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Table of Contents...

Public Health and the Precautionary Principle: The Case of Peak Oil
  Peak oil occurs at that moment in time when half of the world's
  oil has been pumped. (And you can only discover that moment a few
  years after it occurs, looking backward.) After the peak oil moment,
  oil prices will increase steadily. What will the world look like when
  oil costs $250 per barrel? Very different from today. It we do not
  take precautionary action to protect public health during these deep
  changes in our way of life, enormous harm to health, democracy and
  justice will ensue. Now more than ever we need the public health
  perspective -- the precautionary perspective.
Earthday Precaution Seminar at Morehouse Medical School in Atlanta
  The precautionary principle continues to advance in Georgia partly
  because ECO-Action in Atlanta keeps stirring the pot in strategic
  ways, and partly because many environmental justice activists see
  precaution as an essential part of the fight to overcome environmental
  racism and its effects. See our earlier story on ECO-Action.
Come to the 1st National Conference On Precaution June 9-11
  On to Baltimore! Big, important conference scheduled for June 9-11.
  A decade of struggle by environmental justice and toxics activists
  thrust the precautionary principle into the spotlight. Now the U.S.
  Chamber of Commerce formally opposes it. The Bush Administration hates
  it. The American Chemistry Council denounces it. Yet it's spreading
  like the wind, spilling over into land-use, sprawl, housing, and
  control of local economies for the benefit of local people. Who knows
  where this could end? On to Baltimore!
High-voltage Power Lines and Cancer in Children
  The British Health Protection Agency recommends a precautionary
  approach to high-voltage power lines. It's very simple: We suspect
  harm but the science is uncertain, so keep children away.

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From: Energy Bulletin, May 2, 2006
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PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE: THE CASE OF PEAK OIL

By Dan Bednarz, Ph.D.

Good morning; it's a pleasure to be among public health colleagues. I
wish to briefly discuss and integrate:

1. The Precautionary Principle (PP) in public health

2. Peak oil as a multi-faceted public health threat

3. Why public health has not paid appropriate attention to peak oil.

What Is The Precautionary Principle (PP)?

If we tell an audience, "Public health's core concepts are assessment,
policy development and assurance," we will get puzzled looks. But if
we say, "Public health is about protecting the community from injury,
sickness and death," heads will nod in agreement. From its formal
inception 100 years ago public health has functioned in the spirit of
the PP, which the 1998 Wingspread Statement formalized this way: "When
an activity raises threat of harm to human health or the environment,
precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect
relationships are not fully established scientifically."

There are other definitions of this principle, whose nuances as they
apply to public health have been reviewed by Goldstein (2001), and
Goldstein and Carruth (2003) and others (Tickner, 1997; Kurland, 2002;
WHO, 2004).

In our risk conscious society suspected threats to health regularly
undergo scrutiny: cell phones, saccharine, diets, exercise,
genetically modified foods, the latest suspected carcinogen, to name a
few. The PP codifies our collective apprehensions about health and
safety -- this is especially so regarding children and other
vulnerable, innocent cohorts.

However, there is a cultural and psychological significance of the PP.
To illustrate this, note that the Bush administration officially
opposes the PP in many regulatory areas, especially in
environmentalism and sometimes in public health issues. This stance is
personified through the career of John Graham, formerly of Harvard's
school of public health and now Administrator of the Office of
Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and
Budget.

Graham (2003) argues that the PP encourages indifference to the cost-
benefits ratio of intervention versus non-intervention; as a result,
he claims, we often go on obsessive, wasteful wild goose chases. But
if we consider the rhetoric of the Bush administration's foreign
policy, we see that precaution and prevention are the premises of all
its explanations for the invasion of Iraq -- without cost-benefit
analysis or anything more than an untested ordinal level of data
conjecture that we're safer now than if the invasion had not occurred.

