As stated in the Preface and Introductory Remarks, this special issue of Space Science Reviews contains selected papers on ‘Power Line Radiation and its Coupling to the Ionosphere and Magnetosphere’ as a typical example of man-made and natural radio interactions in our environment. Most of the papers were presented originally at the Vth International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility sponsored by the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), Wroclaw, Poland, 17–19 September, 1980 and a few of them similar to the Wroclaw papers were presented at the XXth General AssemblyofURSI, Washington, D.C., 10–19 August, 1981. Accordingly, this topic has received considerable attention not only in an EMC community but also in a broader forum of radio, plasma and space scientists and engineers. Because of this, it has been suggested that it would be beneficial to make the Wroclaw papers available to those who are interested in this subject but were not able to participate in the Wroclaw Symposium. D. Reidel Publishing Company has agreed to publish them in their Space Science Reviews as a special issue of its journal in an expanded version with some additional articles. As a result, nine of the thirteen chapters originated at the Wroclaw Symposium and one is a combined version oftwo Wroclaw and URSI papers, with three additional papers. The final result is the collection of these papers containing reviews and original research results that cover several important topics of man-made and natural radio noise interactions in a composite environment.