Wire codes, introduced by Wertheimer and Leeper, are interesting largely because several case-control studies have reported associations between them and certain types of cancers, including childhood leukemia. This paper is concerned with the reliability of wire codes as a surrogate for residential electric and magnetic field, divided into four categories based on the electrical wiring within 40m of homes. To examine the correlation between spot measurements and wire codes, EMF was measured by using HI-3604 and classified by wire codes. The correlation between long-transformed RMS of magnetic field and wire codes was 0.81. But the correlation between log-transformed RMS of electric field and wire codes was 0.27. The results led us to determine a four category from of the Wertheimer and Leeper code that 1) may be useful in domestic epidemiological studies and 2) is not suitable for electric field exposure. Thus, the critical point of exposure assessment in residential magnetic field is to classify a wire code precisely.
(0)
(0)