Multilevel methodologies to investigate interactions between radiofrequencies and biological systems (MIRABILIS) (DIT.AD009.099)

Thematic area

Engineering, ICT and technologies for energy and transportation

Project area

Structure responsible for the research project

Institute for electromagnetic sensing of the environment (IREA)

Project manager

MARIAROSARIA SCARFI
Phone number: +39 081 7620659
Email: scarfi.mr@irea.cnr.it

Abstract

Electromagnetic (EM) technologies in the microwave (MW) bands have been widely used in many telecommunication applications, such as mobile phones and wireless devices. Therefore, there is an
increasing interest in studying the biological interactions and health effects associated with this type of non-ionizing radiation. Many investigations, in vitro, in vivo and epidemiological, have been carried out,
but some questions remain open in identifying the involved non-thermal mechanisms and in determining the potential effects of modulated fields with respect to continuous wave (CW) signals. Such studies
refer mainly to 2G and 3G technologies, but several information is also available for 4G/LTE networks. The 5th generation wireless system (5G) has been introduced to manage a huge amount of data, which
requires very high throughput per device and per area efficiency, and it is predicted that the worldwide monthly data traffic in 2021 will be about 12 times the traffic in the year 2016.

Goals

The goal of the current project is to evaluate the interaction mechanisms between EMF and biological systems by combining a theoretical and an experimental approach.
To this aim, cell cultures will be exposed to EMF related to 4G/LTE as well as 5G networks, and the results obtained by CW and modulated signal exposures, having the same average power but a different time behaviour, will be compared.
An exposure system, suitable to expose biological samples in the frequency band 24.25-29.5 GHz, will be designed and constructed to fulfill mandatory good practice requirements, such as specific absorption rate (SAR) level with high degree uniformity and temperature control in the exposed samples.
These results, together with those obtained from co-exposures to chemical agents, will be employed to drive molecular simulations on enzyme and protein structures involved in signaling pathways that trigger cell response to EMF.

Start date of activity

01/02/2020

Keywords

microwaves, bioelectromagnetics, health risk

Last update: 03/08/2025