Evaluation of Chinese population exposure to environmental electromagnetic field based on stochastic dosimetry and parametric human modelling

Abstract

Overview

This study aimed to estimate the whole-body averaged specific absorption rate (WBSAR) among the Chinese adult population when exposed to environmental electromagnetic fields (EMFs) of contemporary wireless communication frequencies. This research utilized measurable physique parameters to explore the frequency-dependent dosimetric results.

Methodology

• The physique distribution data for Chinese adults was sourced from the National Physical Fitness and Health Database, including 81,490 adult samples.
• Through mutual information analysis, the number of physique parameters was minimized to three in constructing surrogate models.
• Stochastic methods combined with polynomial chaos expansion were employed to create gender-specific surrogate models reliant on frequency.

Findings

The anatomically correct models were built conforming to targeted physique parameters using a deformable human modelling technique integrated with deep learning from an image database of 767 Chinese adults. Validation of the dosimetric results was performed using finite-difference time-domain simulations, with an error below 6% across all frequencies tested for WBSAR.

This study first introduced a population-based distribution of WBSAR across Chinese adults, indicating significant impacts of different combinations of physique parameters dependent on gender and frequency on WBSAR.

Conclusion

The investigation confirmed the general conservativeness of current guidelines by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection for the surveyed population. It illustrated the feasibility of using a limited number of physique parameters to estimate individual WBSAR efficiently, thereby advancing our understanding of population-wide exposure to RF--EMF at current wireless frequencies.