Evaluation of farmers' OSH hazard in operationnearby mobile telephone radio base stations

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, the authors investigated in the farmers' EMF exposures when they operate in the vicinity of mobile telephone RBSs in order to assess if in the operating frequency range of a transmitting station used by mobile phone service the limits imposed by the Italian laws are kept into proper consideration. Three mobile telephone RBSs having different geometrical and technical features, placed on rural areas of the Apulia Region have been considered. By means of a series of parallelepipeds constructed using a piece of software specifically designed it is possible to state that effective electric field that each of the three investigated stations produced was such that the exposure levels to which farmers are subjected in the surrounding SRB areas are safely within the Italian law limits.Keywords: risk assessment, electromagnetic field, cellular network, farmers' exposure, EC Directive 2013/35. IntroductionThe agricultural sector is one of the professional activities most affected by injuries also because several operations, such as pruning, pesticide treatments, harvesting, and so on, still require the direct man's involvement, which is therefore subject to specific risk factors [1][2][3]. In some cases farmers can also operate on agricultural areas contaminated by potential risk situations without their awareness [4][5] as when they are involved in activities both in open-field and within enclosed productive structures in the surrounding areas of radio base stations (RBSs) [6][7]. These RBSs can be placed close to crops that require a lot of activities (i.e. horticultural cultivations, "tendone" trained vineyards, olive orchards, and so on), so that workers, each day in which they perform their job activity, spend a considerable number of hours in their neighbourhood, with no kind of preventive measure to protect against the possible dangerous effect related to the presence of an electromagnetic field [8][9].The irradiation of signal takes place by means of time-varying of both electric field and magnetic field, which permits the transmission of a given amount of energy using electromagnetic waves [10][11] The Italian Safety Consolidation Act[12]among the various risks for workers' safety included also the risk related to the exposition, during the work, to electromagnetic fields (0 Hz ÷ 300 GHz). This law concerns the safety and health risk protection against the known short term dangerous effects related to induced current circulation and energy absorption inside the human body and arises by the transposition of the ICNIRP recommendations [13] and the EU Directive[14]into national legislation, and their applications were at first established on 30 April 2008 and afterwards delayed by further Directives [15][16]. The exposure limits to EMF for the general public in the frequency range 100 kHz to 300 GHz have been also implemented into Italian legislation [17], according to the ICNIRP guidelines.In this paper the authors investigated the farmers' exposures who perform their job in the vicinity of...

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