Non-Ionising Electromagnetic Fields: Measurement of Exposure of City Dwellers in Urban Environments in Central Spain
Source abstract
Abstract
Despite existing protection limits established by different health agencies and regulatory bodies, chronic exposure to non-ionising electromagnetic field radiation (NIR) has raised concerns about its potential biological effects and its impact on human health. Exposure to NIR in urban environments is almost inevitable due to the density of devices and communication systems that emit these waves. Correctly measuring exposure levels among city residents is key to determining whether there is a relationship between these levels and potential health problems associated with NIR. Several factors, including the ubiquity of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and people’s unawareness of their exposure, make the NIR assessment challenging. This paper proposes a standardised procedure for NIR testing and measurement for frequencies from 100 kHz to 3 GHz, designed explicitly for outdoor urban environments. The measurement procedure is intended for populated urban areas, a complex environment for signal propagation. The complete procedure, techniques, and equipment used for wideband and narrowband measurements are detailed, along with their corresponding overall uncertainty budgets. The data collected by this procedure are suitable and valuable for comparative epidemiological studies due to a systematic measurement protocol and rigorous control of measurement uncertainty. The proposed measurement procedure has been tested in two cities in central Spain, with a total population of 262,000. A total of 534 measurement points have been performed. The results can be used to verify compliance with exposure limits and to demonstrate levels below the applicable regulatory limits. Furthermore, it has been possible to test the validity of the hypothesis that urban environments can be characterised by NIR exposure, which was postulated in this work based on an ITU-R-inspired simplification that classifies urban outdoor areas into representative exposure categories.
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Research context
OpenAlex topics: Electromagnetic Fields and Biological Effects · Millimeter-Wave Propagation and Modeling · Electromagnetic Compatibility and Measurements
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Departamento de Teoría de la Señal y Comunicaciones e Ingeniería Telemática, Universidad de Valladolid, ETSI Telecomunicación, Paseo de Belén 15, 47011 Valladolid, Spain
Funding
Consejería de Sanidad of Junta de Castilla y León
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