Government-bashing has become a national hobby in this inflamed election year, and accusations of cover-ups are the rage.
But Michael Murphy just wants the public to understand the Environmental Protection Agency is doing something to determine whether there`s a risk factor associated with electromagnetic field emissions created by common electrical current.
”We`re kind of on the horns of a dilemma now,” said Murphy, health physicist at the EPA`s Chicago branch. ”We can`t say, `Yes, there is a problem.` `No, there isn`t.` We don`t even have any documents out under our name.”
With power lines crisscrossing towns and rural areas across the country, operated by monolithic utilities, it`s natural for citizens to look to the federal government for protection of their health and well-being.
A number of studies have been released by research arms of universities and by individual academicians that connect EMF emissions with certain diseases.
”The EPA stance right now is that there`s no proven health effects,”
Murphy said. ”The studies are too inconclusive to say there`s a health effect. A biological effect is something that occurs that could be caused by thousands of things. There are too many conflicting reports to be sure if there`s any health effect or not.”
In 1989 the ”CBS Evening News” disclosed that the draft of an EPA report showed a possible link between cancer and EMFs caused by 60-hertz currents. The EPA later stated that those findings were inconclusive.
”That was a study that was released for peer review, not as a document,” said Murphy. ”Someone released it to the public. That report was remanded for an entire rewrite.”
The EPA now stands in the second year of a comprehensive five-year study of the issue.
”The most recent results they`ve gotten they`re not releasing until the first of the year, but they tend to indicate that EMFs are not cancer-causing agents,” Murphy said.
”It indicates they may be weak co-promoters of cancer, which means if you are exposed to a cancer-causing agent or have a medical history, the cancers will progress more rapidly. But that hasn`t even been confirmed yet.”
