The health risks of exposure to electromagnetic fields in work environments

In the last few years the debate on possible health risks of electromagnetic fields has focused on specific sources, namely power lines and, more recently, base stations for cellular telephones. This has drastically diverted the attention of the research and prevention community towards residential exposures. On the other hand, the increasing number of technological process exploiting or generating electromagnetic fields requires greater attention to exposures at the workplace. The scope of research in this area is vast because of different emission characteristics of the sources, different interaction mechanisms at various frequencies, and different effects that have been identified or hypothesized. The paper presents an overview of health problems involved in exposure to electromagnetic fields at the workplace. Different frequency ranges and related sources are considered separately. In particular, the different levels of knowledge are noted and areas requiring further research are identified.