.

§ 35. Anyone Who's Paranoid ▾

The 1981 Gore hearing: FDA radiation chief John Villforth (later quoted: "anyone who's paranoid can blame their troubles on it") and Zaret's cataract slides. The National Academy's vision panel.
Karl Smith's wartime Camp Murphy radar-operator studies: eye strain, headache, insomnia and impotence; four-hour duty limits.

§ 36. An Ocean of Denial ▾

Karel Marha (a Czech émigré, formerly head of the high-frequency department at Prague's Institute of Industrial Hygiene) reveals 60 Hz magnetic fields from the vertical-deflection coil. Stuchly's 2 mG at 12 inches. Pulsed fields are more potent. The Canadian Centre proposes shielding and an interim limit of 60 V/m at 30 cm.

§ 37. Benign Neglect ▾

The Centre's follow-up reports: fields strongest to the side and rear; seat people 1–1.5 m away; no back-to-front desk layouts; lead aprons useless.
Press silence documented by the Columbia Journalism Review; publishers and manufacturers lobby against VDT safety bills; the "Assault on VDTs" editorial.

§ 38. The Spanish Connection ▾

José Delgado's background. Delgado and Leal: 12 mG pulses at 100 Hz arrest chick-embryo development. More clusters (Southern Bell, United Airlines, GTE Alma). Mild replicates the finding at a 30% malformation rate.

§ 39. The Twisting Stage ▾

IBM's Tempest shielding; the lobbying coalition ("like asking to be transferred away from a light bulb"). Guy's IBM report on VDT magnetic fields comparable to Delgado's, and the recommendation to shield that IBM left out of its summary. Slesin against IBM. "People will adapt nicely to office systems if their arms are broken."

§ 40. In Front of Every Nose ▾

The six-laboratory Henhouse Project; BellSouth's consultants and the OMB block NIOSH's protocol. The Karolinska mouse study is announced, then played down. The 1986 Stockholm VDT conference, covered by no major US paper; cardiovascular defects reported in the Swedish and Finnish studies.

§ 41. Ignoring the Evidence ▾

Representative Weiss against the OMB's cuts. NIOSH finds angina more common among BellSouth VDT users. McDonald's Montreal study explains away its own excess. The AMA report ignores the Stockholm papers. Uppsala fetal loss; Umeå genetic effects.

§ 42. Trail Blazing ▾

IBM and Ontario Hydro study VLF fields only. Finnish measurements show ELF fields dominating (8 mG at 12 inches). The Henhouse results are positive. Kaiser Permanente finds an 80% higher miscarriage risk above 20 hours a week. The New York Times attacks Suffolk County's VDT law.

§ 43. A Walk in the Sun ▾

Conflicting advice; Slesin suggests LCD laptops in early pregnancy. Two-thirds of heavy users have focusing problems (Sheedy). Sweden retrofits 3,500 terminals. The Post's "1.8 percent" error. Frölén: the fetus is most sensitive early. "Not any different from walking out in the sun." Miscarriages in the USA Today newsroom.

§ 44. Watchdog ▾

A profile of Louis Slesin and Microwave News: gag-order settlements, the Guy rat study, radar technicians with cancer, and the industries' reasons for denial.

§ 45. Assessment ▾

Goodman and Henderson's gene-transcription and c-myc findings; sceptics on the 1989 National Academy panel; the FDA's electric-blanket article.
The asbestos analogy and the call for a crash research programme. The distribution wiring near homes gets ignored. Remedies: redesigned blankets, restrung or buried lines, dielectric unions in plumbing, low-emission and LCD screens, and 28 or 40 inches of screen distance.

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Practical Takeaways

What to actually do with this

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Check the wiring outside the home, not just visible pylonsOn the book's evidence, the concern is high-current distribution wiring: thick or three-phase primaries, and the first span of secondary wire leaving a pole transformer, within roughly 50–130 feet of the house. Measure indoor 60 Hz fields with a gaussmeter. The studies Brodeur relies on linked risk to chronic levels of only about 2–3 mG, and Savitz found a 40% increase above 2 mG.

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Ground currents through plumbing can raise indoor fieldsBrodeur mentions dielectric unions or non-conductive plumbing as possible fixes, but stresses that shock protection must not be lost. That is a job for a licensed electrician, not DIY.

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Put the effort into chronic, close-range sources, not brief onesFields from appliances fall off within inches, and brief use (hair dryers, mixers) matters little. What matters is anything you sleep or sit next to for hours: electric blankets and heated mattress pads, heated waterbeds, and electric clocks on the nightstand.

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Pregnancy, and couples trying to conceive:the book's strongest direct evidence concerns electrically heated beds (a seasonal miscarriage excess, reproduced with ceiling-cable heating) and heavy use of CRT terminals. The book recommends replacing electric blankets with low-field redesigns. For screens its guidance is:

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For screen work in general:Karl Smith's wartime radar-operator studies support three to four hours at a stretch at most, with breaks, for eye strain and fatigue.

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Read reassurances criticallyBrodeur's recurring warning signs:

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Keep the book's limits in mindIt is openly one-sided investigative journalism from 1989. The associations it reports are mostly around twofold relative risks from a handful of epidemiological studies, several cell and animal findings were not consistently replicated, and CRT monitors (with their deflection coils and flyback transformers) are obsolete. What carries over to modern devices is the reasoning about proximity, duration and pulsed or modulated signals. The measurements themselves do not transfer to LCD screens, phones or Bluetooth.

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Outside the book, for balance:NIOSH's VDT study, which Brodeur was still waiting for (Schnorr et al., 1991), found no increase in miscarriage. In 2002 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified ELF magnetic fields as "possibly carcinogenic" (Group 2B), mainly on the childhood-leukemia data this book describes.

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Currents of Death: Power Lines, Computer Terminals, and the Attempt to Cover Up Their Threat to Your Health

Overview

Key Ideas

Contents

Practical Takeaways

See Also