Apr 3, 2012
NIS-Monitoring Schweiz: Eine Konzept- und Machbarkeitsstudie
G. Dürrenberger, A. Bürgi, J. Fröhlich, N. Kuster, M. Röösli, P. Frei, S. Kühn, O. Lauer, and J. Baumann
BAFU, Sektion NIS, 3003 Bern, Switzerland, February 2012
The IT'IS Foundation participated in a study mandated by the Swiss authorities to develop the concept of monitoring the typical exposure of the Swiss population to non-ionizing radiation (NIR). In particular the following 4 monitoring activities have been found economically and technically feasible. Two have been assigned first priority:
1) The repeated location based (microcompartment based) assessment of the exposure in typical human environments and the measurement of the exposure on predefined routes within those environments. This approach delivers information on technological trends, composition of exposure sources (with the exception of close to body sources).
2) Large-scale numerical models of the human exposure from large installations such as power lines, train infrastructure, mobile communication base stations. This approach allows a region-wide evaluation of exposure from large installation and can be linked and validated with information from existing spot monitoring installations.
Of second priority are:
3) Personal exposimetry, i.e., the assessment of the personal exposure (using exposimeters) of a representative sample. This apprach can be regarded as the gold standard as it determines the exposure in realistic scenarios. However, the method is technically challenging and costly and, in addition, close-to-body sources cannot be included in such a study.
4) The assessment of exposure from personal (close-to-body) devices. In this report a concept for a monitoring of close-to-body sources has been developed, which is the first of its kind worldwide. However, it is expected that due the complexity of the subject a relatively high effort will be required for the implementation.
The scientific impact of the report can be summarized as:
The presented study is one of the first studies to assess the feasibility and develop implementation strategies for a monitoring of human exposure to NIR. The concepts have been developed and classified with respect to technical and economical feasibly. The developed concept for close-to-body sources is the first that allows the monitoring of the exposure from this group of devices in the human population.
