Objective: Studies had suggested that risk of leukemia might be associated with occupational or residential exposures to electromagnetic fields and varied at distance to and level of the exposure or type of occupations. Through pooled analyses, etiologic insight on the associations between exposure and disease might be explained.
Methods: We carried out a Meta-analysis based on primary data (1980 - 2010) from 9 studies related to the electric and magnetic fields exposure and acute myeloid leukemia in adults to assess whether the combined results, adjusted for potential confounding, would indicate an association between them.
Results: In this study the overall estimated OR value was 1.24 (95%CI: 1.11 - 1.37). The odds ratios for exposure categories of 0.1 - 0.2 µT, ≥ 0.2 µT, compared with < 0.1 µT, were 1.17 (95%CI: 0.98 - 1.39) and 1.51 (95%CI: 1.15 - 1.98), respectively.
Conclusion: Through employing the alternate cut points, stratification by level of exposure or distance and the relation on different ways of exposure, there appeared consistent evidence of increased risk between acute myeloid leukemia in adults and the extremely low frequency-electromagnetic to field exposure.