Dosimetry Evaluation in the Fetuses for Pregnant Rats Exposed to 1.95-GHz Cellular Phones

Abstract

In this paper, the dosimetry for pregnant rats and their fetuses in an in vivo exposure setup is conducted by using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method in conjunction with anatomically based pregnant rat models. The exposure setup has been developed for testing possible indirect biological effects on fetuses when the pregnant rats are exposed to 1.95- GHz digital cellular phones. As a result, it is found that the whole-body average specific absorption rate (SAR) for the fetuses varies between 0.02 - 0.40 W/kg when the brain-average SAR for the mother rats varies between 1.4 - 2.6 W/kg. For an input antenna power of 0.67 W which yields a brain-average SAR of 2 W/kg, almost 85% of the whole-body average SARs for the fetuses are within 0.04 - 0.20 W/kg. These SAR values exhibit a quite low level, only half of the whole-body average SAR for the mother rats in most of cases. The low SAR level in the fetuses is unlikely to cause any thermal stress.