| The buzzing is pretty obvious when it is rainy or misty. I passed a power line during my high school bike commute, it never failed to amuse me. I wouldn't call it "loud" though: noticeable, but the average traffic noise is far worse. The leukemia is bullshit, though. The numbers are too small to make any kind of definitive statement, or to properly compensate for things like socioeconomic factors - plenty of other potential causes on the rural farms and poor urban neighborhoods where we usually build power lines, after all. |
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| ▲ | AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent [-] | | > The leukemia is bullshit, though. The numbers are too small to make any kind of definitive statement, or to properly compensate for things like socioeconomic factors - plenty of other potential causes on the rural farms and poor urban neighborhoods where we usually build power lines, after all. This seems like the thing where people use the phrase "there is no evidence of" to imply that something has been disproven when what it actually means is that we don't know enough to say one way or the other. | | |
| ▲ | left-struck a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Basically I just thought the leukaemia claim is quite an extraordinary claim, which requires extraordinary evidence if you’re trying to convince a sensible person of your claim. I know a thing or two about rf, emf and electricity in general and I don’t see why or how these hv wires would cause cancer, or if they did why would it be specifically leukaemia. I’m fully aware though that before we knew about nuclear radiation people would have had similar thoughts about some random rare earth metal causing cancer if you’re not even touching it. So point is, I’ll wait for the proof before I’m convinced, or attempt to convince others. I’ve also anecdotally noticed that people are concerned about many things where there is like very marginal evidence that maybe this is slightly bad for you but then regularly engage in very well known risky behaviour like eating big macs or driving cars. I might be speaking from personal experience. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > I know a thing or two about rf, emf and electricity in general and I don’t see why or how these hv wires would cause cancer, or if they did why would it be specifically leukaemia. Probably the same theory for how a microwave cooks food. > I’ve also anecdotally noticed that people are concerned about many things where there is like very marginal evidence that maybe this is slightly bad for you but then regularly engage in very well known risky behaviour like eating big macs or driving cars. Eating junk food has the countervailing benefit that they like the taste. There is very little personal benefit to having a high voltage line in your yard, and people respond especially poorly to things that have a personal risk with no personal benefit. | | |
| ▲ | giantg2 a day ago | parent | next [-] | | "Probably the same theory for how a microwave cooks food." The actual change to look at isn't really the heating, but rather that RF has been known to increase glucose metabolism in affected cells. My own theory is that if that is true, you're essentially increasing cell aging and oxidative stress with the increased metabolism. Who knows if it's true. The effect seems small and the exposures need to be longterm. | | |
| ▲ | sokoloff a day ago | parent [-] | | Surely power lines running directly across a residential property represent a long-term exposure. (I personally doubt there is a significant risk, but if there is, these powerline easements would be quite risky to the residents in terms of ongoing/continuous exposure.) |
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| ▲ | quickthrowman a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Probably the same theory for how a microwave cooks food. At 60 hz? I think that’s a bit low for microwaving. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | It is if you want your food cooked in under five minutes. The question is, what happens at a lower frequency but a longer period of time? |
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| ▲ | inigyou a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Tell me how you think a microwave cooks food? | |
| ▲ | jmye 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | maxerickson 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They do vegetation control in larger easements, the power lines/electrcity aren't the only possible factor. | |
| ▲ | 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | malfist 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > what it actually means is that we don't know enough to say one way or the other. To take another illustration: nobody can prove that there is not between the Earth and Mars a china teapot revolving in an elliptical orbit, but nobody thinks this sufficiently likely to be taken into account in practice. I think the leukemia claim just as likely. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | If there was a teapot at a proposed orbit then there would be various falsifiable ways to prove it one way or the other. Once you do the experiment, you have the evidence. Before you do the experiment, you don't. If there is a cancer risk then good evidence either way would require randomized controlled trials, which for long-term exposure are very expensive and take a long time, so then nobody does them and nobody really knows the answer. This is not the same thing as knowing it to be false. |
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