Speaker
Description
The discussion on the health risk due to RF-EMF exposure has become even more acute with the deployment of 5G mobile communication technologies which operate in the FR1 (below 7 GHz) and FR2 (above 24 GHz) frequency bands. With reference to FR2 band, skin is considered one of the main targets due the low penetration depth of EMF in this frequency range. Here we used HaCaT cells, a human keratinocyte cell model, to investigate the effects of a 5G modulated signal at 26.5 GHz on reactive oxygen species (ROS) and mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) at different time points from the end of exposure. Two exposure approaches have been planned, which we refer to as bulk and real-time measurements. For bulk measurements, we used a well characterized reverberation chamber (RC)-based exposure system, which relies on two RCs (one for RF exposure and the other for sham exposure) hosted inside two standard cell culture incubators. The second approach relies on a customised RF exposure system currently under development, which will allow the screening of real-time effects through live cells confocal microscopy.
For bulk experiments, cell cultures were exposed for three hours at 1 W/kg SAR, and the results suggest an increase in ROS formation and hyperpolarization of the MMP immediately after and 18 h after RF exposure, respectively. Complementary investigations will be carried out to clarify the observed findings. The experiments are carried out in the framework of 5G:SMILE project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research.
