Health physics
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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the potential for electromagnetic interference (EMI) and to assess the immunity level of implantable pacemakers (PM) when exposed to the radiofrequency (RF) field generated by Wi-Fi devices. Ten PM from five manufacturers, representative of what today is implanted in patients, have been tested in vitro and exposed to the signal generated by a Wi-Fi transmitter. An exposure setup that reproduces the actual IEEE 802.11b/g protocol has been designed and used during the tests. ⋯ The results of this study mitigate concerns about using Wi-Fi devices close to PM: none of the PM tested exhibit any degradation of their performance, even when exposed to RF field levels five times higher than those allowed by current international regulation (20 W EIRP). In conclusion, Wi-Fi devices do not pose risks of EMI to implantable PM. The immunity level of modern PM is much higher than the transmitting power of RF devices operating at 2.4 GHz.
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In areas contaminated by radioactive materials, well designed dose assessment is necessary in order to protect people from radiation exposure and manage the exposure situation appropriately. Probabilistic dose assessment is a useful method for providing a more complete characterization of information on dose distributions in the population and requires statistically characterized data on pathway-relevant contributors. The objective of this paper is to determine statistical features of contributors to external exposures, as well as to identify causes of variabilities of individual doses to the populations living in areas contaminated by the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. ⋯ Results showed that the ambient dose equivalent rate also distributed with lognormal form, and it had variabilities attributable to the spatial distribution of deposited radionuclides. The distribution form of time spent outdoors depends on the characteristics of occupation, and the distributions for indoor workers and outdoor workers were lognormal and normal, respectively. Results of a multiple-regression analysis suggested that such variabilities of contributors give rise to significant differences in individual doses among the populations.