The EU Directive on Electromagnetic Fields—Practical Experience of Field Measurements

Abstract

The EU directive on exposure to electromagnetic fields was published in 2004, but due to some problems it was not introduced in the EU countries before 2016. However, still today, many companies are not aware of the legislation and have not taken measures to comply. This could perhaps be due to some of the practical problems they are facing in trying to comply. Here, we address some of these problems, such as showing compliance with the action levels for non-sinusoidal extremely low-frequency magnetic fields, time-averaging for the initial start-up current of handheld machines and time-averaging of radiofrequency fields when measuring plastic welding machines, including the uncertainty in the measurements. Finally, we discuss some of the problem concerning workers with special needs.

Keywords

• radiofrequency
• plastic welding
• extremely low-frequency magnetic field
• spot welding
• harmonic content
• instrumentation