THE ELECTRICITY Authority (EAC) yesterday rushed to the defence of its pylons, insisting they had nothing to do with a child-cancer "hot-spot" in the Polemidia suburb of Limassol.
Residents at Pano Polemidia – where seven children have leukaemia – are threatening to bulldoze any new pylons the EAC tries to put up in their area. Prompted by such protests, the Health Ministry has announced an epidemiological study to try and find out why there are so many child cancer patients in the suburb.
Child leukaemia has been grabbing all the headlines recently with the highly publicised effort to find a bone-marrow donor for a six-year-old sufferer from Nicosia. Some 70,000 people have donated blood in the search for a compatible donor for the boy.
EAC chairman George Georgiades was yesterday keen not to see the authority branded a cancer agent.
He said scientific studies proved there was absolutely no link between the high intensity electro-magnetic fields created by pylon cables and child leukaemia. "The EAC has a whole series of studies and has undertaken systematic measurements of force fields and has found no evidence of any relation between residents’ health and any accumulation of air-borne transfer of electricity," Georgiades said.
A recently completed eight-year study of 4,000 children with cancer in Britain found no link with pylons. The scientists, led by eminent epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll, said their study "closed the case" on magnetic fields as a cause of leukaemia.
Despite his insistence that pylons were "innocent," Georgiades said the EAC was fully in favour of the Ministry epidemiological study, saying it would help "dispel all doubts" about pylons.
"We have to question the whole network in Cyprus," the EAC chief said.
Health Minister Frixos Savvides yesterday confirmed the government was launching an "immediate" epidemiological study for the Polemidia area. He admitted that Pano Polemidia had a worrying incidence of child leukaemia. He also made it clear the study would not start with the assumption that pylons were the only possible culprits.
"We will start an intensive epidemiological study in the area to establish if there is any link between this increased incidence and anything concerning electricity pylons or anything else in the area," Savvides said.
The Health Ministry study is to be carried out in conjunction with the Karaiskakion Foundation. The Foundation has spearheaded the effort to find a bone-marrow donor for six-year-old leukaemia patient Andreas Vassiliou.
Savvides echoed Georgiades’ estimation that pylons were risk-free. Emissions from pylon cables, the Minister said, were no more powerful than those from an ordinary household dryer. But not everyone is as confident of the safety of pylons. Epidemiologist Michalis Voniatis yesterday said the issue was still "debatable."
"There are strong indications that the presence of pylons with high-intensity cables has serious consequences for the health of those living under such pylons, and for the health of children specifically," Voniatis said.
He admitted there was no concrete proof of a pylons-leukaemia link, but recommended no new pylons be put up in built-up areas.
The epidemiologist gained prominence last year when he released a study linking emissions from a foundry outside Ergates, in the Nicosia district, to high cancer incidence in the village. The government is now carrying out an independent study of the possible effects foundry emissions have on local health.