This shows, I surmise, that the public intuitively endorses an
expansive interpretation of the PP; however, given our differing
political, economic, ethical, moral and group allegiances, our actual
disagreements are about when and how to invoke it.

In this vein, Judith Kurland has pointed out that in the health and
environment arenas, the PP is better received and more consistently
implemented in Europe, where it was formalized into environmental
policy in the 1970s, than it is in the U.S. In our country the
manufacturers of tobacco, lead paint, petroleum, pharmaceuticals,
asbestos, among others, have at times sought to withhold, stall, or
doctor vital epidemiological and biostatistical information while
simultaneously arguing that "all the data are not in" (Kurland, 2002:
499).

Kurland rightly contends that action in the face of "informed"
uncertainty is the cornerstone of the PP -- and I add of good-faith --
(as opposed to faith-based) public health. We are touching upon the
fault line of a narrow versus a broad conception of the public health
mission -- just think of our current debate in this country about
climate change, also known as global warming. Is it a public health
issue?

With this conception of the PP as a strategic tool/resource of
stakeholders in the policy-making process -- because that is, I
contend, its real function -- it is enlightening to ask why public
health has been slow to respond to the emerging worldwide petroleum
crisis colloquially known as "Peak Oil." Is this indifference
justified? After all, we cannot attend to every potential risk. Or is
it symptomatic of a failure of public health to engage in "assessment,
policy development and assurance" -- that is, a failure to act in
accordance with the PP.

Peak Oil as a Public Health Threat

Some background on how I identified peak oil as a public health threat
is helpful. I will summarize a great deal of information, so if you
desire further details on anything I say I will be happy afterwards to
offer you sources.

At first I was skeptical of the dire and gloomy warnings of "Life as
we know it" coming to an end. I had concluded during the oil crises of
the seventies, when I was a college student, that when push came to
shove technology would save us. In 2004 I realized that this sanguine
outlook on energy was naive. At that point I had an "of course!"
experience: It's about systems theory; stress/disturb the political-
economic system with an exogenous change (peak oil) and it will
reverberate through the sub-system of public health. For example,
there is a good deal of discussion in the peak oil literature on the
possibility of food rationing and food riots, but what about
healthcare riots? This is merely one example of the repercussions for
public health.

Finding only a few documents dating back to the seventies energy
crises in the public health literature, I branched out for
perspective: economics, environmentalism, earth sciences, geology, and
so on. I was intrigued by the writings of economist Nicholas
Goregescu-Roegen (1971; 1975). During the 1970s he wrote how
traditional economics literally defies the laws of thermodynamics and
the concept of entropy. His exegesis on this simplistic thinking,
exhibited even among Nobel Laureates, exposes the power of the taken-
for-granted assumption of perpetual growth. He likewise critiques the
belief that a Steady-State economy is a solution to growth based-
economics. His thesis is uncomplicated: if you come to terms with
thermodynamics -- and therefore energy and entropy -- you realize its
formidable long-term constraints upon economic activity.

Also, I was impressed by Reg Morrison's (1999) encyclopedic book
Spirit in the Gene, one of whose themes, the unavoidable ecological
costs of extracting resources from the planet, parallels Goergescu-
Roegen's analysis and is indispensable to grasping the enormity of our
energy-intensive and dependent lifestyle.

I should add a definition of peak oil, which in shorthand form means
the point at which half of all the recoverable conventional oil in the
world has been pumped from the ground. This is momentous because of
the universal role petroleum plays in society. Given our time
limitations, I will not stray into examples; suffice it to say that we
are ensconced in what some have labeled the petroleum era.

As alluded to earlier, "catastrophists" argue that peak oil signals
the end of technologically complex society -- a return to muscle-
powered times awaits us, they claim. I understand fully why a first
time or casual reader could dismiss their arguments as the latest
Cassandra narrative -- although we should remember that Cassandra's
"curse" was to tell the unvarnished truth all the time. Indeed, there
is an element of identification or rejection one feels compelled to
make when reading this (sometimes) fervent literature. All I can say
here is that as scientists we have to keep these deep-seated feelings
in mind and separate, as best we can, fact from value, wish and
fantasy.

