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August 15, 1997 - A. Mason My wife has a relation who has leukemia. He is 21 years old, has had it since he was 20, and found out today that he was in the final stages. He has been working in an aluminum plant where they melt down aluminum ingots. The furnaces are Electric. Could this enviroment have caused his leukemia? He also dips snuff.
February 11, 1997 - Tim There is believed to be a link between leukemia and Still's Disease (Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis). In 1985, we lived in a house in Cheshire, England, with living areas upstairs, bedrooms downstairs - and an electricity substation close to the house, linked to a high-voltage cable immediately adjacent to the house, and right next to the side of my daughter Louise's bedroom. She slept and studied with her head adjacent to the wall against which the cable was buried at shallow depth. At the age of 9 years, she suddenly developed the classic symptoms of Still's Disease (JRA). She has made a good but incomplete recovery, which has affected the whole of her subsequent life. The local Electricity Authorities have strenuously denied any link, but we find the coincidence of the findings and the exact circumstances of Louise's illness too great for comfort. Has anyone explored a link between Still's Disease/Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis and high-voltage power cables plus sub-stations? [Editor's Reply: The possible association between EMF exposure and childhood leukemia has been indicated by a number of epidemiologic studies which I think you probably know about since you have investigated the topic. The connection to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) is not known to me. We have been keeping a database of EMF literature which currently numbers over 20,000 articles. A quick search of the EMF Database indicates many papers on the use of pulsed magnetic fields and decimeter-band waves to treat JRA but none that relate exposure to an etiologic factor in the condition. In a more general sense, there are many studies which suggest that EMF can have an action on various components of the immune system, in some cases activating reactions and in other cases suppressing an immune system response. The high voltage cable issue raises another point: most larger scale studies have examined an association between presumed magnetic field exposure and childhood leukemia but recently there has been renewed interest in electric fields as a risk factor (especially in the UK). Roger Coghill has suggested the importance of electric field exposure in a number of childhood diseases, asthenia, headache, depressive illness, and other non-cancer conditions. He has a recent paper you might want to look at: European Journal of Cancer Prevention 5(3):153-158, 1996.]