Coupling Mechanism of EM with Biology

Background

Dosimetric research is often limited by phenomenological analyses and assumptions rather than rigorous scientific methods and analyses to determine the basic coupling mechanism between the incident electromagnetic field and the biological body. Understanding the underlying physics, however, is a precondition to derive complete solutions for real-world problems (e.g., assessing the health risk of body-mounted or hand-held transmitters and developing technically and scientifically sound procedures for demonstrating compliance). Investigations of the coupling of the human body to far-field sources already began in the late 1970s. Determining the coupling mechanisms for sources operating close to the human body has been one of our main research focuses.

Selected Past Achievements

The following basic coupling mechanisms were successfully derived:

• transmitters close to the body (e.g., Kuster & Balzano, 1992)
• exposure of the human body close to base station antennas (e.g., Gosselin et al., 2009)
• mechanism of partial body resonances (e.g., Li, 2012)
• coupling of implants (e.g., Kyriacou et al., 2011)

Next Challenges

• To determine the coupling mechanism of weak EMF with the human brain or cell biology. The main objective of the 2012 Workshop on EMF Health Risk Research: Lessons Learned and Recommendations for the Future in Monte Verita is to define the most promising research strategy to resolve this scientific conundrum
• To develop meaningful microdosimetric models for applications in biological processes for determining the underlying coupling mechanism.