Should I carry on living here....or is it bad for my health??

londonman81

Hi all,

Two weeks ago I moved into rented accomodation near to my work in east London. I chose the room in this flat because it was the only one that I had seen within my price range which had enough space for a desk, TV table etc.

I have settled into the flat well and really like it - it has a nice balcony with decent views, nice people sharing the flat with me and plenty of space.

But...

The flat is in a slightly isolated location and there are powerline pylons in the distance from the flat. They are on the back side of the development of flats and are not visible unless you walk towards the development from the front side. Now I'm not a great judge of distance but my guess is that the powerlines are around 500m away or possibly more.

I don't know whether there is a real health risk from living near powerlines but I am very wary of anything which could be a hazard.

To complicate matters - I have been searching for alternative flats in areas which are nowhere near potential hazards - but I have found nothing which compares with the actual accomodation I have now. They are small rooms, in dislikable locations and with weird people etc. I would almost certainly end up moving into poorer accomodation if I moved away from here because of the powerlines.

My main worry right now though is whether I should continue living here. There doesn't seem to be any guidance as to what distance from a powerline is safe.

What do you people think I should do?
It's a tricky one and I can't seem to get any useful advice from anywhere.

Thanks in advance,

L

Ted_Hutchinson

From The New Scientist 03 June 2005
Large study links power lines to childhood cancer The largest study so far finds children living near high voltage overhead power cables at birth are more likely to develop leukaemia – but the cause is still unknown
As you are not a child, are probably out of range of any direct effect and will not be spending 24hrs7days a week under this possible very weak effect I think you personally should stop worrying. As far as risk is concerned you would imho be better staying where you are, assuming everything else about the flat is fine, and spend the money you would have spent in other accomodation on improving your diet by increasing the amount of Omega 3 you consume each week as well as ensuring you get at least 5 portions of fruit and veg daily and are taking sufficient exercise.
It's probably too late to affect the factors which are most likely to affect your life span as you can't alter your genes or what happened while you were developing.

Booze and fags you clearly can do something about and following that it's diet, exercise and lifestyle. I'd only worry about power lines only if I were living directly under them by that I mean within 50 meters.

hopefulfooluk

500m from a powerline is fine especially if you're not going to live there for your lifetime. The electromagnetic fields that are emitted by a 400kV line (the biggest pylons you get) travel about 200m from the cables themselves, so you're well out of that range. However having said that it's not the biggest pylons that are the worst - sometimes the smaller ones that are owned by the electricity companies can give off bigger fields than the bigger lines as they can have hugely varying current from one side to the other, which causes a larger EMF.

A good site to check if you're worried is https://www.powerwatch.org.uk

Hope this helps, try not to worry about it too much. I live 500m from pylons and I'm fine. Better go now as I need to comb my tail.

Chris

DilbertJones

You have a tail!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Crumbs........... I'd get that checked out :rotfl:

hopefulfooluk

You mean it's not normal? The leaflet that the electricity board put through my door said they were normal and not to worry...