The Dielectric Properties of Biological Materials

Abstract

We are honored to have been asked to carry on the tradition established by Dr. Postow and the late Dr. Polk in the first two editions of the Handbook of Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields. Their editions of this handbook were each recognized as the authoritative standards of their time for scientists working in bioelectromagnetics, the science of electromagnetic field effects on biological systems, and for others seeking information about this field of research. In revising and updating this edition of the Handbook of Biological Effects of Electromag- netic Fields, we have expanded the coverage to include more material on diagnostic and therapeutic applications. At the same time, in updating and expanding the previous editions’ coverage of the basic science and studies related to the possible biological effects of the electromagnetic fields, we have added new material on the related physics and chemistry as well as reviews of the recent developments in the setting standards for exposure limits. Following the previous edition’s lead, we have charged the authors of the individual chapters with providing the reader, whom we imagine is fairly well founded in one or more of the sciences underlying bioelectromagnetics but perhaps not in the others or in the interdisciplinary subject of bioelectromagnetics itself, with both an introduction to their topic and a basis for further reading. We asked the chapter authors to write what they would like to be the first thing they would ask a new graduate student in their laboratory to read. We hope that this edition, like its two predecessors, will be useful to many as a reference book and to others as a text for a graduate course that introduces bioelectromagnetics or some of its aspects.