Assessment of Electrical Brain Activity of Healthy Volunteers Exposed to 3.5 GHz of 5G Signals within Environmental Levels: A Controlled-Randomised Study.

Following the recent deployment of fifth-generation (5G) radio frequencies, several questions about their health impacts have been raised. Due to the lack of experimental research on this subject, the current study aimed to investigate the bio-physiological effects of a generated 3.5 GHz frequency. For this purpose, the wake electroencephalograms (EEG) of 34 healthy volunteers were explored during two "real" and "sham" exposure sessions. The electromagnetic fields were antenna-emitted in an electrically shielded room and had an electrical field root-mean-square intensity of 2 V/m, corresponding to the current outdoor exposure levels. The sessions were a maximum of one week apart, and both contained an exposure period of approximately 26 min and were followed by a post-exposure period of 17 min. The power spectral densities (PSDs) of the beta, alpha, theta, and delta bands were then computed and corrected based on an EEG baseline period. This was acquired for 17 min before the subsequent phases were recorded under two separate conditions: eyes open (EO) and eyes closed (EC). A statistical analysis showed an overall non-significant change in the studied brain waves, except for a few electrodes in the alpha, theta, and delta spectra. This change was translated into an increase or decrease in the PSDs, in response to the EO and EC conditions. In conclusion, this studhy showed that 3.5 GHz exposure, within the regulatory levels and exposure parameters used in this protocol, did not affect brain activity in healthy young adults. Moreover, to our knowledge, this was the first laboratory-controlled human EEG study on 5G effects. It attempted to address society's current concern about the impact of 5G exposure on human health at environmental levels.

Exposure of South Korean Population to 5G Mobile Phone Networks (3.4-3.8 GHz).

As industrialized countries race to install and deploy 5G networks, some countries have taken the lead and already have operational 5G networks in place. South Korea is among these. In this study, we measured exposure to electromagnetic fields in South Korea to evaluate the relative contribution of 5G as compared with other frequencies such as 2G, 3G, and 4G. Results show that the emission of 5G contributes about 15% to total telecommunications emissions. The highest levels were observed in the vicinity of 5G antennas and remain below the limits set by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). © 2021 Bioelectromagnetics Society.

A Multi-Band Body-Worn Distributed Radio-Frequency Exposure Meter: Design, On-Body Calibration and Study of Body Morphology.

A multi-band Body-Worn Distributed exposure Meter (BWDM) calibrated for simultaneous measurement of the incident power density in 11 telecommunication frequency bands, is proposed. The BDWM consists of 22 textile antennas integrated in a garment and is calibrated on six human subjects in an anechoic chamber to assess its measurement uncertainty in terms of 68% confidence interval of the on-body antenna aperture. It is shown that by using multiple antennas in each frequency band, the uncertainty of the BWDM is 22 dB improved with respect to single nodes on the front and back of the torso and variations are decreased to maximum 8.8 dB. Moreover, deploying single antennas for different body morphologies results in a variation up to 9.3 dB, which is reduced to 3.6 dB using multiple antennas for six subjects with various body mass index values. The designed BWDM, has an improved uncertainty of up to 9.6 dB in comparison to commercially available personal exposure meters calibrated on body. As an application, an average incident power density in the range of 26.7-90.8 µW·m - 2 is measured in Ghent, Belgium. The measurements show that commercial personal exposure meters underestimate the actual exposure by a factor of up to 20.6.