I bought an EM meter when house hunting, because I had fallen for the hype regarding the effects. Because of the R-squared nature of the strength, you would almost have to live right next to a VERY high voltage power line for it to be significant. What I found was, that regular street power lines produced a higher EM signal in houses than what is caused by the high voltage lines.
I'm talking about living under one. I almost bought a very nice townhouse but it had 600v lines running over it. You could hear them hum and they would make a small fluorescent tube glow just from the field effect. Regular power lines don't do that.
Yes, very close to the high-voltage lines is a definite concern. I know someone that used to work along the right-of-ways for high voltage lines and he said it could make your teeth hurt sometimes! If you are close enough to lower voltage power lines, you can get high EM levels. How high the levels need to be for adverse health effects is not known to me, but since the street level lines are close enough to potentially adversely affect people, and there doesn't seem to be a known and obvious and widespread effect, I believe it is probably an insignificant concern.
At the time when I was looking at said townhouse, my company shared space with a team of RF engineers (tower builders). I asked them about the safety of it and they gave me all sorts of technical reasons why it was safe, blah, blah. At the end of their justifications, I asked them "would you buy the townhouse?". All resoundingly said NO.
I'll take my chances with RF soup vs. living under high tension lines.
I bought an EM meter when house hunting, because I had fallen for the hype regarding the effects. Because of the R-squared nature of the strength, you would almost have to live right next to a VERY high voltage power line for it to be significant. What I found was, that regular street power lines produced a higher EM signal in houses than what is caused by the high voltage lines.
I'm talking about living under one. I almost bought a very nice townhouse but it had 600v lines running over it. You could hear them hum and they would make a small fluorescent tube glow just from the field effect. Regular power lines don't do that.
Yes, very close to the high-voltage lines is a definite concern. I know someone that used to work along the right-of-ways for high voltage lines and he said it could make your teeth hurt sometimes! If you are close enough to lower voltage power lines, you can get high EM levels. How high the levels need to be for adverse health effects is not known to me, but since the street level lines are close enough to potentially adversely affect people, and there doesn't seem to be a known and obvious and widespread effect, I believe it is probably an insignificant concern.
At the time when I was looking at said townhouse, my company shared space with a team of RF engineers (tower builders). I asked them about the safety of it and they gave me all sorts of technical reasons why it was safe, blah, blah. At the end of their justifications, I asked them "would you buy the townhouse?". All resoundingly said NO.