In These New Times

Published:  21 May, 2008(INVERNESS COURIER)

THE scientist whose evidence has been ruled out of the Wester Balblair sub-station inquiry would have accused power companies of “distortion, procrastination, obfuscation, and downright deception of the public”.

The claim is made by Roger Coghill, a member of the Government’s advisory body on electro-magnetic fields, whose inquiry precognition has been passed to The Inverness Courier.

Read the full text below, and see Friday’s Courier for the latest inquiry news.

Executive Summary – Precognition of Roger Coghill

1. Credentials: I have Masters degrees from the Universities of Cambridge (Biological Sciences) and the University of Wales (Environmental Management), and an M Phil qualification from the University of Surrey (Human Studies). My independent laboratory at Pontypool, South Wales, has specialised for some 20 years in researching the science of bioelectromagnetics (the study of interactions between the physical energies of electricity and magnetism with organic life) and I have published peer-reviewed papers and books on these issues, both therapeutic and pollutive. I am on several technical committees of scientific societies involved in bioelectromagnetics, and a member of SAGE, a Government funded committee advising the Ministry of Health on precautionary approaches to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) exposure.

2. Opening Argument: I aim to show, by reference to peer-reviewed scientific literature, that the present guidelines relating to 50Hz electric and magnetic fields offered by the International Committee on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) are not relevant to chronic exposure of human populations at non-thermal field strengths. I will show that even ICNIRP do not regard their own guidelines as relevant to the substation application, and recognise the existence of non thermal bioeffects. I will argue that the persistent comparison of likely field strengths to ICNIRP guidelines is a deliberate deception on the part of SHETL and contains errors of omission and commission of which they are well aware, against a background where other major countries do not accept these guidelines both within and outside Europe.

3. Likely Fields from the Proposed Installation: The Final Report of Scottish Hydro Electric Transmission Ltd (APL 11/3/130B, October 2007) reporting measurement and assessment of 50 Hz EMFs carried out during 20/21 June 2007, indicates maximum measured ELF electric fields of 1580 Volts/metre under a 275kV powerline and in excess of 1200V/m elsewhere. The effect of converging powerlines was found not to be an increase in field strength but a delay in the rate of fall-off with distance (page ii, pars 9) and at 100 metres distant from the centreline of a 400/275 kV line field strengths of 48V/m were calculated by SHETL in their previous (undated) Environmental Appraisal of Beauly Substation (Table 5.3, page 32). I will produce evidence that at these electric field strengths there is a near fivefold likelihood of leukaemia and other major health disorders.

4. SAGE committee recommendations: I will aim to show that if the present application were to follow recommendations made in the First Interim Report of SAGE it would not be permitted in the form presently sought.

5. Conspiracy by Electric Power Utilities and by SHETL: I aim to demonstrate that the electric power utilities, acting in concert, have during the last three decades been responsible for distortion, procrastination, obfuscation, and downright deception of the public in matters relating to EMF bioeffects research, and that this Public Inquiry ‘ provides a blatant further example of that deception. I will bring robust and substantive evidence from reputable scientists working in many parts of the world in support of my allegations, embodied in the Bioinitiative Report and other reviews of the scientific literature. In essence the power utilities have focused attention on the magnetic component of these fields, to which mankind has long been accustomed by evolution, (and indeed are used ubiquitously for navigation and other purposes by the animal kingdom) whereas the published evidence points strongly to the alternating electric component, a novel influence on this planet of only a few generations duration, as causing major perturbations of at least two vital organic life processes with serious sequelae for health. I will show that these ill heath effects are not confined to cancer but embrace epilepsy, depressive illness, lowered immune system competence, and neurodegeneration.

6. Existing local ill health patterns from ENIF exposure: I aim to show that the village of Wester Balblair, like the village of Dalmally in Scotland, and the village of Ferndown in Dorset, has suffered an serious over-representation of ill health compared with normal populations, as a result of its proximity to the present 1951 substation, and argue that this loss of the quiet enjoyment of local properties will be further exacerbated by the proposed substation and line extensions.

7. Mechanisms of Interaction: I will present evidence of ways in which alternating electric fields adversely affect health, based on peer review published studies. Such effects include inter alia inhibition of cytotoxic lymphocyte competence, synthesis of free radicals in body fluids, interference with cardiac rhythms, suppression of melatonin, a vital indolearnine, enforced calcium efflux from the cell cytosol, leading to loss of intracellular signal induction, interference with important enzyme activity levels, disturbance of neurotransmission and cognitive mechanisms. I will show that alternating magnetic fields do not induce these adverse effects to anything like the same extent even with induction of small electric fields,

8. Conclusions: I will ask that on health and general amenity grounds the present installation be relocated in an underground environment, and any extensions be similarly housed at least one kilometre from the present village. I will ask for an undertaking by the SHETL to collaborate in and publish a comprehensive literature review of alternating electric field biological effects studies at ELF frequencies and to take steps to produce a variant of EMDEX monitors capable of measuring electric fields in residential homes, and that future measurements of homes at the request of residents should include electric field measurements, not simply magnetic field measurements.