Sannino Anna, Romeo Stefania, Scarfì Maria Rosaria, Massa Rita, d'Angelo Raffaele, Petrillo Antonella, Cerciello Vincenzo, Fusco Roberta, Zeni Olga
Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment (IREA), National Research Council, Naples, Italy.
Department of Physics, University Federico II, Naples, Italy.
Front Public Health. 2017 Dec 18;5:344. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2017.00344. eCollection 2017.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has evolved rapidly over the past few decades as one of the most flexible tools in medical research and diagnostic imaging. MRI facilities are important sources of multiple exposure to electromagnetic fields for both patients and health-care staff, due to the presence of electromagnetic fields of multiple frequency ranges, different temporal variations, and field strengths. Due to the increasing use and technological advancements of MRI systems, clearer insights into exposure assessment and a better understanding of possible harmful effects due to long-term exposures are highly needed. In the present exploratory study, exposure assessment and biomonitoring of MRI workers at the Radio-diagnostics Unit of the National Cancer Institute of Naples "Pascale Foundation" (Naples, Italy) have been carried out. In particular, exposure to the MRI static magnetic field (SMF) has been evaluated by means of personal monitoring, while an application tool has been developed to provide an estimate of motion-induced, time-varying electric fields. Measurement results have highlighted a high day-to-day and worker-to-worker variability of the exposure to the SMF, which strongly depends on the characteristics of the environment and on personal behaviors, and the developed application tool can be adopted as an easy-to-use tool for rapid and qualitative evaluation of motion-induced, time-varying electric field exposure. Regarding biomonitoring, the 24 workers of the Radio-diagnostics Unit were enrolled to evaluate both spontaneous and mitomycin C-induced chromosomal fragility in human peripheral blood lymphocytes, by means of the cytokinesis-block micronucleus assay. The study subjects were 12 MRI workers, representative of different professional categories, as the exposed group, and 12 workers with no MRI exposure history, as the reference group. The results show a high worker-to-worker variability for both field exposure assessment and biomonitoring, as well as several critical issues and practicalities to be faced with in this type of investigations. The procedures for risk assessment and biomonitoring proposed here can be used to inform future research in this field, which will require a refinement of exposure assessment methods and an enlargement of the number of subjects enrolled in the biomonitoring study to gain robust statistics and reliable results.
在过去几十年中，磁共振成像（MRI）作为医学研究和诊断成像中最灵活的工具之一得到了迅速发展。由于存在多种频率范围、不同时间变化和场强的电磁场，MRI设备是患者和医护人员多次暴露于电磁场的重要来源。由于MRI系统的使用日益增加和技术进步，迫切需要更清晰地了解暴露评估，并更好地理解长期暴露可能产生的有害影响。在本探索性研究中，对意大利那不勒斯“帕斯卡莱基金会”国家癌症研究所放射诊断科的MRI工作人员进行了暴露评估和生物监测。特别是，通过个人监测评估了对MRI静磁场（SMF）的暴露，同时开发了一种应用工具来估计运动诱发的时变电场。测量结果突出了SMF暴露在每日和工作人员之间的高度变异性，这在很大程度上取决于环境特征和个人行为，并且所开发的应用工具可作为一种易于使用的工具，用于快速定性评估运动诱发的时变电场暴露。关于生物监测，放射诊断科的2名工作人员参与了研究，通过胞质分裂阻滞微核试验评估人外周血淋巴细胞中的自发和丝裂霉素C诱导的染色体脆性。研究对象为12名代表不同专业类别的MRI工作人员作为暴露组，以及12名无MRI暴露史的工作人员作为参照组。结果表明，在现场暴露评估和生物监测方面，工作人员之间存在很大差异，同时这类调查还面临一些关键问题和实际情况。这里提出的风险评估和生物监测程序可用于为该领域的未来研究提供参考，未来研究需要改进暴露评估方法，并扩大生物监测研究的受试者数量，以获得可靠的统计数据和结果。
