While compiling this situation report, I was surprised to find so many new studies on topics I thought had already been studied quite extensively. Perhaps researchers are now more intrigued by the potential health effects related to extremely low-frequency fields than they were a few years ago.
The actual piece of news is that the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) published their new exposure guidelines in December 2010. The new guidelines have been revised to reflect the changed biological basis, as the exposure guidelines are no longer presented as current densities but as values for internal electric fields.
The bulletin also includes a brief report from the Bioelectromagnetics Society’s annual meeting in South Korea last summer. I mainly focus on presenting some papers published at the conference by the Tampere University of Technology. What I remember best about the conference was the way in which electromagnetic fields will be applied in future technologies. For example, MRI image quality can be clearly improved if the scanning is done using higher fields than today. Another interesting application is to use magnetic fields for supplying power for buses. Electromagnetic fields can be utilised in a wide range of technical innovations. It is quite easy to overlook the positive aspects related to these fields when you only focus on exploring their potential harmful health effects.
I conclude the bulletin with my own publication. It is a follow-up on my articles that discussed measurements carried out at 400 kV substations. The results were earlier examined by analysing the maximum values for electric fields, measured currents and calculated current densities. This time we investigated work tasks carried out on service platforms, studying mean values for the entire measurement period and not just the maximum values. You can read more about the results in the last section of the bulletin.
The summary of the second situation report bulletin for the year 2010 is published online in English.
Hope you enjoy reading this summary in English!
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