Slashdot Mirror
Real Life EMF Experiences?
ilander asks: "I've been looking to buy my first home recently and found one that seemed perfect. The one downside is that there are power lines directly overhead (in the yard) as well as a high tension power line tower in the empty lot in back, less than 200 feet away from the house.
So does anyone have any personal experience working/living near power lines? Aside from the possible health risks, which may or not exist (depending on who you ask), will I run into any problems with my monitors and TVs? What about DSL, cable and my 802.11b network? How about digital satellite reception?
Any help is appreciated!"
BIggest issue I see is resale value. How long you plan to stay will affect things also. You may well be convinced that there are not problems with the power lines but it will be difficult to convince someone else to take it off your hands in x number of years.
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Part of the uselessness called 'science' that they teach in schools deals with electrical current and magnetic fields.
IIRC, the strength of an electrical field is 1/(distance^2). If we have two distances, we can calculate the drop in the magnetic field as follows: (1/(d1^2)) / (1/(d2^2)) or, more simply: d1^2 / d2^2. Therefore, the difference between living directly under the power lines (assuming that the power lines are 50ft up in the air) and the difference between living a few houses away (say 200 ft) would be 2500/40000 or 5/80ths (about 6%). Living a few more houses away (say, 200 more ft) would result in a drop of 2500/160000 or about 1.5%
The point of all this math and science is that if power lines can cause cancer, it should be rather easy to detect - cancer rates would be high under the power lines, and fall off sharply.
I have never seen a study with this result, so its probably safe to assume that power lines do not cause cancer.
I don't care about proving it. I life my life the way I want. If one day they prove to me that there is no risk, I'll gladly go and live under a high-tension power line. Until then, when in doubt between two houses, one of which being a "potential" risk, I'll go with the safe one. Maybe stupid.
Think about this one: I give you two glasses of water. One looks clean, the other one looks yellowish. But I garantee you that the yellowish one is as safe as the other one. However, you may choose freely either one of them. Are you going to go with the yellowish water? You would be crazy.
Why taking this risk - as small as it may be - when you have equivalent other alternatives ?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
And do they smoke? Drink lots of caffeine?
Eat meat?
Excercise?
How's your family history of this?
-1, FUD
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.