Comments on "Electric current and electric field induced in a human body when exposed to an incident electric field near the resonant frequency" [with reply]
For original paper see ibid., vol. 48, no. 9, p. 147-53 (2000). The author makes two observations on the original article. The commentator questions whether a seated person is well modeled as a right circular cylinder. The second observation is that King cites only microwave studies on mice to show that electromagnetic radiation causes malignancies. These studies themselves are widely disputed. He then uses simple dimensional scaling to show that 2.45 GHz for a mouse scales to 100 MHz for a man. Such a scaling law may be useful in calculating the resonant frequency for a human subject versus a mouse when treated as antennas, but such scaling is meaningless when the physics of a hypothetical carcinogenic process are unknown.
Increased mortality in amateur radio operators due to lymphatic and hematopoietic malignancies.
To search for potentially carcinogenic effects of electromagnetic field exposures, the author conducted a population-based study of mortality in US amateur radio operators. Ascertainment of Washington State and California amateur radio operators (67,829 persons) was done through the 1984 US Federal Communications Commission Amateur Radio Station and/or Operator License file. A total of 2,485 deaths were located for the period from January 1, 1979 through December 31, 1984, in a population of amateur radio operators which accumulated 232,499 person-years at risk. The all-cause standardized mortality ratio (SMR) was 71, but a statistically significant increased mortality was seen for cancers of the other lymphatic tissues (SMR = 162), a rubric which includes multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. The all-leukemia standardized mortality ratio was slightly, but nonsignificantly, elevated (SMR = 124). However, mortality due to acute myeloid leukemia was significantly elevated (SMR = 176).
A slowly rotating coil system for AC field measurements of Fermilab Booster correctors
A method for measurement of rapidly changing magnetic fields has been developed and applied to the testing of new room temperature corrector packages designed for the Fermilab Booster Synchrotron. The method is based on fast digitization of a slowly rotating tangential coil probe, with analysis combining the measured coil voltages across a set of successive magnet current cycles. This paper presents results on the field quality measured for the normal and skew dipole, quadrupole, and sextupole elements in several of these corrector packages.