Cancer in Swedish railway workers.
Authors
Wenzl-TB; Floderus-B
Source
Cancer Causes and Control 1994 Nov; 5(6):581
Abstract
A letter was written in response to a paper previously published in Cancer Causes and Control. The first author felt that the use of a particular instrument to measure personal exposure of Swedish railway workers to magnetic fields was not appropriate. The instrument used may have presented inaccurate exposure estimates since the frequency response decreased below 30 Hertz and the frequency of the electric current used was 16.66 Hertz. The first author did not feel that this problem was critical to the conclusions of the original paper. However, it was stated that if increased risk due to increased exposure intensity was studied, the inaccuracy of the instrument would probably prove to be a problem. The importance of matching the instrument to the characteristics of the agent being measured was stressed. The author of the original paper was allowed to reply and reiterated that estimates of exposure to magnetic fields was highly dependent on the choice of the instrument and how the measurement was carried out. The original author emphasized that the magnetic field densities were provided in the paper to show that some of the study groups had a high magnetic field exposure during work.
Keywords
NIOSH-Author; Humans; Cancer; Magnetic-fields; Exposure-levels; Occupational-exposure; Electromagnetic-fields; Railroad-industry
Source Name
Cancer Causes and Control
