Louis Slesin on the current industry spin over powerline safety
Excerpt from Microwave News:
No Cancer Risk from Power Lines,
Says the New York Times
Big Score for Industry Scientists
December 1, 2014
Last updated
December 12, 2014
Still worried about power lines and cancer? That”s so retro, says the New York Times. You”re just stuck in the 1980″s.
This is what the “newspaper of record” wants you to know about the risk of childhood leukemia from power lines: A “fairly broad consensus among researchers holds that no significant threat to public health has materialized.”
The full message is told in a new 7+ minute video, produced by the Times” RetroReport, which boasts a staff of 13 journalists and 10 contributors, led by Kyra Darnton. The video even credits a fact checker. What”s missing is the common sense to do some digging when reporting on a controversial issue.
If Darnton’s crew had done its homework, they would have realized that their view is based on two industry-friendly researchers, David Savitz and John Moulder. Savitz, now VP for research at Brown University, has come a long way since he first reported that power lines are linked to childhood leukemia back in 1986. Power line EMFs have been very, very good for Savitz”s career. He parlayed that study into a multimillion contract from the electric power industry to study cancer risks among electric utility workers. He found a link to brain tumors. A couple of years later, he paid the industry back by renouncing his own work and that of many others. Now he”s done it again with his original power line study in the new Times video.
As for Moulder, everybody in the EMF community knows that he has pocketed bundles of money testifying for companies denying that power lines or cell phones present any risk. We long ago detailed Moulder”s work for industry.
Those who make the effort to read the scientific literature can see that a number of different groups have pooled the results of the many epidemiological studies on EMFs and childhood cancer and each has reaffirmed the link “”as both Savitz and Moulder are well aware.
SNIP
Read the full article with links, here
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