Take the West Natick neighborhood of Ranger Road, Tournament Road, Burning Tree Road, Burning Tree Terrace and Stonebridge Circle, where gleaming 150-foot-tall steel towers loom over modest split-level homes and carry high-voltage transmission lines that hum in rain or high humidity.
While the corridor brings power to homes, schools, the Natick Mall and other businesses, several residents think something more menacing is also getting delivered: cancer, at least to those living closest to the lines.
"There's got to be something that's contributing to the cause," said Lynne D'Agnelli, citing the local cancer prevalence - at least nine cases among current and former long-term owners at 17 houses. At least one of those patients died while living in the neighborhood.
A 2009 state investigation didn't find anything amiss, but lingering fears and ongoing cancer battles have kept D'Agnelli and her friend across the corridor, Maureen Allain, searching for answers.
Recently, the pair helped convince Rep. David Linsky, D-Natick, to file a bill seeking a commission to study whether invisible electric and magnetic fields from the state's power lines harm health.
"We don't know what our kids have or don't have," said Allain, whose husband has lymphoma and who has a sign on one of her trees warning of an "EMF zone," shorthand for an electromagnetic field. "We don't want to see this repeated."
Historical evidence that residential electrification caused the emergence of the childhood leukemia peak - Sam Milham, E. M. Ossiander
Until poles and wires were first extended into our communities, humans had never been exposed to alternating power-frequency fields. Similarly, radio, television, radar, microwaves, cell phones, and the other indispensable devices of our modern world, all expose humans to EMFs which are completely new to human evolutionary experience. There is some evidence that other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum may be leukemogenic. Weak alternating magnetic fields have been shown to affect reaction time, slow the heart, and affect the electroencephalogram in humans. Nocturnal secretion of the pineal hormone melatonin, a powerful anti-cancer agent, is suppressed by chronic exposure to alternating magnetic fields in electrical workers.Fighting Cancer, Former CVPS Head Gives Thanks For Blood Drive - Vermont Public Radio
Bob Young, the former head of Central Vermont Public Service says the annual Gift of Life blood drive that CVPS co-sponsors has taken on a special significance to him. Young told VPR's Nina Keck he was recently diagnosed with Leukemia and blood and platelet donations have been critical in helping him fight the disease.
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