EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Three Quarters of a Century of Research on RF Exposure Assessment and Dosimetry—What Have We Learned?

Kenneth R. Foster, Marvin C. Ziskin and Quirino Balzano
Additional contact information
Kenneth R. Foster: Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Marvin C. Ziskin: Department of Radiology, Temple University Medical School, Philadelphia, PA 19140, USA
Quirino Balzano: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 4, 1-10

Abstract: This commentary, by three authors with an aggregate experience of more than a century in technology and health and safety studies concerning radiofrequency (RF) energy, asks what has been learned over the past 75 years of research on radiofrequency and health, focusing on technologies for exposure assessment and dosimetry. Research programs on health and safety of RF exposure began in the 1950s, initially motivated by occupational health concerns for military personnel, and later to address public concerns about exposures to RF energy from environmental sources and near-field exposures from RF transmitting devices such as mobile phones that are used near the body. While this research largely focused on the biological effects of RF energy, it also led to important improvements in exposure assessment and dosimetry. This work in the aggregate has made RF energy one of the best studied potential technological hazards and represents a productive response by large numbers of scientists and engineers, working in many countries and supported by diverse funding agencies, to the ever rapidly evolving uses of the electromagnetic spectrum. This review comments on present needs of the field, which include raising the quality of dosimetry in many RF bioeffects studies and developing improved exposure/dosimetric techniques for the higher microwave frequencies to be used by forthcoming communications technologies. At present, however, the major uncertainties in dosimetric modeling/exposure assessment are likely to be related to the inherent variability in real-world exposures, rather than imprecision in measurement technologies.

Keywords: radiofrequency radiation; exposure assessment; dosimetry; history; exposure limits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/4/2067/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/4/2067/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:4:p:2067-:d:748033

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:4:p:2067-:d:748033