Assessment of personal exposure from radiofrequency-electromagnetic fields in Australia and Belgium using on-body calibrated exposimeters

Bhatt, Chhavi Raj; Thielens, Arno; Billah, Baki; Redmayne, Mary; Abramson, Michael J.; Sim, Malcolm Ross; Vermeulen, Roel; Martens, Luc; Joseph, Wout; Benke, Geza

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2016.08.022

Cited by 48 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Joseph et al 32 measured a median total E RMS value of 0.09 V/m over several rural locations in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Bhatt et al 1 measured an average E RMS value of 0.07 ± 0.04 V/m in rural environments in Belgium. Both previous studies of rural RF-EMF exposure are close to what we found in this manuscript and certainly within the measurement uncertainty of 3 dB on our measurements.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure of Western Honey Bees

Thielens

Greco

Verloock

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) can be absorbed in all living organisms, includingWestern Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera). This is an ecologically and economically important global insect species that is continuously exposed to environmental RF-EMFs. This exposure is studied numerically and experimentally in this manuscript. To this aim, numerical simulations using honey bee models, obtained using micro-CT scanning, were implemented to determine RF absorbed power as a function of frequency in the 0.6 to 120 GHz range. Five different models of honey bees were obtained and simulated: two workers, a drone, a larva, and a queen. The simulations were combined with in-situ measurements of environmental RF-EMF exposure near beehives in Belgium in order to estimate realistic exposure and absorbed power values for honey bees. Our analysis shows that a relatively small shift of 10% of environmental incident power density from frequencies below 3 GHz to higher frequencies will lead to a relative increase in absorbed power of a factor higher than 3.Wireless communication is a widespread and growing technology. Most of the wireless networks and personal devices operate using Radio-Frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields (EMFs). The current networks rely on frequencies between 0.1 GHz and 6 GHz 1 . These EMFs can be absorbed in dielectric media and can cause dielectric heating 2 . This dielectric heating can occur in any living organism, including insects.Absorption of RF EMFs in insects has been studied previously. Wang et al. 3 studied absorption of RF EMFs in mashed codling moth larvae at 27 MHz and 915 MHz. Shrestha et al. 4 studied dielectric heating of Cryptolestes ferrungineus S. in different stages (eggs, larvae, pupae, and adults) at 27 MHz. Shayesteh et al. 5 exposed Tribolium confusum and Plodia interpunctella to RF EMFs at 2450 MHz 6-8 . are reviews of RF heating of insects. Dielectric porperties of insects are measured by Nelson et al. 9 from 0.2 to 20 GHz through the determination of loss of RF EMF power in insect samples (rice weevil, red flour beetle, saw-toothed grain beetle, and lesser grain borer). Absorption of RF EMFs was studied by Halverson et al. 10 in insects between 10-50 GHz. Thielens et al. 11 used numerical simulations to study absorption of RF EMFs from 2-120 GHz in four insect models. The main conclusions from the aforementioned studies are that (i) RF EMFs can be absorbed and can cause dielectric heating in insects and (ii) this absorption of RF-EMFs is frequency dependent. This frequency dependency is important since 5th generation (5 G) networks are expected to partially operate at higher frequencies (up to 300 GHz) 12,13 . This shift might induce a change in RF EMF absorption for insects 11 .Western Honey Bees (Apis Mellifera) are particularly important insects because of the environmental and economical importance of this species. Therefore, previous studies have focused on the potential effects of EMF exposure of Western Honey Bees. Low-frequency EM properties and exposure of ho...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure of Western Honey Bees

Thielens

Greco

Verloock

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…All E values were translated to power density (Sinc) values using: Sinc = E²/377, in each frequency band. During measurements where two ExpoM-RF devices were used simultaneously by the same researcher, geometric means of Sinc obtained with the two ExpoM-RFs were computed using the formula: Geometric mean= (Sinc,1 × Sinc,2) 1/2 , since this reduced the measurement uncertainty on the mean (Thielens et al, 2015;Bhatt et al, 2016b).…”

Section: Data Processing and Statistical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous findings (Beekhuizen et al 2013;Sagar et al, 2016;Urbinello et al 2014a) suggest that a path that requires at least 15 min of transportation time yields a reproducible arithmetic mean exposure measure. However, measured RF-EMF data can show a highly non-Gaussian distribution (Bhatt et al, 2016b), which implies that small (logarithmic) changes in the data could have a large effect on the arithmetic mean. Thirdly, there have been almost no studies that validate PEM measurements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These are mainly caused by shielding of the body and detuning of the measurement device in the presence of the body (Bolte, 2016;Gajšek et al, 2015;Iskra et al, 2011;Neubauer et al, 2010;Thielens et al, 2015). The measurement uncertainties could be reduced by using an on-body calibration of the PEMs (Bolte, 2016;Bhatt et al, 2016b) and averaging over multiple devices on the body (Thielens et al, 2016). This led to the development of a personal distributed exposimeter (PDE) (Thielens et al, 2013), in the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) 900 MHz downlink (DL) band.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This led to the development of a personal distributed exposimeter (PDE) (Thielens et al, 2013), in the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) 900 MHz downlink (DL) band. This frequency band was chosen for prototyping, since it is one of the highest contributors to total DL exposure from mobile phone base stations (Bhatt et al, 2016a(Bhatt et al, , 2016bSagar et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Representativeness and repeatability of microenvironmental personal and head exposures to radio-frequency electromagnetic fields

Thielens

Bossche

Brzozek

et al. 2018

Environmental Research

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The aims of this study were to: i) investigate the repeatability and representativeness of personal radio frequency-electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) exposure measurements, across different microenvironments, ii) perform simultaneous evaluations of personal RF-EMF exposures for the whole body and the head, iii) validate the data obtained with a head-worn personal distributed exposimeter (PDE) against those obtained with an on-body worn personal exposimeter (PEM). Data on personal and head RF-EMF exposures were collected by performing measurements across 15 microenvironments in Melbourne, Australia. A body-worn PEM and a head-worn PDE were used for measuring body and head exposures, respectively. The summary statistics obtained for total RF-EMF exposure showed a high representativeness (r > 0.66 for two paths in the same area) and a high repeatability over time (r > 0.87 for repetitions of the same path). The median head exposure in the 900MHz downlink band ranged between 0.06V/m and 0.31V/m. The results obtained during simultaneous measurements using the two devices showed high correlations (0.42 < r < 0.94). The highest mean total RF-EMF exposure was measured in Melbourne's central business district (0.89V/m), whereas the lowest mean total exposure was measured in a suburban residential area (0.05V/m). This study shows that personal RF-EMF microenvironmental measurements in multiple microenvironments have high representativeness and repeatability over time. The personal RF-EMF exposure levels (i.e. body and head exposures) demonstrated moderate to high correlations.

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