The Rise and Fall of Power Line EMFs: The Anatomy of a Magnetic Controversy

The suggestion that power line electromagnetic fields (EMFs) cause diseases like cancer has generated dozens of popular articles and television news segments, hundreds of scientific studies, and numerous consensus reports; it has attracted the attention of epidemiologists, biologists, physicists, policymakers and lawyers. This article will examine the evolution of this controversy through a detailed analysis of the arguments that have been used for and against the hypothesis that power line EMFs have adverse health effects. This article argues that the power line EMF issue provides a classic case study for exploring the challenges citizens, scientists, and policymakers face in sorting out a complex science‐based controversy. This story not only brings together many different perspectives and—from popular notions of cancer clusters to complex epidemiological arguments, from to state‐of‐the‐art animal studies to policy instruments such as the precautionary principle—but also reveals the manner in which a heated controversy can be effectively resolved over time.