The three benchmarks I pay attention to are empirical: the price of
crude, daily worldwide production, and the supply-demand ratio. Prices
approximately are at an all time high and expected to rise, and demand
is beginning to surpass supply. At this time, those who claim we are
at or near peak oil are, in my estimation, supported by data trends.
The flatness of daily extraction -- it's hovering around 85 million
barrels per day -- for the past two years may indicate we are at peak
oil; we will not know until production falls and cannot recover. I
suggest that this plateau in production alone is a classic case for
invoking the PP: we do not have all the data, but the consequences of
waiting to have full information are potentially damaging or
irreversible.

Therefore, dismissing peak oil as humbuggery is unjustified because
running out of oil is not a fantasy for revenge or the science fiction
of unhappy recluses or cargo cultists; it is a geological fact.

At this point some of you may be thinking, "What about substitutes?
Sugar cane, tar sands, shale oil, solar wind, chicken fat, palm oil,
hydrogen, and so on. If these can offset the decline in oil, won't
public health be utterly unaffected by peak oil?"

Well, I'm glad you asked since this brings us directly to the mission
of public health and how to deal with uncertainty and risk. Let me
categorically assert, and I will be happy to provide evidence, that we
do not have scalable, fully appropriate alternatives and substitutes
available at present to face what a decline in world oil production
will wreak. In addition, even if we are not geologically at peak, we
would need, according to The Hirsch Report which is described below,
20 years lead time to make a soft landing. Therefore, I believe we
should create risk management scenarios for a variety of disruptive to
worst case outcomes.

Note I'm advocating risk assessment; this is an analytic process, not
a call for immediate system change. Our default "do-nothing" position
is to hope all goes well -- and right now our old friend "Mr. Free
Market" is pretty confused about oil. For public health to stand pat
is irrational, even as it is the natural response from the point of
view of what we know about the social-psychology of risk -- I will
return to this in my summary.

Consider that "The Hirsch Report" to the Department of Energy,
released in February of 2005 to virtually no media attention,(2005:
64) states: "The world has never faced a problem like this. Previous
energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and
evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary" [emphasis
added] -- I hope that this brief review has made the minimal point
that public health should, in accordance with the PP, react to peak
oil through the framework of risk assessment. Now we may ask why
public health is not paying due attention to peak oil. Let me offer
some admittedly preliminary classes of explanation.

The Unprecedented Nature of the Problem

Peak oil is not a virus, carcinogen, or a pool of fetid standing
water. It is a unique problem of exogenous change: a geologically
imposed end to the fossil fuel era, whose first manifestation is the
peaking of petroleum extraction, to be followed later by natural gas
and then coal.

Ideally our government and the market should solve the energy problem.
Thirty years ago Jimmy Carter took steps toward a national energy
policy that was subsequently ridiculed by Ronald Reagan, as was
symbolized by the first act of his administration: dismantling the
solar panels Carter has installed on the White House roof. In
addition, there is no guarantee that government can alone solve this
problem without substantial guidance from the public and interested
institutions -- like public health.

Turning specifically to public health, most textbooks acknowledge the
importance of energy but only in the contexts of its environmental
pollution challenges and its necessity to spur economic development
and growth. There is scant literature on its scarcity or depletion;
overall, it is taken for granted that fossil fuel energy will always
be available and cheap. Historically, this is a pardonable but
nonetheless an immense oversight or misconception that now must be
rectified; and let me emphasize that many students are reading in
their public health textbooks that we have a 50 year supply of
petroleum remaining, and 300 years of coal.

Our discipline must revise its understanding of energy in its generic
sense and petroleum in its uniqueness as more than a source of energy.
For example, petroleum is integral to the cultivation, processing and
distribution of food; and it is an ingredient of a vast array of
products, from toothbrushes to pharmaceuticals to computer cases. Also
it is associated with population growth and lifestyle comforts. I only
mention transportation.

