Exposure to 60-Hz magnetic and electric fields at a Canadian electric utility
该研究测量了魁北克水电公司32个工种员工的极低频磁场和电场暴露水平,发现变电站工人、发电站操作员等工种暴露较高,工种差异解释了约一半的暴露变异。
OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to estimate exposure to extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic and electric fields in the Québec electrical utility Hydro-Quebec. METHODS: Personal exposures to ELF magnetic and electric fields were measured for workers randomly selected from 32 job categories at Hydro-Québec. Weekly arithmetic and geometric means, and other indices of exposure were estimated from 465 worker-weeks of data. RESULTS: By job category, the arithmetic means of the ELF magnetic field ranged from 0.09 to 2.36 microT. Those of the ELF electric field exposures ranged from 2.5 to 400 V.m-1. Within each field, correlations of either the arithmetic or geometric means with alternative indices, including an index of the time rate of change, were generally high (r > or = 0.8). Exceptions were the 20th percentile of the electric means and the proportion of time above 12.4 and 100 microT. The day-to-day variation of exposure was greater than the variation between workers. The median between-day and between-worker components of variance (as geometric standard deviations) by job category were 2.13 and 1.71 for magnetic fields (2.24 and 1.81 for electric fields). CONCLUSIONS: Substation workers, hydroelectric generating station operators, and cable splicers showed the highest arithmetic means for 60-Hz magnetic fields above 1 microT. For 60-Hz electric fields, forestry workers, equipment electricians in 735 kV substations, and distribution linemen (contact method) had arithmetic mean exposures greater than 100 W.m-1. Of the total variance in the logarithms of the weekly magnetic and electric field means, job category explained 49.6% and 59.5%, respectively.