A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

David Savitz Says There’s “Probably No” Leukemia Risk

August 2, 2011

De-Kun Li's new study, published yesterday, got quite a bit of news coverage with comments from all over. One of the most surprising, at least to us, was from David Savitz, who some 25 years ago was the first to support Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper's then still controversial finding linking magnetic fields to childhood leukemia. Here's part of what Savitz told WebMD: "[EMF] has been very, very thoroughly studied, and it really questionable whether it causes any health effects at any reasonable level." We thought we had better check with Savitz to make sure he hadn't been misquoted and to see if, as one might well infer, he had repudiated his 1988 paper. "The association with power lines has not been corroborated," he replied. He summmed up his postion on whether or not there is a link this way: "It really isn't a question of what one study or another says, but rather what the body of literature as a whole says and to me it says 'probably not, but maybe something for relatively high magnetic fields and childhood leukemia'." We wonder what Nancy Wertheimer would say.

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