Do magnetic fields in hybrids make you sick?

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Do magnetic fields in hybrids make you sick?

Say it isn't so. The New York Times had this story about the potential health risk posed by hybrid vehicles and the magnetic field created by their battery systems.

Here's the science:

The flow of electrical current to the motor that moves a hybrid vehicle at low speeds (and assists the gasoline engine on the highway) produces magnetic fields, which some studies have associated with serious health matters, including a possible risk of leukemia among children.

With the batteries and power cables in hybrids often placed close to the driver and passengers, some exposure to electromagnetic fields is unavoidable. Moreover, the exposure will be prolonged -- unlike, say, using a hair dryer or electric shaver -- for drivers who spend hours each day at the wheel.

As the primary driver of a hybrid Toyota Camry, this idea is a little troubling. I had to read on.

Reporter Jim Motavalli talked to those making up a small group of "skeptics" who are worried about the exposures, including a woman who thought her hybrid was causing her to fall asleep at the wheel.

There are also interviews with car manufacturers who said that their vehicles generated low levels of magnetism, below European standards for safe exposures.

My bottom-line conclusion? It's an interesting topic that I'll keep an eye out for, but I'm too worn down by readers and enviros worried over bisphenol A in Nalgene bottles, phthalates in plastic shower curtains and polluted fish to figure out some lead-lined seat cushion on which to park my bum. At this point, I'll take my chances.

For those wanting to test their own exposure, you can buy a TriField meter, which costs about $145, though there are questions about how accurately the average car owner is able to make a measurement.

Posted by at April 28, 2008 5:25 p.m.
Categories: Consumers and the environment, Energy

Comments

#122845

Posted by Green Party at 4/28/08 7:09 p.m.

Well, this is just silly. An extension of the fear-based culture we have developed over the past seven years. There is very little magnetic field from the cables, which are on the outside of the car's unibody chassis metal.

It is reasonable though to be concerned about chemicals leaching from plastics. Some are frightened that the using-up of oil will have other effects like reducing feedstock to make plastics, but they do not realize that other materials can be used to make very nice plastics... and do not leach hazardous chemicals that petroleum-based plastics have.

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#122862

Posted by unregistered user at 4/28/08 8:09 p.m.

So that's what makes my arm hair stand up in my Prius.
Going to be some messed up sperm.

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#123799

Posted by unregistered user at 4/30/08 11:00 p.m.

I still don't see the hype about a 2008 hybrid car when I used to have a 1982 Nissan Sentra that got 55-60 mpg on the highway. There has been so much progress since the 80's - with almost everything except fuel economy and politics, it seems.

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#124841

Posted by unregistered user at 5/4/08 8:28 a.m.

HYBRIPHOBIA: REMEMBER WHEN POWER LINES CAUSED CANCER?
EMF stopped causing cancer in 1997, but no one bothered to tell Jim Motavalli, who wrote an Automobile column in the Sunday New York Times about the risks of EMF in hybrids. According to Motavalli the National Cancer Institute studied the cancer risks associated with electromagnetic fields. And so it did - but it couldn't find any. You might think Motavalli would at least check the Archives of the New York Times. On July 3, 1997, the day the massive four-year NCI study of power lines and cancer appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Gina Kolata reported in the Times that the study was unambiguous and found no health effects associated with electromagnetic fields. An editorial in the same issue of the Journal put it in perspective: "Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into studies that never had much promise of finding a way to prevent the tragedy of cancer in children. It is time to stop wasting our research resources." It all began in 1979 when Nancy Wertheimer, an unemployed epidemiologist, and her friend Ed Leeper, drove around Denver looking for common environmental factors in the homes of childhood victims of leukemia. It practically jumped out at them - every home had electricity. Their study was so flawed it would have been laughed off but for Paul Brodeur, a scientifically-ignorant writer for The New Yorker. He wrote a series of terrifying articles about power lines and cancer that were collected in a 1989 book, Currents of Death.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/environment/archives/137647.asp?from=blog_last3

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#125263

Posted by unregistered user at 5/5/08 2:23 p.m.

I have a 2007 Saturn Vue Hybrid and I have noticed that I feel like I'm short of breath and light headed. Anyone else had this problem with their hybrid?

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