Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jan 8;57(1):59-69.
doi: 10.2478/raon-2023-0002. eCollection 2023 Mar 1.

Estimating exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields near high-voltage power lines and assessment of possible increased cancer risk among Slovenian children and adolescents

Tina Zagar  1 , Blaz Valic  2   3 , Tadej Kotnik  3 , Sara Korat  1 , Sonja Tomsic  1 , Vesna Zadnik  1 , Peter Gajsek  2   3
Affiliations

Estimating exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields near high-voltage power lines and assessment of possible increased cancer risk among Slovenian children and adolescents

Tina Zagar et al. Radiol Oncol. .

Abstract

Background: Some previous research showed that average daily exposure to extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields (MF) of more than 0.3 or 0.4 μT could potentially increase risk of childhood leukaemia.

Materials and methods: To allow calculations of ELF MF around high voltage (HV) power lines (PL) for the whole Slovenia, a new three-dimensional method including precision terrain elevation data was developed to calculate the long-term average ELF MF. Data on population of Slovenian children and adolescents and on cancer patients with leukaemia's aged 0-19 years, brain tumours at age 0-29, and cancer in general at age 0-14 for a 12-year period 2005-2016 was obtained from the Slovenian Cancer Registry.

Results: According to the large-scale calculation for the whole country, only 0.5% of children and adolescents under the age of 19 in Slovenia lived in an area near HV PL with ELF MF density greater than 0.1 μT. The risk of cancer for children and adolescents living in areas with higher ELF MF was not significantly different from the risk of their peers.

Conclusions: The new method enables relatively fast calculation of the value of low-frequency magnetic fields for arbitrary loads of the power distribution network, as the value of each source for arbitrary load is calculated by scaling the value for nominal load, which also enables significantly faster adjustment of calculated estimates in the power distribution network.

Keywords: cancer; childhood cancer; exposure assessment; extremely low frequency magnetic fields; high voltage power lines; modelling.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Points in 1m grid for two spans of a power line are shown with blue and black dots in which the program determined the values of the extremely low-frequency (ELF) magnetic fields (MF). Red circles represent the final 10 mgrid for which the final results were generated.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Comparison of results obtained by all four algorithms to determine total value of extremely low-frequency (ELF) magnetic fields (MF) for a case of crossing of two 2×110 kV power lines of type barrel under the nominal load of 650 A. The color scale shows the deviation of the estimated value of ELF MF values determined by all four new algorithms from the actual value of ELF MF determined by the usual numerical modeling procedure. The black contours represent the limits of 0.1, 0.4 and 1.0 μT for the actual values, and the red contours for the estimated values.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The daily, monthly, yearly and total (1. 1. 2006 – 31. 12. 2017) mean values of the load of a 400 kV power line with the highest mean values in Slovenia.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Example of the total value of the extremely low-frequency (ELF) magnetic fields (MF) of several high voltage power lines around distribution transformer stations for nominal load in the area of the capital city of Ljubljana (approximately 5 x 2.7 km).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Greenland S, Sheppard AR, Kaune WT, Poole C, Kelsh MA. A pooled analysis of magnetic fields, wire codes, and childhood leukemia. Childhood Leukemia-EMF Study Group. Epidemiology. 2000;11:624–34. doi: 10.1097/00001648-200011000-00003. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ahlbom A, Day N, Feychting M, Roman E, Skinner J, Dockerty J. A pooled analysis of magnetic fields and childhood leukaemia. Br J Cancer. 2000;83:692–8. doi: 10.1054/bjoc.2000.1376. et al. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kheifets L, Ahlbom A, Crespi CM, Draper G, Hagihara J, Lowenthal RM. Pooled analysis of recent studies on magnetic fields and childhood leukaemia. Br J Cancer. 2010;103:1128–35. doi: 10.1038/sj.bjc.6605838. et al. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Amoon AT, Swanson J, Magnani C, Johansen C, Kheifets L. Pooled analysis of recent studies of magnetic fields and childhood leukemia. Environ Res. 2022;204(Pt A):111993. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.111993. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bunch KJ, Keegan TJ, Swanson J, Vincent TJ, Murphy MF. Residential distance at birth from overhead high-voltage powerlines: childhood cancer risk in Britain 1962-2008. Br J Cancer. 2014;110:1402–8. doi: 10.1038/bjc.2014.15. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types