Methodology of a study on the French population exposure to 50 Hz magnetic fields

Abstract

The characterisation of population exposure to a 50-Hz magnetic field (MF) is important for assessing health effects of electromagnetic fields. With the aim of estimating and characterising the exposure of the French population to 50-Hz MFs, two representative samples of the population were made. A random selection method based on the distribution of households in different regions of France was used. The samples were carried out starting from a random polling of telephone numbers of households (listed, unlisted fixed phones and cell phones only). A total of 95,362 telephone numbers were dialed to have 2148 volunteers (1060 children and 1088 adults). They all agreed to carrying an EMDEX II meter, measuring and recording MFs, and to filling out a timetable for a 24-hour period. In this article, the methodology of the sample selection and the collection of all necessary information for the realisation of this study are presented.

Impact of high electromagnetic field levels on childhood leukemia incidence

“…To gain a better insight into the proportion of highly exposed children, it can be helpful to perform nationwide surveys. In some countries, such studies are already ongoing 77…”

Use of Machine Learning in the Analysis of Indoor ELF MF Exposure in Children

“…A database of personal exposure measurements to ELF MF in children was analyzed. The data came from the EXPERS study [5,6] and consisted of exposure measurements recorded from children aged 0–14 years located in France. The database contained the recordings from 977 children located in rural or urban places (948 children) and in Paris (29 children) (for more details about the areas under test, see [6]).…”

“…Previous studies evidenced that daily average exposures >0.4 μT increased the risk of childhood leukemia’s onset, without any causal relationship [2,3,4]. To further investigate their possible relationship with children leukemia, several studies were conducted to measure personal exposure to ELF in children in Europe [5,6,7,8,9], United States [10,11,12,13,14,15], and Asia [16,17,18].…”

“…This is the first time that ML has been used for the characterization of ELF exposure scenarios in children. Cluster analysis was applied to personal exposure measurements recorded in the EXPERS study [5,6] from children living in France to identify clusters of children with similar exposure levels and similar exposure scenarios (i.e., similar electric network configuration in the proximity of the home or school). The aim of the paper was neither to demonstrate the influence of ELF exposure on children Leukemia, nor to present a novel measurement study of personal ELF exposure.…”

Cluster Analysis of Residential Personal Exposure to ELF Magnetic Field in Children: Effect of Environmental Variables

“…In the first decade of the 2000s, some studies [2,3,4] showed that the risk of childhood leukemia increased for daily average MF exposures >0.4 μT, without evidencing a causal relationship. Since then, an ever increasing number of studies and campaigns were implemented throughout the world to measure ELF MF in children and thus provide realistic data about the level of personal exposures in everyday settings [5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18].…”