Lou Gaudio is an artist--he builds big, beautiful homes. Normally, they are snapped up lickity-split, but eight recent houses he built in North York are taking longer to sell than he thought and he blames their proximity to powerlines and the media fuss over studies that purport to show a link between electric-magnetic fields (EMF) and certain kinds of cancer.
Gaudio bought the properties on Charlton Street, northwest of Finch and Yonge in the spring of 1998 and had the model home built by early fall. Over the next year, he completed work on seven other houses, four on the south side of the street with backyards adjacent to a field that has powerline towers and four on the north side, some 100 meters away from the powerlines.
He sold the four houses on the north side by mid-winter, despite a sizeable premium for their location. It was not until the summer of 1999, one year after beginning this project, that he sold a house on the south side. He told Toronto Free Press many interested home buyers expressed concern about the powerlines.
Gaudio said he expected it would take "a little longer than normal" to sell the houses because of the powerlines, but is surprised it is taking so long. The four and five bedroom houses, which sell for about $500,000 include a finished basement, are between 4,250 and 4,580 square feet and are luxuriously finished. They feature granite floors and countertops, cornice molding, luminous 10 X 10 funnelled skylights, hardwood floors, copious potlights, interlocking brick driveways, sizeable yards, and two-car garages. If such a house were located anywhere else, the pricetag would be three-quarters of a million dollars.
Each of the houses Gaudio has sold were bought by families with young children. Still, potential buyers are shaken by well-publicized reports showing an "association" between EMF and leukemia.
The developer blames "sensational media stories" for his difficulty in moving the properties. Just this spring, the Toronto Star had blazed with a headline: "Power lines linked to leukemia risk: Children face 2-4 times higher chance of cancer, study finds."
Furthermore, the Star quotes only the study's authors and Liz Armstrong, of the left-wing Stop Cancer Ontario, quaintly described as "an activist group demanding action on the environmental causes of cancer."
Nobody that was skeptical of the study was interviewed or quoted.
For her part, Armstrong said just because the evidence might not be conclusive, doesn't mean there should not be action taken. "Even if you can't prove (EMFs cause cancer), do we need to take the risk? What's the point of carrying on the way we've been?"
The authors of the most recent study include two Toronto researchers. Dr. Lois Green is a staff epidemiologist at Ontario Power Generation, who is also with the University of Toronto's Department of Public Health. Dr. Mark Greenberg is a pediatric oncologist at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Dr. Greenberg told Toronto Free Press that the research shows an "association" and that there is no proof that higher exposure rates cause leukemia. He said that many newspaper reports of this study and others like it lack context and fail to relate what exactly the studies show.
He said media coverage fails to delineate between an association and a cause-effect relationship. The difference is important, but seemingly lost on reporters and editors and therefore left unexplained to readers who are misled.
"It's irresponsible" Greenberg said, blaming much of the hysteria among the public on the media.
Neither the Toronto Star reporter or editor we contacted returned our calls.
Aside from how the media covers such studies are the public policy implications.
Greenberg said that for now the only action government should take is to fund more research. He said that there is not enough known about exposure to EMP and its link to cancer to do anything more ambitious than to study the issue some more. Based on the evidence, he said "you can not make public policy because we don't know the parameters of the issue."
Green was less cautious. In an interview with Toronto Free Press, she pointed to European and American initiatives that look to do something (what yet is unclear as Congress will not release its report until later this year) as a spur to Canadian action. Yet, she offered no specifics about what she would have government do.
Both Greenberg and Green said you can't get rid of hydro wires, and electricity is a part of the environment so little could be done even if a link were discovered. But they both said that parents with young children needed to be educated about various risk factors, of which EMF is just one. Green said parents have to consider a plethora of safety issues such as the speed and density of the traffic the children must deal with while walking to school or playing on the streets as examples of other health risks.
Powerlines "are another thing parents have to balance on their equation when looking where to live."
Gaudio cites a report that shows there is more radiation emanating from the average household microwave than the nearby powerlines. Indeed, Greenberg says there could be an association between various household appliances and leukemia. "I wouldn't be surprised if appliances such as dishwashers" were a "risk factor" he said. "My knees are at the level of a child's body," he noted suggesting another possible risk.
While Greenberg and Green were both much more responsibly cautious about the meaning of their findings than the media reports of their study, other studies have concluded that there is no link. In another case, a "study" claiming to show an EMF-cancer link was shown to be bogus.
Robert Lidurby's 1992 study was proven to be false when U.S. federal investigators found he had falsified data. It concluded that he discarded data that didn’t agree with his hypothesis that there is a EMF-cancer link.
Other studies cast doubt on any such link. The Daily Commercial News reported in July 1997 on a study showing there was no correlation between proximity to powerlines and leukemia. It quoted Dr. Lawrence Fischer, Director of the Institute for Environmental Toxicology at Michigan State University, who said "It makes you wonder how much more money we want to throw at this subject, because basically, we can't see anything definite."
That is an important point. That uncertainty frustrates potential homebuyers, indeed all consumers, as they hear and read about endless studies purporting to show this thing or that which is bad for you. Green stressed that personal comfort level is important but she took no blame for the mass hysteria over powerlines.
Some people, fortunately for Gaudio, don't put much confidence in such studies. In August and September he sold two of his four south side houses. But it was a long wait. "They're beautiful houses. Someone will come along eventually" he says confidently. But he is still angry with the media hype which is so ingrained in the public consciousness, that when Gaudio shows potential buyers numerous studies to the contrary, they are unmoved.
If you are interested in looking at either of Gaudio's two remaining luxury homes and are not frightened by the media hype, you can call Gaudio at (905) 887-1390.