HEALTH : Cancer Warning Challenged

WASHINGTON —  Some scientists today challenged the findings of a government report suggesting possible cancer links to high-voltage electric power lines.

“I don’t believe the evidence is strong enough yet that there is a link,” Dr. Demitrious Trichopolous, a professor of epidemiology at Harvard University, told a scientific advisory board scrutinizing the report. He said studies suggesting that electromagnetic fields from power lines might have caused cancer in children living near such lines were based on “inherently weak data.”

In other testimony, a physicist maintained there is inadequate biological data to support the findings in the Environmental Protection Agency study. And a cancer expert maintained the study goes contrary to the general theories about the mechanisms involved in cancer cell development.