Kheifets L I, Sussman S S, Preston-Martin S
Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0813, USA.
Rev Environ Contam Toxicol. 1999;159:111-29. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4612-1496-0_5.
There are many recent comprehensive reviews of the residential EMF epidemiologic literature, but they do not attempt to cover the issue of childhood brain tumors and EMF in depth. We present here background information on descriptive epidemiology of known or suspected causes of childhood brain tumors and a detailed review of studies that have examined the associations between EMF as represented by various surrogates, and childhood brain tumors. We evaluated nine studies of childhood brain tumors and residential exposure to EMF based on wire codes, distance, measurements, and modeling, and six studies that examined the use of appliances by children or their mothers during pregnancy. For each study we discussed analytical and methodological issues including choice of cutpoints, nonconcurrent control selection, random digit dialing, differential participation, and ability of a study to detect an association. On the basis of this comprehensive review of all available childhood brain cancer studies, we do not see support for an overall association between EMF and childhood brain cancer. This lack of support applied for all surrogates of past magnetic fields, including wire code, distance, measured or calculated fields, and use of appliances by either child or mother.
近期有许多关于居住环境电磁场（EMF）流行病学文献的全面综述，但它们并未深入探讨儿童脑肿瘤与电磁场这一问题。在此，我们呈现已知或疑似儿童脑肿瘤病因的描述性流行病学背景信息，并详细回顾那些研究了以各种替代指标表示的电磁场与儿童脑肿瘤之间关联的研究。我们评估了九项基于电线编码、距离、测量和建模的儿童脑肿瘤与居住环境电磁场暴露的研究，以及六项研究儿童或其母亲在孕期使用电器情况的研究。对于每项研究，我们讨论了分析和方法学问题，包括切点选择、非同期对照选择、随机数字拨号、差异参与度以及研究检测关联的能力。基于对所有现有儿童脑癌研究的全面综述，我们未发现电磁场与儿童脑癌之间存在总体关联的证据。这种缺乏支持的情况适用于过去磁场的所有替代指标，包括电线编码、距离、测量或计算出的场强，以及儿童或母亲使用电器的情况。