Problem Identification

How would public health recognize the problem of peak oil? This is not
a frivolous question; a theme of inquiry in the area of social studies
of science is, "Where do research questions come from?" Do they come
from theory and the internal dynamics of the field? Or from external
political, social and economic forces? We can stipulate that ideally
it's an interaction of both because public health is an applied,
problem-driven field. Still, I suggest that most public health
problems reflect de facto government and foundation agendas -- that's
where the positive incentives are.

Finally, public health suffers from the "Silo effect," or to be
charitable, the "Invisible College" phenomenon, where one's research
colleagues are few and spread across the globe. This is to say the
discipline lacks overarching communication and integration and has, as
do most scientific disciplines, small semi-insular groups working on
esoteric problems. This is a widespread yet often benign pattern in
some scientific disciplines, but it is vexing in public health.

The Media

Reviewing sociologist Herbert J. Gans's book, Deciding What's News,
Frank Mankiewicz, characterized television and newspaper reporters:
"[O]ur colleagues who set much of the nation's agenda have solid,
bourgeois, mildly reformist views, respect authority, want to be liked
and probably see the unfamiliar as vaguely threatening. The result is
that tomorrow's news is going to look very much like today's, even if
the world does not."

This orientation is not conducive to reporting that we face an energy
predicament that may precipitate an economic and social crisis, let
alone lead to extrapolating as to how this could affect public health.
To indicate how little "mainstream" attention has been paid to the
topic, on March 1st of this year, Robert Semple, Jr., wrote in the New
York Times: "The Age of Oil could be ending without our really being
aware of it." Semple never uses the term "peak oil" in his article; it
is still a virtually taboo concept in mainstream media, and he takes
the most optimistic position that peak is thirty years away.

Reviewing the literature on risk identification, Fischoff (1989)
informs us that we tend to hold on to pre-existing beliefs in the face
of conflicting evidence and are unlikely to change our minds
exclusively on the basis of logic and appeals to evidence -- they rely
heavily on their social context for definition. Furthermore, people
typically disagree more about whether a risk exists than what to do
about an acknowledged risk -- in other words, the question of when to
invoke the PP is paramount.

There is hope as little-by-little the energy crisis enters the
mainstream news discussion. A week ago Jane Bryant Quinn wrote soberly
in Newsweek of her alarm over the oil situation, but she did not use
the term "peak oil". Three weeks ago, Der Spiegel, Germany's leading
news magazine, published and article titled, "Wie lange noch?" ("How
much time is left?"), that dealt with the concept of Peak Oil by name.
This has yet to happen in a major American media source, but, as the
Germans say, "Wir wollen mal sehen" -- We'll see.

The Government

In the first three chapters of Kevin Phillips' new book, American
Theocracy, he indicts the federal government for failing to
forthrightly inform the public about our energy situation. Philips
writes, "The political establishment's reluctance to acquaint the
American electorate with this dilemma involves three particularly
glaring problems: (1) unwillingness to speak of the present oil crisis
in the full context of geological, economic, and military history; (2)
failure to understand the past vulnerability of great but
idiosyncratic national energy cultures [like England relying on coal]
losing their familiar footing; and (3) refusal to discuss the evidence
of oil-field depletions and insufficient new discoveries that shows
petroleum production moving toward an inflammatory worldwide
shortage."

I believe he is right to draw these conclusions. But governments,
especially large ones, are not unitary rational actors. As some of you
here know, I attend the Defense Department's monthly "Conversation
about Energy" series in Washington.

Let me interject an example you'll appreciate on the ambivalent nature
of government. While the Defense Department is planning for peak oil,
the DoE in essence "buried" the Hirsch Report. It was not available on
its website until October of last year -- in response to citizen
complaints about its unavailability. Hirsch spoke at this past
Monday's Conversation meeting, smiled and said "No comment" when asked
if he felt the DoE had hidden his report.

