Impact of head morphology on local brain specific absorption rate from exposure to mobile phone radiation.
Adibzadeh F, Bakker JF, Paulides MM, Verhaart RF, van Rhoon GC. · 2014
View Original AbstractIndividual head anatomy causes mobile phone radiation absorption to vary up to 16-fold between people, making standard safety tests inadequate.
Plain English Summary
Researchers used computer models to study how mobile phone radiation is absorbed in the brains of 20 different people with varying head shapes and sizes. They found that radiation absorption (called SAR) varied dramatically between individuals - up to 16 times higher in some people compared to others, depending on their unique head anatomy. This means current safety testing, which uses only standard dummy heads, may not accurately predict radiation exposure for real people with different head shapes.
Why This Matters
This research exposes a fundamental flaw in how we assess mobile phone safety. The science demonstrates that using generic head models - the current industry standard - creates massive blind spots in our understanding of individual radiation exposure. When absorption rates can vary by more than 16-fold between real people, it means some individuals may be receiving far higher doses than safety tests suggest. What this means for you is that current SAR ratings on phones represent averages that may not reflect your personal exposure level. The reality is that your head size, shape, and tissue composition all influence how much radiation your brain absorbs during calls. This variability helps explain why some people may be more susceptible to EMF-related health effects than others, and why population-wide studies sometimes show mixed results.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study. The study examined exposure from: 835 and 1900 MHz
Study Details
In this study, we performed detailed dosimetric simulations for 20 head models and quantified the variation of RF dose in different brain regions as a function of head morphology
Head models were exposed to RF fields from generic mobile phones at 835 and 1900 MHz in the "tilted"...
The results show that the variation in the averaged SAR among the heads can reach up to 16.4 dB at a...
In conclusion, we show head morphology as an important uncertainty source for dosimetric studies of mobile phones. Therefore, any dosimetric analysis dealing with RF dose at a specific region in the brain (e.g., tumor risk analysis) should be based upon real morphology.
Show BibTeX
@article{f_2014_impact_of_head_morphology_1806,
author = {Adibzadeh F and Bakker JF and Paulides MM and Verhaart RF and van Rhoon GC.},
title = {Impact of head morphology on local brain specific absorption rate from exposure to mobile phone radiation.},
year = {2014},
url = {https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25399806/},
}