A physically based model for residential magnetic fields from electric transmission and distribution wiring was developed to reanalyze the Los Angeles study of childhood leukemia by London et al. For this exposure model, magnetic field measurements were fitted to a function of wire configuration att
Residential magnetic fields predicted from wiring configurations: II. Relationships to childhood leukemia
✍ Scribed by Duncan C. Thomas; Joseph D. Bowman; Liangzhong Jiang; Feng Jiang; John M. Peters
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 103 KB
- Volume
- 20
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0197-8462
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Case-control data on childhood leukemia in Los Angeles County were reanalyzed with residential magnetic fields predicted from the wiring configurations of nearby transmission and distribution lines. As described in a companion paper, the 24-h means of the magnetic field's magnitude in subjects' homes were predicted by a physically based regression model that had been fitted to 24-h measurements and wiring data. In addition, magnetic field exposures were adjusted for the most likely form of exposure assessment errors: classic errors for the 24-h measurements and Berkson errors for the predictions from wire configurations. Although the measured fields had no association with childhood leukemia (P for trend .88), the risks were significant for predicted magnetic fields above 1.25 mG (odds ratio 2.00, 95% confidence interval 1.03±3.89), and a significant doseresponse was seen (P for trend .02). When exposures were determined by a combination of predictions and measurements that corrects for errors, the odds ratio (odd ratio 2.19, 95% confidence interval 1.12±4.31) and the trend (p X007) showed somewhat greater significance. These findings support the hypothesis that magnetic fields from electrical lines are causally related to childhood leukemia but that this association has been inconsistent among epidemiologic studies due to different types of exposure assessment error. In these data, the leukemia risks from a child's residential magnetic field exposure appears to be better assessed by wire configurations than by 24h area measurements. However, the predicted fields only partially account for the effect of the Wertheimer-Leeper wire code in a multivariate analysis and do not completely explain why these wire codes have been so often associated with childhood leukemia. The most plausible explanation for our findings is that the causal factor is another magnetic field exposure metric correlated to both wire code and the field's time-averaged magnitude.
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