Wanted: Better studies on power line risks

When objectors to a plan by Public Service Electric & Gas (PSE&G) to build 4500 Kilovolt lines through New Jersey met with members of the newspaper’s editorial board last Thursday in Long Hill Township, it was a chance for them to discuss their own misgivings about the attitude of the power company as well as the plan itself.

That PSE&G at least needs to work on its people skills is clear. The company had originally planned to go to the communities through which the lines run and win over each of them. When that appeared to be too daunting a task after municipalities began to complain, PSE&G dropped the idea and applied directly to the state Board of Public Utilities (BPU) for approval. That’s a way to make enemies.

Another good point was the objectors’ claim importing coal from more southern and western states invites coal-based technologies that increase pollution and create more greenhouse gasses. That idea appears supportable from the evidence.

But other complaints are a bit harder to prove.

Claims that PSE&G is willing to fry residents with high levels of electric and magnetic fields (EMF) just so it can make a bigger buck supplying electricity to the region perhaps awaits some kind of proof.

So far that hasn’t happened. And, it can be argued, what’s wrong with making a profit? It’s the American way.

Nothing, the objectors might say, except your fringe benefit might be getting cancer in the process.

But would you?

The most maddening feature of the whole argument both for and against the power line plan is the uncertainty EMF causes cancer.

On the one hand it doesn’t even matter from a public relations standpoint without evidence either way.

If people claim a high rate of cancer among people underneath the lines, it may be anecdotal evidence but the cancer is real. It doesn’t matter what the power company says, the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is deadly.

So, why are there not better studies?

Search on line and one can find research going back decades, yet the results are maddeningly inconclusive. Study the documents and the same words always crop up: “Possible” or “mixed results;” there’s nothing conclusive.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends exposure of no more than 3 milli-Gauss (mG) of EMF.

PSE&G say it meets these standards and the new lines would as well, yet there has been testimony at the BPU of levels sometimes going as high as 10 times more than what PSE&G says its lines are emitting.

But what does that even mean? The WHO doesn’t even know.

In its “International EMF project” the WHO notes,  “No major public health risks have emerged from several decades of EMF research, but uncertainties remain.”

Is a more nebulous statement even imaginable?

Why can’t conclusive studies be undertaken? The WHO points out the problems.

From its website: “There is no clear understanding if and how EMF, at the low levels emitted by common appliances, might cause damage to cells. If a common EMF exposure were found to cause a disease, it would likely be a rare one. Demonstrating such a relationship would require complex population studies.

“Complex population studies” mean time and, most of all, money. The government would likely have to chip in, but so would the power companies, and why would they work on something against their best interests.

Well, how about doing it for the common good? And a good study might even show EMF as harmless. One wonders if the power companies think that possibility likely.

But with new technologies allowing power lines of more than twice the normal power, isn’t it time precaution kept pace with innovation?

Electric companies aren’t marketing cigarettes; they’re producing a necessity.

Isn’t it time they start doing it knowing its safe?