Abstract
Recently it has been studied the effect of exposure to electromagnetic fields on human health in Japan. It begins to be also studied the effect of the exposure to the intermediate frequency (IF) magnetic field. Although a large number of scientific research in extremely low frequency (ELF) magnetic fields and radiofrequency (RF) fields has been done, there is few studies examining the biological effects of IF electromagnetic fields. Because the devices that are exposing IF electromagnetic fields have spread widely, it is important to evaluate the effect of human health effect.
We had already reported that the short exposure (2 hours) to an IF magnetic field at 532 μTrms (85-fold of International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guideline) did not cause cellular genotoxic damage [1]. In this study, we evaluate the effect of exposure to 23 kHz an IF magnetic fields at more high density, 6 mTrms (960-fold of ICNIRP guideline) on expression of heat shock proteins (HSPs). As a result, for the expression of Hsp27, p-HSP27, and HSP70, no significant changes were observed following exposure to the IF magnetic field using the method of Western blot and immunofluorescence. The expression of these HSPs was not affected by the IF magnetic field exposure. However, the possibility of effects on other cellular functions remains, and further studies on the cellular effects of IF magnetic fields are required.
