Radiation
Non-ionizing.
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Non-ionizing Radiation
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| Major Class |
Frequency
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Chief Use
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Health Hazard
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| Ultraviolet light | plastics manufacture, tanning beds | Eye damage, skin cancer, burns | |
| Infrared light | heating | Burns, fire hazard | |
| Lasers | (many frequencies ) | industrial, supermarket checkout | Eye damage, burns |
| Microwaves | |||
| 300GHz | satellite communications | All the below can burn at very close range and high power. | |
| 30 GHz | radar | ||
| 3 GHz | radar, microwaves, cell phones | Some controversy | |
| Radiowaves |
300 MHz-3 kHz |
AM, FM, TV, CB | |
| Sub-radion | >3kHz | induction heating, submarine communications | |
So you might have guessed that the applicable health and safety standards are dependent on the frequency of the non-ionizing radiation. Here is a sheet from the TLV booklet ©ACGIH that tells you which section of the TLV book to look for standards:
The "Applicable TLV" refers to the chapter of the book. Here's one for Radiofrequency and Microwave:
You see that the TLV is a function of both the power of the source and the frequency of the radiation. At lower frequencies the electric and magnetic field need to be measured separately. At higher frequencies they are measured together. This TLV is expressed as the maximum power to which a person should be exposed, averaged over six minutes. So you don't need to remember a lot of details about this, but you should remember that for non-ionization radiation, you need to know two things, one is the source frequency, and the other is the power. Here's how to measure this power:
Measuring E and H Look at
the variety of meters. You might get the flavor of the website that fear of
Electromagnetic radiation is common and people are willing to spend money to
determine the EMF of their video monitors and cell phones. These small meters do not always show the
meter's antenna, but both E field and
H field meters are highly directional. The antennas are usually flat plates
that look like tennis rackets. You rotate them in space to find the maximum
field. The instructions on the pocket meters will tell you how to rotate the meter itself.
Now while you are pondering meters, here is one I have not tried. Ghost
hunters
The State of Alaska requires employers to post the equivalent of MSDS sheets for certain physical hazards. These are called PADS, physical agent data sheets. Look here and see how many are for non-ionizing radiation.