Extremely low frequency magnetic field measurements in buildings with transformer stations in Switzerland
Authors not listed · 2011
Classifying apartments by their location relative to a transformer room proved a feasible way to estimate ELF magnetic field exposure in Swiss buildings.
Plain English Summary
Researchers measured extremely low frequency magnetic fields (ELF-MF) in 39 apartments across 18 Swiss buildings that contained transformer stations. Apartments fully adjacent to a transformer room had an arithmetic mean ELF-MF of 0.59 μT, while those only partly touching the transformer room averaged 0.14 μT, and the remaining apartments averaged 0.10 μT. The researchers concluded that apartment location relative to the transformer room could reduce the effort of exposure assessment and may help eliminate selection bias in future epidemiologic studies.
Why This Matters
Each apartment's rooms were measured at the same time using five to six EMDEX II meters for ten minutes per room. The study found a distinct ELF-MF exposure gradient in buildings with a transformer, meaning levels varied clearly depending on how close an apartment was to the transformer room. To judge whether the location-based classification matched actual measurements, the researchers calculated a kappa coefficient of 0.64 (95% confidence interval: 0.45 to 0.82) when only fully adjacent apartments were treated as highly exposed (above 0.4 μT).
Show BibTeX
@article{extremely_low_frequency_magnetic_field_measurements_in_buildings_with_transformer_stations_in_switzerland_ce1338,
author = {Unknown},
title = {Extremely low frequency magnetic field measurements in buildings with transformer stations in Switzerland},
year = {2011},
doi = {10.1016/j.scitotenv.2011.05.041},
}