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Radiation Protection Dosimetry 83:5-7 (1999)
© 1999 Oxford University Press
ICNIRP Initiatives
The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) is the independent, non-governmental, scientific organisation, comprising all essential scientific disciplines, which, together with the WHO, is qualified to assess health effects of exposure to electromagnetic fields. ICNIRP uses the results of this assessment of draft health based exposure guidelines. The development of exposure guidelines requires a critical, in depth evaluation of the established scientific literature. The paper describes some criteria used for health risk assessment. Dosimetry is one of the most critical components of any scientific study assessing effects of electromagnetic fields on biological systems. Induced electric fields or current densities and specific absorption rate (SAR) are the fundamental and widely accepted dosimetric parameters. Significant recent dosimetric developments include the introduction of anatomically derived voxel-based electromagnetic models of the human body of various resolutions as well as varieties of effective numerical schemes. Due to these developments it is possible to analyse systematically the relationship between various exposure parameters and the fundamental dosimetric parameters. An appropriate metric for EMF epidemiology should be sufficiently comprehensive to allow the determination of the basic dosimetric quantities, their amplitudes and distribution in the human body.