The safety team at my work place has been grasping for straws lately and one of their most recent targets is RF hazards in the workplace. For some of our processes we use high powered induction heating supplied by a step down transformer to deliver a high current, frequency tuned (in the order of 10's of KHz) supply to the induction coil heating a graphite sucseptor.
I guess b.c I am the "electrical engineering" guy on the team they designated me to be a point of contact for the "safety team." Personally I think safety's claims are a little fetched. Given the equipment we use for process their is no ionizing energy hazard but I suppose there could be a thermal "heating" hazard if the emitted power density were high enough.

I have seen research that a particular hazard exists potentially around 350MHz due to natural resonance of the body but the frequencies of our generators are magnitudes below this.

Has anyone else dealt with this issue at their jobs? Also what characteristics and equations could be use to evalute the potential safety hazard. I vaguely remember from Electro-Magnetics that magnetic flux attenuates with distance at a 1/x^2 or something.

[Edited on July 1, 2009 at 10:04 AM. Reason : omar: accidentally deleted the wrong one so put your post in here]

7/1/2009 9:13:06 AM

the frequencies you're talking about seem awfully low. what is the emitted power?

7/1/2009 1:15:50 PM

Power is the magnitude of say 30-50 KW.

On of our pieces of equipment of "concern" actually uses the 60 HZ from mains.

7/1/2009 1:24:55 PM

Just create charts with lots of numbers surrounded by math operations and integration symbols, and tell them it's safe. They won't know the difference.

7/1/2009 2:01:16 PM

Rather than try to do the calculations, or in addition to, why not get something that can measure the EMI.

It should be easy enough to model but it might be just as quick to measure it.

7/1/2009 2:15:50 PM

just buy a canary

7/2/2009 12:03:23 AM

Quote :

"I have seen research that a particular hazard exists potentially around 350MHz "

I'd like to see this research. I think that I'd have 3 eyes or fried internal organs if this was the case.

Also, 50 kw is a lot of power. you sure it's that strong? what is it?

7/2/2009 12:09:09 AM

it's not that much for industrial equipment

7/2/2009 12:24:22 AM

^^ Furnace using Induction Heating

7/2/2009 8:29:46 AM