Authored By:
Bunch KJ, Swanson J, Vincent TJ, Murphy MFThis is a case-control study that investigated the association between childhood leukaemia and residing next to high voltage powerlines at birth. The study is a further analysis on a previous case-control study (Bunch et al, 2014) which included 53,506 cases of childhood cancer diagnosed from 1962 to 2008, and 132,275 matched controls. For the earlier period of 1962-1989, risk of childhood leukaemia increased with increasing age (peaking at the age category of 10-14) however for the later period of 1990-2008, no increased risk was observed in any age category. Risks were higher in some regions than in others but no significant difference to the total risk was found. The authors found that the elevated risks previously found (for the earlier period) was associated with the year of birth or year of cancer diagnosis.
Published In:
J Radiol Prot 2016; 36 (3): 437-455This paper by Bunch et al is the final paper that formed a series of epidemiological investigations into childhood cancer and high voltage power lines in the UK. It contains further analyses on the data captured by previous publications by Draper et al (2005), Kroll et al (2010, summary available on September 2010’s report), Bunch et al (2014, summary available on June 2014’s report), Swanson et al (2014) and Bunch et al (2015, summary available on September 2015’s report).
The authors initially argued that the age of high voltage power lines is a potential risk factor for leukaemia (i.e. newly constructed power lines are associated with higher risk of leukaemia) however further analyses in this paper has shown that this was not the case. The elevated risks previously observed in the study period of 1962-1989 may mean that there was an unknown risk factor that existed in the past but has been declining since the 1960s up to the 1990s and it did not exist anymore in the 2000s.
