Tasmanian health officials have just released a report into their investigation of a number of cancer cases reported in staff members at the Hobart School in Hobart, the capital of the Australian state of Tasmania. Staff members and local citizens had been especially concerned because of the school’s proximity to overhead power lines and the resultant exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Among a staff of 263, 19 cases of cancer had occurred over a period of 29 years. This figure exceeded the expected count of 11.1 that might have been expected given the statistical norm for the Tasmanian population as a whole. Involved in the study were personnel from the Tasmanian Cancer Registry, the Education Department, and the Public and Environmental Health Service.Dr. Roscoe Taylor, Director of Public Health, discounted the likelihood of an environmental cause for a number of reasons. He pointed out that an analysis of the overall population involved—i.e. school staff—failed to provide statistically valid results. Also, a number of different types of cancer were involved, all of them common within the general population. There was no increased occurrence of a rare cancer that would suggest some unusual exposure or causative factor. Most significantly, when cases involving those who had worked at the school only for a very short period of time were eliminated from the study, the cancer rate increase became statistically insignificant. Dr. Taylor also explained that students from the school were not included in the study as the institution is a special-needs school serving children with severe health problems making it difficult to make meaningful comparisons between their health outcomes and those of the general population.Find the actual report online on the Tasmanian government website.
EMR and School Cancer Investigation