In a conversation I had with a colleague last month, he advises the
Federal government on environmental risk analysis and science policy,
he told me I was overreacting to think energy was a major threat to
our healthcare system. "It's third or forth in importance, Dan, not
first." I was dumbfounded and asked, "What about the Hirsch Report?"
and he replied, "I've never heard of it." I like and respect this man,
so I bit my tongue and did not retort, "Okay, now I know where you're
not coming from."

Daniel Yergin, energy consultant and peak oil denier, had the same
"never heard of it" response during an interview last fall. These
gentlemen are not my uncle Joe; and I'm sure we all have "expertise"
stories we could share.

Also, a few weeks ago The Corps of Engineers released a study on peak
oil. It reported, "The doubling of oil prices in the past couple of
years is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Peak oil is at
hand." It also predicted the possibility of resource wars and
recommended that the Army think strategically about energy.

And for those who appreciate irony, in 1995 the Congressional Research
Service released a report titled, "World Oil Production after Year
2000: Business As Usual or Crises?" Further, at this past Monday's
"Conversation on Energy" both Hirsch and Congressman Roscoe Bartlett,
R-MD, agreed that if the president would openly discuss peak oil the
financial markets would fall prey to panic and instability.

Finally and most important, the Department of Health and Human
Services and the Centers for Disease Control are institutionally
oblivious to peak oil's implications for the nation's health.

I'm neither an alarmist nor moral entrepreneur by inclination, but let
me observe that this is utterly astonishing.

Summary

The PP is a strategic resource in policy debates because it allows
advocates and stakeholders to -- properly I believe -- take a broad
view of public health's mission and to act on informed suspicion of
deleterious threats to health and the environment.

The PP is not an alarm system or an oracle. We need to understand the
filters, bureaucratic and more generally economic, political and
cultural, that both lead us to and away from the identification of
health hazards. Why study this and not this? is not a navel-gazing
question.

Given that resources always are scarce, we cannot avoid what Harold
Lasswell termed the heart of policy analysis: "Who gets what, when and
why?" This question will become immensely important if peak oil turns
out to be the fracturing beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.
If it is, public health has an opportunity to help lead our society
through several decades of difficult to catastrophic socio-economic
times. By this I suggest that public health will no longer be able to
avoid debating the limits to growth issue, for this may be the
ultimate meaning of peak oil.

Finally, and here I am speculating with a tinge of grandiosity, if
peak oil ushers in an era of resource scarcity and economic
instability -- perhaps in a way similar to what Steven Jay Gould has
called "punctuated equilibrium" -- public health will have an
opportunity to turn its training and educational expertise to the task
of -- for want of a better way of putting it -- "providing a truthful
narrative that explains the great transformation underway."

I will stop here for questions.

Thank you for your attention.

References

Fischoff, Baruch. 1989. "Risk: A Guide to Controversy." In Improving
Risk Communication. The National Research Council, ed., pgs. 211-253.
Washington: National Academy Press.

Fournier, Donald F. and Eileen T. Westervelt. 2005. Energy Trends and
Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations. U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Washington, DC. September.

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1971. The Entropy Law and the Economic
Problem. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. 1975. "Energy and Economic Myths."
Southern Economic Journal, 41.

Goldstein, Bernard D. 1999. "The Precautionary Principle and
Scientific Research Are Not Antithetical." Environmental Health
Perspectives, Volume 107, Number 12, December.

Goldstein, Bernard D. 2001. "The Precautionary Principle Also Applies
to Public Health Actions." American Journal of Public Health September
2001, Vol. 91, No. 9: 1358-1361.

Goldstein, Bernard D., and Russellyn Carruth. 2001. "Implications of
the Precautionary Principle for Environmental Regulation in the United
States." Law & Contemporary Problems, Vol. 66.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The Structure of Evolutionary Theory.
Cambridge, Ma: Belknap Press.

