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).
Electromagnetic fields in air of traveling-wave currents above the earth
The problem of the electromagnetic field created by a thin, straight conductor of infinite length carrying a forward traveling-wave current with a complex propagation constant γ above a homogeneous and isotropic planar earth of wave number k1 is formulated in terms of contour integrals. In the limit where γ becomes equal to the free-space wave number k0, the component of the magnetic field in air normal to both conductor and interface is evaluated in closed form in terms of known special functions while the remaining components of the field in air are expressed as series expansions in δ=k02(k14−k04)−1/2 via the application of a contour integration technique. The new analytical formulas involve familiar transcendental functions and are valid at any distance from the source. The analysis sheds light on the intricate nature of low-frequency electromagnetic fields generated by transmission lines in the presence of a conducting or a dielectric half-space.