Potential health impacts of residential exposures to extremely low frequency magnetic fields in Europe

By assigning the literature review-based exposure distribution to all EU27 countries, we estimated the total annual number of cases of leukaemia attributable to ELF MF at between ~ 50 (95% CIs: − 14, 132) and ~ 60 (95% CIs: − 9, 610), depending on whether exposure-response was modelled categorically or continuously, respectively, for a non-threshold effect. This corresponds to between ~ 1.5% and ~ 2.0% of all incident cases of childhood leukaemia occurring annually in the EU27. Considerable uncertainties are due to scarce data on exposure and the choice of exposure-response model, demonstrating the importance of further research into better understanding mechanisms of the potential association between ELF MF exposure and childhood leukaemia and the need for improved monitoring of residential exposures to ELF MF in Europe.