Graham, John D. 2004. "The Perils of the Precautionary Principle:
Lessons from the American and European Experience." Washington, D.C.:
Heritage Foundation Lecture #818, January 15.

Kurland, Judith 2002. The Heart of the Precautionary Principle in
Democracy. Public Health Reports, Vol. 117 Nov/Dec, pgs. 498-500.

Mankiewicz, Frank. 1979. "The Knowns and Unknowns: Review of Herbert
Gans's Deciding What's News." New York Times Book Review, June 24, pg.
7.

Joseph P. Riva, Jr. titled, "World Oil Production after Year 2000:
Business As Usual or Crises?" Washington, DC: Congressional Research
Service.

Quinn, Jane Bryant. 2006. "The Price of Our Addiction." Newsweek April
24.

Tickner, Joel. 1997. "Precautionary Principle." The Networker: The
Newsletter of the Science and Environmental Health Net. May, Vol. 2,
#4

World Health Organization. 2004. "The Precautionary Principle: Public
Health, Protection of Children and Sustainability -- Fourth
Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health. Budapest, Hungary,
June 23-25.

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From: ECO-Action, Apr. 21, 2006
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EARTHDAY PRECAUTION SEMINAR AT MOREHOUSE MEDICAL SCHOOL IN ATLANTA

On April 20th, ECO-Action brought the word on the precautionary
principle to the Morehouse College School of Medicine (MSM) in
Atlanta.

The seminar was part of ECO-Action's ongoing work to increase support
in the medical community for the precautionary principle and to inform
health professionals about ways they can support communities to
prevent harm from exposure to toxic hazards and protect public health.

ECO-Action staff member Yomi Noibi and others made presentations to
the school's Department of Community Health and Preventive Medicine,
highlighting the connections between protecting public health and
promoting precaution.

In his presentation, Yomi emphasized why it is important to apply the
precautionary principle to prevent harm to human health and the
environment.

The Reverend Richard Bright of the MSM Prevention Research Center
illustrated some unacceptable consequences from current "acceptable"
practices with diethylstilbestrol, pesticides, and sewage and storm
water storage.

Dr. Daniel Blumenthal, Chairman of the MSM Department of Community
Health and Preventive Medicine, focused on the use of the
precautionary principle in medical practice and pharmaceutical drug
approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Three panelists then discussed the presentations. Dr. Martha Elks led
off with a powerful presentation that questioned whether our current
laws are "consistent with our knowledge and values?" She concluded by
saying that harm avoidance laws such as the precautionary principle
are consistent with U.S. laws and traditions.

Dr. Jewel L. Crawford challenged participants to maintain their health
through exercise and diet.

Mr. Sherrill Marcus, an African-American grassroots organizer,
emphasized that the precautionary principle is a much needed tool that
is essential for getting justice for people of color.

Participants left with a greater understanding of the precautionary
principle and agreed to spread the word on precaution.

We can expect more news about a possible Southeast Regional Conference
on Precaution at the MSM in 2007.

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From: www.besafenet.com, May 1, 2006
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COME TO THE 1ST NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PRECAUTION JUNE 9-11

Taking Precautionary Action: Roadmap for Success

June 9th -- 11th, 2006, University of Maryland School of Nursing,
Baltimore, MD

Join with hundreds of activist groups to share successful
precautionary strategies, tools, and programs. The conference will
bring together people working on toxics and nuclear pollution, disease
prevention, pesticides, worker safety, and many other issues.

Learn about over 50 model local, state, and nationwide precautionary
policies. Add practical new tools to your arsenal on messaging,
alternative assessments, full-cost accounting and more.

Participate in trainings on community organizing, fundraising,
advocacy, media outreach, and more. Help build the movement for
precautionary action to prevent harm from environmental hazards by
registering today!

