Occupational exposures to radiofrequency fields: results of an Israeli national survey
Authors not listed · 2015
The Israeli national survey found that most routine occupational RF exposures were below 1% of ACGIH limits, but walkie-talkie, induction heating, and plastic welding workers had the highest exposures.
Plain English Summary
Researchers conducted an Israeli national survey of occupational radiofrequency field levels between 100 kHz and 40 GHz across 25 occupations. They recorded almost 4300 measurements from 900 sources and categorized exposures as routine, incidental, or unintended. The geometric mean of routine exposures was below 1% of ACGIH threshold limit values for most occupations, but walkie-talkie, induction heating, plastic welding, industrial heating, and diathermy workers had higher percentages. Incidental and unintended exposures exceeded the TLV for one and 14 occupations respectively. Walkie-talkie workers dominated collective exposure, accounting for 96.3% of the total.
Why This Matters
The authors noted that relatively high RF exposures can occur in broadcast, medical, and communications industries as well as in law enforcement. They reported that within-occupation geometric standard deviations were very large, so even though medians were below the limit, variable fractions of workers were projected to exceed it. The paper cautions that a brief exceedance of the TLV does not automatically indicate hazard because limits include a tenfold safety factor and are based on a six-minute averaging period.
Exposure Information
Specific exposure levels were not quantified in this study.
Show BibTeX
@article{occupational_exposures_to_radiofrequency_fields_results_of_an_israeli_national_survey_ce603,
author = {Unknown},
title = {Occupational exposures to radiofrequency fields: results of an Israeli national survey},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1088/0952-4746/35/2/429},
}