DESIGNING EMF EXPERIMENTS - WHAT IS REQUIRED TO CHARACTERIZE EXPOSURE

Anyone who has attempted to organize and synthesize the results of res earch on biological effects of electric and magnetic fields (EMF) has experienced frustration when trying to evaluate the comparability of E MF exposures among separate studies. Reporting of exposure characteris tics is often incomplete, and some investigators focus on particular n uances of exposure, which in other laboratories go unrecorded because they are not regarded as important. The obstacles encountered when com paring studies, when designing replication studies, and when evaluatin g research proposals could be reduced were a more standardized approac h taken in describing ''EMF exposure.'' To this end, a numerical listi ng of 18 separate parameters important to EMF exposure characterizatio n is proposed. Although the goal of this list is primarily to expedite the description of EMF exposure, references are provided to examples of EMF exposures and to detailed discussions of EMF exposure systems. (C) 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.