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Environnement, Risques & Santé

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50/60 Hz electromagnetic fields. What we know now Volume 5, issue 1, Janvier-Février 2006

Author
Service des études médicales, EDF-Gaz de France, 22–28, rue Joubert 75009 Paris, France

In 1979, epidemiologic findings raised questions about the possible health risks of electric and magnetic fields (EMF) at industrial current frequencies (50 or 60 Hz). The response to those questions was an exemplary effort of biological and epidemiologic research. This review of literature, without aiming at bibliographic exhaustiveness, is intended to provide elements of response, based on the data underlying the current scientific consensus. The only mechanism by which these fields can act on living things is by inducing current within the body. Exposure to EMF does not promote tumor development or reproductive abnormalities in animals. Epidemiologic research initially suggested the possibility of such effects but has since reduced their possible range. In adults, neither residential nor occupational exposure appears to increase the risk of tumors or of cardiac, neuropsychiatric, or reproductive disorders. The hypothesis of a risk of leukemia or other cancers in children has been withdrawn for the vast majority of common residential exposures. The only remaining question is that of leukemia at the highest exposure levels.