Dragan Poljak, full professor at the Department of Electronics, University of Split, Croatia presented a special seminar at Ashurst Lodge entitled ”Exposure to Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) Fields and Related Effects” referring to the electromagnetic analysis of humans exposed to low frequency field sources.
Dragan also referred to the effects of very low frequency fields produced by power lines and transformer substations, in the range of 50 to 60 Hz. This is important due to the increasing concern that these fields may have on the effects of human health. Dragan has analyzed the coupling of extremely low frequency fields to the human body using numerical models. The numerical results obtained using analytical, finite differences and boundary element methods were found to be in satisfactory agreement.
Knowing the current distribution, one can readily calculate the current density induced in the human body which is the most important parameter in quantifying the possible irreversible biological effects.
The lecture ended up with a rather long discussion related to the current research on the subject and in particular to the inclusion of realistic human body models followed by the treatment with efficient simulation tools.
Wessex Institute