Go to www.besafenet.com/ppconf.html

Space is limited, so please register soon. Reserve hotel at discount
rate by Friday, May 12th. Register by Friday, May 26th.

The 3 day Conference includes over 35 workshops. It starts Friday
10:00 AM and ends Sunday 4:00 PM.

For more information, contact ppconference@chej.org or 703-237-2249
ext. 11.

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From: Daily Telegraph (London, UK), Apr. 29, 2006
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QUESTIONS REMAIN OVER PYLON DANGERS

By Nic Fleming, Medical Correspondent

Despite taking seven years to complete, Dr Gerald Draper's
investigation into the links between childhood leukaemia and high-
voltage power lines was by no means conclusive.

The research, published in full by the British Medical Journal last
summer, looked at more than 29,000 children with cancer, including
9,700 with leukaemia, born between 1962 and 1995, and a control group
of healthy youngsters in England and Wales.

Dr Draper and colleagues, from the Childhood Cancer Research Group at
Oxford University, recorded the distance between the children's
addresses at birth and the nearest high-voltage power line. They found
that 64 children with leukaemia lived within 650ft of the line, and
258 lived between 650ft and 1,950ft away.

By comparing with control groups, they concluded that those within
650ft were around 69 per cent more likely to develop leukaemia, and
those living between 650ft and 1,950ft away were 23 per cent more
likely to develop the blood cancer, when compared to those living
further away from power lines.

Around 500 children under 15 are diagnosed with leukaemia, cancer of
the blood, every year in Britain and around 100 die.

Dr Draper estimated that, of the 400-420 cases that occur in England
and Wales, about five might be associated with living in proximity to
high voltage power lines.

The first suggestion of a link between EMFs and childhood leukaemia
came from US researchers Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper.

Eddie O'Gorman, the chairman of the charity Children with Leukaemia,
said: "Planning controls must be introduced to stop houses and schools
being built close to high-voltage overhead power lines."

While the researchers found a clear trend between the distance at
which children were born from power lines and the risk of leukaemia,
they could find no explanation for the finding. Some scientists have
suggested magnetic fields produced by the lines could be to blame.
However, the study found a raised risk beyond 650ft -- a distance at
which magnetic fields from power lines are at or below background
levels.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said this could mean at least
some of the increased risk of leukaemia could be associated with
factors other than EMFs.

The HPA responded to Dr Draper's study by suggesting that a
"precautionary approach". Dr Michael Clarke, scientific spokesman for
the HPA, said: "There is no hard evidence of a risk, but there is a
hint of one. We formally suggested that the Government should consider
precautionary measures."

The Department of Health said: "The Department of Health commissioned
and funded the biggest ever study of its kind into cases of childhood
cancer in proximity to high voltage power lines. This showed a
statistical association, but no casual link.

"We have set up a group to consider the evidence and whether there is
a need to develop precautionary measures. Ministers will consider the
group's recommendations when they report."

Pylon cancer's u7bn blight [on housing prices] 

Copyright Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2006

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  Rachel's Precaution Reporter offers news, views and practical
  examples of the Precautionary Principle, or Foresight Principle, in
  action. The Precautionary Principle is a modern way of making
  decisions, to minimize harm. Rachel's Precaution Reporter tries to
  answer such questions as, Why do we need the precautionary
  principle? Who is using precaution? Who is opposing precaution?

  We often include attacks on the precautionary principle because we  
  believe it is essential for advocates of precaution to know what
  their adversaries are saying, just as abolitionists in 1830 needed
  to know the arguments used by slaveholders.

  Rachel's Precaution Reporter is published as often as necessary to
  provide readers with up-to-date coverage of the subject.

  As you come across stories that illustrate the precautionary 
  principle -- or the need for the precautionary principle -- 
  please Email them to us at rpr@rachel.org.

  Editors:
  Peter Montague - peter@rachel.org
  Tim Montague   -   tim@rachel.org
  
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