APPW2025

Chairperson：Tomohiro Tominaga（Japan Electrical Safety & Environment Technology Laboratories - Japan EMF Information Center）

Co-hosted by: Japan Electrical Safety & Environment Technology Laboratories - Japan EMF Information Center

In recent years, there has been a remarkable increase in the sources of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and their diversity, both for personal and business purposes. While these technologies enhance our daily lives by making them more convenient and comfortable, the use of electricity inevitably generates EMFs, which raises concerns among the public about health effects. The International EMF Project, initiated by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1996, aims to assess the health risks associated with various EMFs, including static fields (0 Hz), extremely low-frequency fields (ELF; >0–300 Hz), intermediate-frequency fields (IF; 300 Hz–10 MHz), and radio-frequency fields (RF; 10 MHz–300 GHz).
To date, WHO has completed health risk assessments for static and low-frequency EMFs up to 100 kHz and commenced task group meetings in 2023 to evaluate the health risks of RF EMFs.
In this presentation, I will cover the following topics:
1.WHO's health risk assessment methodology;
2.Environmental Health Criteria 238, published in 2007, regarding low-frequency EMFs;
3.The updated exposure protection guidelines issued in 2010 by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), based on WHO's risk assessment findings;
4.The contribution of power-frequency magnetic field exposure to childhood leukemia risk, etc.

【References】
1.WHO International EMF Project :
https://www.who.int/health-topics/electromagnetic-fields#tab=tab_1
2.ICNIRP: https://www.icnirp.org/
3.EHC (2007), Environmental Health Criteria 238, ISBN 978-92-4-157238-5
4.WHO (2007) - Fact Sheet N°322,
5.ICNIRP (2010) Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Time-Varying Electric and Magnetic Fields (1 Hz - 100 kHz). Health Physics 99(6):818-836