Life Time Dosimetric Assessment for Mice and Rats Exposed to Cell Phone Radiation in Reverberation Chambers

Published

March 17, 2017

Author(s)

Perry F. Wilson, John M. Ladbury, Galen H. Koepke, Yijian Gong, Myles Capstick, Keven Kuhn, David L. McCormick, Ronald L. Melnick, Niels Kuster

Abstract

In this paper, we present a detailed life time dosimetry analysis for individually housed rodents exposed to radio frequency (RF) signals. The unrestrained rodents were exposed in reverberation chambers for 2 years at three whole-body averaged specific absorption rate (SAR) levels of 6 W/kg, 3 W/kg and 1.5 W/kg for the rats, 10 W/kg, 5.0 W/kg, and 2.5 W/kg for the mice. This requires an accurate analysis of the dose as well as the uncertainty and variation due to the exposure environment, animal posture and differences in the growth rates of individual rodents over a 2-year exposure period, which had not been comprehensively analyzed in any previous research. For this purpose, six high-resolution anatomical models of rats and mice plus five postured models of a male rat and male mice were analyzed, and accurate whole-body SAR (wbSAR) and organ SAR (oSAR) are reported. The average exposure of the high-water-content tissues – blood, heart, lung – were more highly exposed by _4 dB compared to the wbSAR. The lowloss tissues such as bone and fat were less exposed by a factor of _9 dB compared to the wbSAR. The uncertainty over the exposure period for the SAR was estimated to be

Citation

IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility

Volume

59

Issue

6

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

dosimetry, RF exposure, reverberation chamber, Specific Absorption Rate (SAR)

Citation

Wilson, P. , Ladbury, J. , Koepke, G. , Gong, Y. , Capstick, M. , Kuhn, K. , McCormick, D. , Melnick, R. and Kuster, N. (2017), Life Time Dosimetric Assessment for Mice and Rats Exposed to Cell Phone Radiation in Reverberation Chambers, IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=920297 (Accessed October 9, 2025)