Global Issues
Argentine Locals Want Power Transformers Out of Neighborhoods
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 22 (IPS) - Scientific uncertainty about the health impacts of electromagnetic fields is fueling worries among people in the Argentine capital who are demanding that energy power transformers be located far from their neighborhoods.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) does not rule out the possibility that exposure to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields could pose a risk to human health, even possibly being linked to childhood leukemia. But it says there is not enough evidence to warrant strict recommendations.
Since 2004, local residents living near the Rigolleau substation in the district of Berazategui, on the southeast side of Buenos Aires, have been demanding that the plant be moved, for fear of possible health effects.
And according to charges brought in court, another substation, operating since 1978 in the neighboring city of Ezpeleta, has driven up the rate of cancer among the people living near the transformer.
In 2000, a chemical company asked for an expansion of electricity supplies for its factory, and Edesur, the company that runs the substation, doubled its output. But the local residents protested that the move also increased electromagnetic pollution.
The courts upheld the precautionary principle – which states that even if a cause-effect relationship has not been fully established scientifically, precautionary measures should be taken if the product or activity may pose a threat to health or the environment – and ordered that the transformer stop operating until the possible link to the increase in cancer cases was clarified. But the substation is still generating electricity.
Based on the court precedent, residents of Berazategui are demanding that Rigolleau be relocated before it begins operating. But their efforts have so far been unsuccessful, and there are suspicions that the transformer is already running.
“They tell us we have to prove that Rigolleau pollutes. But it is the other way around: it is the state and the company that have to give us scientific certainty that there will be no long-term health impacts,” Vanesa Salgado told Tierramérica*.
Salgado is a member of the Forum for the Rights of Children, Adolescents and Young People of Berazategui. Her two children attend a school located 150 metres from the plant, whose underground cable runs underneath that building as well as another school.
In 2004, when Edesur decided to install the plant there, the neighborhood began to mobilise. Local residents had been warned by people from Ezpeleta about the imperceptible danger posed by exposure to electromagnetic radiation, which varies in intensity depending on demand for energy throughout the day.
Edesur did not respond to their requests for information. According to Salgado, “they say they are within the legal limits” for emissions. The national electricity regulatory agency, ENRE, backs the position taken by the company. And if it is taking the regular measurements that it is required to take, it has not informed the community of the results.
Edesur and ENRE cite Energy Secretariat Resolution 77/98, signed in 1998, which established an upper limit of 25 microteslas (µT) – the unit used to measure magnetic fields – for this kind of radiation. “But that resolution is a technical norm, and doesn’t take into account health impacts on the population living around the substation,” Salgado said.
© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service