#562: Milham comments on the Gosford Hospital substation
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Comments from Epidemiologist Sam Milham about why you should not build over a substation:
The Koll Center cluster was in the Grub and Ellis commercial real estate building and involved workers who worked on the first floor of a high rise over 3, 12kV transformers. Here are links to the papers on pubmed: I also had a case of three professors who sequentially occupied an office over a transformer getting leukemia or brain cancer.
Sam Milham
I: Am J Ind Med. 1996 Dec;30(6):702-4. Links
Increased incidence of cancer in a cohort of office workers exposed to strong magnetic fields.
a.. Milham S Jr.
A small cohort of 410 office workers (263 men and 147 women, ever employed) exposed to strong magnetic fields by three 12 kV transformers located beneath their first-floor office developed eight incident cancers over a 15 year exposure period. Only one cancer was ascertained in the 254 workers employed for less than 2 years, compared to seven cancer cases ascertained in the 156 workers employed for 2 years or more (p = 0.0057; Fisher’s exact test). An analysis of linear trend of cancer incidence using average years employed as an exposure score was positive (p = 0.00337) with an odds ratio of 15.1 in workers employed over 5 years. A positive trend of cancer cases with duration of employment is seen for males and females separately and together (p < 0.05). For workers employed more than 2 years, the standardized cancer incidence ratio was 389 (95% confidence interval 156-801). Cumulative magnetic field exposure may be of etiologic importance in explaining the cancer incidence pattern in this cohort. PMID: 8914716 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]1: Am J Ind Med. 2004 Jul;46(1):86-7. Links A cluster of male breast cancer in office workers. Milham S. Three cases of male breast cancer were diagnosed among a small group of men who worked in a basement office of a multi-story office building. This office was adjacent to an electrical switchgear room which generated high magnetic fields in their work space. The risk of male breast cancer in this group was increased about 100-fold (observe three cases, expect 0.03 cases; P < 0.00001). Since 1991, 15 epidemiologic studies have associated male breast cancer with exposure to electromagnetic field. Copyright 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. PMID: 15202128 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE
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