Childhood Leukemia and 50 Hz Magnetic Fields: Findings from the Italian SETIL Case-Control Study

Alberto Salvan, Alessandra Ranucci, Susanna Lagorio, Corrado Magnani and On behalf of the SETIL Research Group
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Alberto Salvan: Institute for Systems Analysis and Computer Science "Antonio Ruberti", IASI-CNR, Via dei Taurini 19, 00185 Rome, Italy
Alessandra Ranucci: Medical Statistics & Cancer Epidemiology Unit—Department of Translational Medicine, CPO Piemonte and University of Eastern Piedmont, Via Solaroli 17, 28100 Novara, Italy
Susanna Lagorio: National Centre for Epidemiology, Surveillance and Health Promotion—National Institute of Health, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Rome, Italy
Corrado Magnani: Medical Statistics & Cancer Epidemiology Unit—Department of Translational Medicine, CPO Piemonte and University of Eastern Piedmont, Via Solaroli 17, 28100 Novara, Italy

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: We report on an Italian case-control study on childhood leukemia and exposure to extremely low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF). Eligible for inclusion were 745 leukemia cases, aged 0–10 years at diagnosis in 1998–2001, and 1475 sex- and age-matched population controls. Parents of 683 cases and 1044 controls (92% vs. 71%) were interviewed. ELF-MF measurements (24–48 h), in the child’s bedroom of the dwelling inhabited one year before diagnosis, were available for 412 cases and 587 controls included in the main conditional regression analyses. The magnetic field induction was 0.04 ?T on average (geometric mean), with 0.6% of cases and 1.6% of controls exposed to >0.3 ?T. The impact of changes in the statistical model, exposure metric, and data-set restriction criteria was explored via sensitivity analyses. No exposure-disease association was observed in analyses based on continuous exposure, while analyses based on categorical variables were characterized by incoherent exposure-outcome relationships. In conclusion, our results may be affected by several sources of bias and they are noninformative at exposure levels >0.3 ?T. Nonetheless, the study may contribute to future meta- or pooled analyses. Furthermore, exposure levels among population controls are useful to estimate attributable risk.

Keywords: leukemia; acute lymphoblastic leukemia; childhood; extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields; epidemiology; case-control study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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