Air Pollution, Carbon Monoxide, Smoke, Fire

The Italian government is threatening to end electrical service to Vatican Radio. Why? Because the station's towers allegedly emit excessive volumes of electromagnetic emissions. Of course, without electricity to the Vatican towers, papal broadcasts worldwide will end.

The story has been in La Repubblica, Il Tempo, Il Messaggero and elsewhere. It goes like this:

Many years ago the Vatican erected a series of radio towers in a rural area to broadcast papal speeches worldwide. The tower area become less rural and more populated over time. Meanwhile, Italy enacted laws which limited electromagnetic emissions, what some cutely term "electrosmog." Indeed, three Vatican workers now face trial for violating the Italian limitations.

To untangle this debate, it's important to note that the Vatican is a sovereign state and that the radio towers are on Vatican property. Thus an instant issue is whether Italian laws can apply to towers on Vatican land.

A second issue concerns the health fears sometimes associated with electromagnetic radiation, both overseas and in the U.S.

Essentially, the argument is made that exposure to massive amounts of electromagnetic radiation may lead to cancer. Indeed, residents around the tower area complain of high rates of leukemia.

There is no question that when such issues arise they should be examined with care. Happily, when it comes to electromagnetic radiation, there is evidence that no significant risk exists.

Not "no risk" but no "significant" risk. There is a difference.

Too often when discussing environmental issues there is a lack of balance, an effort to eliminate all risk. While the goal of a risk-free world might be regarded as laudatory, the world is full of hazards, as is life. People really do get hit by lightening.

So, is there risk from electromagnetic radiation?

Several groups have looked at such emissions and here's what they found:

According to an editorial in New England Journal of MedicineJuly 3, 1997), "electromagnetic fields have no reproducible biologic effects at all, except at strengths that are far beyond those ever found in people's homes."

The editorial also states that "18 years of research have produced considerable paranoia, but little insight and no prevention. It is time to stop wasting our research resources."

A 1995 study of more than 1,000 scientific papers by the American Physical Society, a group which includes 45,000 physicists, found no link between power line electromagnetic fields and cancer. See: "Cancer Fear Is Unfounded, Physicists Say, The New York Times, (May 14, 1995).

But what about communities which seem to have higher incidents of cancer than other areas?

This is a question worth considering. The catch is that residential populations are in motion, so to have an accurate measure you would have to look only at long-term residents -- and even then there are so many variables that such studies would be open to debate. For instance, what if an unusually-large percentage of the long-term local population smokes? (At least with tobacco we know with utter assurance that smoking is closely associated with a variety of cancers.)

No one is sure how the current battle -- no pun intended -- between the Vatican and the Italian government will be resolved. But if it turns out that we start looking at scientific evidence rather than anecdotal fables, then everyone will be ahead.

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