Comparison of specific absorption rate induced in brain tissues of a child and an adult using mobile phone

Abstract

The steady increase of mobile phone usage, especially mobile phones by children, has led to a rising concern about the possible adverse health effects of radio frequency electromagnetic field exposure. The objective of this work is to study whether there is a larger radio frequency energy absorption in the brain of a child compared to that of an adult. For this reason, three high-resolution models, two child head models (6 - and 11-year old) and one adult head model (34-year old) have been used in the study. A finite-difference time-domain method was employed to calculate the specific absorption rate (SAR) in the models from exposure to a generic handset at 1750 MHz. The results show that the SAR distributions in the human brain are age-dependent, and there is a deeper penetration of the absorbed SAR in the child’s brain. The induced SAR can be significantly higher in subregions of the child’s brain. In all of the examined cases, the SAR values in the brains of a child and an adult are well below the IEEE safety standard.