What input data are needed to accurately model electromagnetic fields from mobile phone base stations?

Аннотация

Previous observational studies on potential health effects from radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) from mobile phone base stations have applied several methods to assess exposure. Performing measurements could be perceived as a superior approach to obtain exposure estimates for study participants,1–4 but is very time intensive and can therefore be prohibitive in large epidemiological studies. Other studies have applied surrogate measures as proxies for exposure, such as average density and power output of antennas per area,5 or distance to the closest mobile phone base station.6,7 However, such simple exposure proxies have been shown to correlate poorly with measured exposure levels,8 which means that study participants are likely to be misclassified hampering the assessment of the presence or absence of health effects.