leenakorpinen.fi

As I started to compile this situation report, I thought that I might not even find enough new studies or other interesting publications. I already knew that neither the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) nor the European Union has published anything new.

A review of the international electromagnetic exposure guidelines is underway both by the European Union and the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). The new guidelines from the ICNIRP have not yet been published; however, in autumn 2009, the ICNIRP gave us the opportunity to have a look at their draft in advance. This time they wanted to receive feedback before announcing their final guidelines. The new element in the ICNIRP proposition is that current density values have been replaced by internal electric field values in the human body.

The health impacts of low-frequency electric and magnetic fields are widely discussed nowadays. The first impression is that quite a large amount of new scientific information is generated every year, but it is hard to keep on top of it all. However, I don’t think that truly new scientific data is being produced more than before; it is rather that different types of comments and summaries may be being generated in greater abundance.

Meeting of The Bioelectromagnetics Society (BEMS) and the European BioElectromagnetics Association (EBEA) was held in Davos, Switzerland in June 14th - 29th 2009.

We started a new project “Occupational exposure of electric and magnetic fields at 110 kV substations” in April 2009. The aim of the project is to investigate occupational exposure at 110 kV substations using measurements. In addition, the aim is to also study the current densities in the neck and total contact currents (induced by electric field), if the action value (10kV/m) of directive (2004/40/EC)is exceeded. The project will last until the end of the year 2010.

The 19th EAEEIE (European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering) Annual Conference is held in Tallinn, Estonia in June 29 – July 24, 2008.

There are two papers from my projects in the 19th EAEEIE Annual conferences in Tallinn.

The E-Girls project of the Vaasa region aimed at making it easier for girls in particular to start studies in electrical engineering or electronics. The goal was to increase the number of female students in technology and, with time, also the number of women working in technology industry. In addition, one aim was making girls more interested in industry as such. It is common knowledge that the proportion of women working in technical jobs in industry is very low at the moment.

The potential health effects of electric and magnetic fields have been studied for a long time. The World Health Organization (WHO) published an extensive book on its website a while ago, which deals with, for instance, research reports on the subject.

In the virtual course Electricity, electronics and environment, developed in the E-Girls - Towards technology – project, the senior secondary school students selected three out of seven practical questions to be answered. 97 (90,7 %) of them answered the question: ‘What would it be like to spend a day without electricity?’. This topic was clearly the most popular one both among girls and boys.---

I have been producing web content for over ten years. Meanwhile, the Internet has taken huge steps forward. It was about time I published my own dynamic website. The site contains things that inspire me. For instance, there is a changing picture and a thought of the day on the index page and much of my previously developed web content can be found in the archive. The regional E-Girls project of Vaasa enabled this website for me.

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