Abstract
This study focused on the evaluation of the exposure of children aging from five to fourteen years to 50 Hz homogenous magnetic field uncertain orientation using stochastic dosimetry. Surrogate models allowed assessing how the variation of the orientation of the magnetic field influenced the induced electric field in each tissue of the central nervous system (CNS) and in the peripheral nervous system (PNS) of children. Results showed that the electric field induced in CNS and PNS tissues of children were within the ICNIRP basic restrictions for general public and that no significant difference was found in the level of exposure of children of different ages when considering 10000 possible orientations of the magnetic field. A “mean stochastic model,” useful to estimate the level of exposure in each tissue of a representative child in the range of age from five to fourteen years, was developed. In conclusion, this study was useful to deepen knowledge about the ELF-MF exposure, including the evaluation of variable and uncertain conditions, thus representing a step towards a more realistic characterization of the exposure to EMF.
Highlights
Low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF), such as magnetic fields generated by transmission of electricity power lines, are ubiquitous in daily life
The variability of the exposure in terms of E99th in the central nervous system (CNS) due to the change in the orientation of the B-field was low for all the children models, resulting in Quartile Coefficient of Dispersion (QCD) values lower than 5%
Most of previous studies assessing the exposure to homogeneous magnetic fields due to common Extremely low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF) sources as power lines, modelled them as uniform magnetic fields polarized in three orthogonal directions, discarding all the other possible orientations
Summary
Low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF), such as magnetic fields generated by transmission of electricity power lines, are ubiquitous in daily life. Starting from the late 1970s, many studies focused on a possible association, firstly suggested by Wertheimer and Leeper [2], between long-term exposure to ELF-EMF and an increased risk of childhood cancer (see, e.g., [3]), with an overall conclusion that the exposure to low frequency magnetic fields could be associated with an increased risk of leukaemia in children. This last possibility led the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) [4] to classify ELF magnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in 2002. Two previous studies [13, 14] dealt with
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