Abstract

Abstract

Overview

Assessing exposure to intermediate frequency (IF) electromagnetic fields (EMFs) has been challenging, limiting epidemiological studies. This research provides a novel methodology to estimate pregnant women's exposure to IF-EMFs from induction cookers in household settings.

Method

• Development and validation of an exposure estimation model through two phases of home-visit surveys.
• Variables in model: wattage, cookware diameter, distance from the hob center.
• Constructed four models to evaluate variables' importance and general applicability.
• Comparison between estimated exposure values from responses and actual measurements using Spearman rank correlation.

Findings

The measured average magnetic field was 0.23 μT at a 30 cm horizontal distance, showing diverse correlations between the models with no significant differences among them.

Conclusion

This initial comprehensive measurement of magnetic fields from over 70 induction cookers offers insights into the dose-response relationships needed for future epidemiological studies on IF exposure. A limitation noted was the estimation of instantaneous exposure during cooking only.