Neonatal incubators are very important for an infant’s first few days of life - neonates are particularly vulnerable to the environment, as they grow at a rapid rate. Yet, there has been little investigation on the effect of environmental RF exposure to newborns. The exposure of neonates to electromagnetic fields (EMF) including radio frequency radiation used in new wireless technologies has raised public health concerns, such as whether cancer, neurological effects, developmental disability effects, and so on can result from long-term exposure at these frequencies (1).
As part of the exchange program between Sorbonne Universities and the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Nanotechnology Engineering student Andrew Lofts is currently on exchange in France to collaborate with Hassan Aboushady, Professor in LIP6 (Laboratoire Informatique Paris 6) on a joint project between Sorbonne University (UPMC), spin off company Seamless Waves, and Hôpital Antoine-Béclère, (APHP, Paris-Sud University Hospital).
In the lab, Dr. Aboushady and Lofts are looking into the effects of environmental RF exposure on Neonates in incubators. The team is investigating whether or not there is a correlation between neonates’ various physiological conditions such as heart rate SpO2 and blood pressure and RF exposure in terms of power and frequency.
“There have been many controversial studies on RF exposure, but no definite decisions on its health effects have really been decided,” says Lofts. “We hope to uncover more information about its possible effects on the population.” Lofts also discusses his impact on the research at Sorbonne University (UPMC) on a larger scale, saying, “Part of my project is to also set the stage for the University group to expand into the medical research field to open up more applications for the devices they are designing.”
The current objective of the project is to find correlations from the RF environmental exposure measured by the team between the variability of the neonates physiological conditions. Lofts says they also want to “see if the incubators used have any kind of shielding from the environment, and how the different medical devices contribute to the spectrum,”
Lofts comments that the project is “multidisciplinary,” and involves a wide range of technologies. They are using software defined radios, FPGA circuits, printed circuit boards, and Antennas along with MATLAB for processing. At the hospital, the team also works with medical monitoring equipment to interpret network protocol and messages. Currently, the neonate sensors are being streamed to the hospital database, with conditions being saved in real time.
If correlations between negative health effects in the neonates and RF frequencies are found, it will provide “evidence towards change,” says Lofts. “At the moment there is still a large debate on the effects of RF exposure on high risk neonates. If we don’t find anything, then we should continue to monitor the arrival of new technologies such as 5G.”
References
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Bellieni, C. V., & Pinto, I. (2012). Fetal and neonatal effects of EMF. BioInitiative Working Group, (19), 16.