110KV High Voltage lines 30 meters away from home safe?

I recently purchased an apartment in China, as you maybe aware in the cities of China everyone lives in highrise apartment buildings, we just purchased one not knowing at the back there is a 110KV tower 30 meters away near a river, I have a son who's 2 years old, I am worried about the RF that gets emitted may have an effect on his health, through my research on the net, It's come up a stale mate weather it's safe or not.

There is no conclusive research to suggest that prolonged periods of time near high voltage lines, some artices I have read say they have found cases of children who have grown up near high voltage lines have leukemia or brain cancer in later life, for adults there is no real side effect.

I have also researched that there is no harm at all, birds and other animals making nests on HV lines, that the exposure is less than living near a GSM or CDMA tower.

My friend who has worked for an electrical maintenance company for 7 years repairing heavy duty lines told me there's nothing to worry about.
He advised me to buy a cheap radio and test it out on site, he said if the radio has alot of interference in close proximity of the HV lines, it's RF is quite strong. But he said this was more likley the case the 300+ KV lines.


My main question is:
Should I be concerned and shift apartments 300 meters away or stay where I am ?

I would move if it is a viable option. When purchasing property in the US I always ask Realtor's how close unburied Electric line are. I have personally withdrawn offers after finding out how close some homes were located to above ground power lines.

Incidentally when I was growing up a kid a few years younger than me was born and raised in a house that had power lines running in his back yard. He died of Leukemia in high school. Although no official link was ever established I always thought his proximity to those lines was a contributing factor.

-M

reply to post by crackerjack


I say rely on nature. Look to see if birds and other little animals are present. This could be a good indicater if your surroundings are safe or not. Animals can sense when things are not right and will move away accordingly.

MOTF!

while not proven, there is a slight chance that EMF from the high voltage lies can cause cancer or other afflictions. Knowing that, my advice would be to let others do the on site research. Move and let your child not have to worry about if this will be a problem or not. Better safe then sorry. (IMHO)

Well, if you can't move you could go the tinfoil hat way. Line the walls with tinfoil and ground it.

Or make a large coil of wire inside the wall and see if you can create a inductive link to the power line.

Free power.

I shifted apartments to another block 300 meters down the road, cost is abit more, but I think its better to be safe than sorry, theres no savings over health! So now there's 4 rows of buildings in front of mine then the line.

I think this should be ample space.

Ni Hao,

I would buy an EMF meter which can measure in Gauss as to the actual strength of the emitted fields.

Turn off your electricity at the circuit breaker box first before measuring to minimize the influence of local EM fields, even though your neighbors power could influence this somewhat.

Then take another reading with the power on to distinguish between local and external sources.

But this shall allow you to at least have a concrete figure as to what you are being exposed to if anything.

I would even walk near/ in closer proximity to the lines themselves to see what types of readings you are receiving as a base line figure.

Originally posted by masawa


Incidentally when I was growing up a kid a few years younger than me was born and raised in a house that had power lines running in his back yard. He died of Leukemia in high school. Although no official link was ever established I always thought his proximity to those lines was a contributing factor.

-M

The kid probably lived in even closer proximity to water pipes. So do you reject all properties that have runing water. Only some of the children who die of cancer live near power lines. Every single one, without exception, drank water at some point.
reject the Luddites and learn the difference between correlation and causation.

reply to post by nh_ee


Thanks for the advise, I will look for one and see what results I find!
But I think 300 meters is better than 30 meters.

By law in China, apartment complexes has to be a minimum distance of 30 meters from any HV lines.

So naturally, all the developers pack apartments in where they can, I talked to the power company if there was any chance they were going to lay the cables underground but they said it's the developers responsibility and they should front the costs. Which I know theres no chance of that happening.

My cousin was reaised in an apartment with HIGH voltage power lines less than 100ft from his window.....He died from Leukiemia as well at the age of 18.



[edit on 9/2/2010 by Chaos Lord]

Originally posted by Chaos Lord
My cousin was reaised in an apartment with HIGH voltage power lines less than 100ft from his window.....He died from Leukiemia as well at the age of 18.

There are people that have leukemia that are close by power lines.
There are people that have leukemia that are far away from power lines.
There are people that have leukemia that are in big cities.
There are people that have leukemia that are in the rural countryside.
There are people that have leukemia that have city water
There are people that have leukemia that have well water.
There are people that have leukemia that (fill in the blank)

But when you look at the statistics, no correlation can be found.
One statement that is often used is “ There is more people with leukemia close by power lines than far away from them” The reason for that is there is more people living close by power line than far away. People normally gravitate to places with power lines and civilization. But statistically, based on population, there is no statistical difference.

It is a natural human condition to try to locate “anything” responsible for causing a tragedy that may befall you or your family.

That is why people made up fictional god of thunder, wind, and earth
To try to create something they can point to as the cause of their unfortunate problems.

It is only natural that when someone suffers such an unfortunate disease, that they try to make the connection with something that has been a visual irritation to them in the past.

It is natural to try to make the connection, but it doesn’t mean that it’s the cause.


[edit on 2-9-2010 by Mr Tranny]

There are two forms of radiated energy from power lines, one proportional to the voltage (EMF field) and the other proportional to the current in the line (electromagnetic field). Both obey the inverse square law IE double the distance you are from the line and those fields are 1/4 the strength. This concern about ill effects from the radiation has been a hot topic for a long time but the only reasonable evidence of this has been seen in workers who do liveline work in extremely close proximity to the live equipment wearing special suits and even then it only shows up in a few who do such work for decades.

You can get a much higher dose of radiation from watching a CRT TV or sleeping on an electric blanket which is probably the worst exposure of all that no-one ever considers when worrying about power line radiation endangering them. It's all in the inverse square law and distance from the radiation source. I've spent decades regularly working in and walking around in EHV switchyards within a few metres of equipment carrying 100s of MW at voltages over 220kV without incident and the lines quoted by the OP at 30m distance means I've been exposed to fields at least 100 times stronger, perhaps much more than that and I'm still fine.

Not to say that some caution isn't justified but the potential risk does tend to get blown out of proportion.

Underground cables: that means unsuspecting pedestrians can walk right over the same cable only about 2 metres or less below their feet so the potential exposure is much much greater than you'd experience from overhead lines for the same voltage and loading. Granted that the UG HV cable will have a hoechstetter screen so the only radiation will be electromagnetic proportional to the current in the conductor.

[edit on 2/9/2010 by Pilgrum]

On Mythbusters they tested a similar theory which surprised me as I assumed you could have a coil somewhat near a high voltage line and obtain some "free electricity" and their proximity and materials seemed to show that the inverse square law was Really in effect. The test indicated that even a few feet away from the high power lines and they could hardly even get a reading let alone get usable power so it should be relatively simple to find out if there are any signals or output that could affect you from whatever distance you live from them.