Calculation of Electric Field Induced in the Human Body for Simultaneous Exposure to Spatially Uniform ELF Electric and Magnetic Fields With a Phase Difference

Abstract

International exposure guidelines such as ICNIRP guidelines and IEEE C95.1 standard are published to protect human from potential adverse health effect. These guidelines and standards establish the limit for the induced electric field, also called the basic restriction. The permissible external field strength—known as the reference level—is then conservatively derived from the basic restriction. Though the reference level is calculated assuming that the human body is exposed to electric or magnetic fields separately, in reality, simultaneous exposure to both fields may occur. Such exposures are particularly likely when a human body is positioned under overhead transmission lines. Under such circumstances, a phase difference between the electric and magnetic fields occur due to the phase difference between the power line’s voltage and current. We investigated the impact of external electric and magnetic field phase differences on the induced electric field in numerical human models. This was done under simultaneous exposure to a spatially uniform vertical electric field and horizontal magnetic fields at 50 Hz. Our computational findings revealed that the strength of the induced electric field fluctuates with the phase difference and that the variation caused by this difference varies across different body parts. The basic restrictions of the ICNIRP guidelines were met under the simultaneous exposure to electric and magnetic fields at the reference level, even when considering the phase difference.

Keywords

• Anatomical human models
• dosimetry
• extremely low frequency electric and magnetic field
• human safety