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American Journal of Epidemiology Advance Access published online on October 3, 2008
American Journal of Epidemiology, doi:10.1093/aje/kwn230
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American Journal of Epidemiology © The Author 2008. Published by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Original Contribution

Childhood Leukemia in Relation to Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Fields in the Vicinity of TV and Radio Broadcast Transmitters

Hiltrud Merzenich, Sven Schmiedel, Sabrina Bennack, Hauke Brüggemeyer, Johannes Philipp, Maria Blettner and Joachim Schüz

Correspondence to Dr. Hiltrud Merzenich, Institute of Medical Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, University Mainz, 55101 Mainz, Germany (e-mail: merzenich{at}imbei.uni-mainz.de).

Received for publication February 27, 2008. Accepted for publication July 7, 2008.

A case-control study of radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) and childhood leukemia was conducted in West Germany. The study region included municipalities near high-power radio and TV broadcast towers, including 16 amplitude-modulated and 8 frequency-modulated transmitters. Cases were aged 0–14 years, were diagnosed with leukemia between 1984 and 2003, and were registered at the German Childhood Cancer Registry. Three age-, gender-, and transmitter-area-matched controls per case were drawn randomly from population registries. The analysis included 1,959 cases and 5,848 controls. Individual exposure to RF-EMFs 1 year before diagnosis was estimated with a field strength prediction program. Considering total RF-EMFs, the odds ratio derived from conditional logistic regression analysis for all types of leukemia was 0.86 (95% confidence interval: 0.67, 1.11) when upper (≥95%/0.701 V/m) and lower (<90%/0.504 V/m) quantiles of the RF-EMF distribution were compared. An analysis of amplitude-modulated and frequency-modulated transmitters separately did not show increased risks of leukemia. The odds ratio for all types of leukemia was 1.04 (95% confidence interval: 0.65, 1.67) among children living within 2 km of the nearest broadcast transmitter compared with those living at a distance of 10–<15 km. The data did not show any elevated risks of childhood leukemia associated with RF-EMFs.

child; electromagnetic fields; leukemia; radiation, radio; television

Abbreviations: AM, amplitude modulated; CI, confidence interval; FM, frequency modulated; ICCC, International Classification of Childhood Cancer; RF-EMF, radio frequency electromagnetic field


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