COMPARISON OF COUPLING OF HUMANS TO ELECTRIC AND MAGNETIC-FIELDS WITHFREQUENCIES BETWEEN 100 HZ AND 100 KHZ

Recent laboratory and epidemiological results have stimulated interest in the hypothesis that human beings may exhibit biological responses to magnetic and/or electric field transients with frequencies in the r ange between 100 Hz and 100 kHz. Much can be learned about the respons e of a system to a transient stimulation by understanding its response to sinusoidal disturbances over the entire frequency range of interes t. Thus, the main effort of this paper was to compare the strengths of the electric fields induced in homogeneous ellipsoidal models by unif orm 100 Hz through 100 kHz electric and magnetic fields. Over this fre quency range, external electric fields of about 25-2000 V/m (depending primarily on the orientation of the body relative to the field) are r equired to induce electric fields inside models of adults and children that are similar in strength to those induced by an external 1 mu T m agnetic field. Additional analysis indicates that electric fields indu ced by uniform external electric and magnetic fields and by the nonuni form electric and magnetic fields produced by idealized point sources will not differ by more than a factor of two until the sources are bro ught close to the body. Published data on electric and magnetic field transients in residential environments indicate that, for most field o rientations, the magnetic component will induce stronger electric fiel ds inside adults and children than the electric component. This conclu sion is also true for the currents induced in humans by typical levels of 60 Hz electric and magnetic fields in U.S. residences. (C) 1997 Wi ley-Liss, Inc.