Frequency of Workers with Active Implanted or Wearable Medical Devices Potentially Subjected to Interference Problems at the Workplaces

Almost all the workplaces determine a certain level of occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) for the workers employed. If these workers have Active Implantable Medical Devices (AIMD) or Active Wearable Medical Devices (AWMD), they are considered at particular risk, as the possibility of an electromagnetic interference cannot be excluded a priori. We estimated the amount of workers with AIMD and AWMD to have an overall panorama of the main types of portable medical devices possibly affected by interference problems at the workplaces. We administered a survey to 132 Occupational Physicians (OPs) in Italy. The data provided by the OPs refer to a population of > 200,000 workers and indicate that the 0.8% of them can be considered as particularly sensitive to occupational EMF risk for the presence of AWMD or AIMD. The most common AWMD resulted hormones/drugs pump and hearing aids, worn by the 0.4% of the working population. Considering AIMD, the most frequent resulted cardioverter defibrillators and pacemakers, implanted in about the 0.2% of workers. In conclusion, our data indicate that a number of medical devices can be affected by potential interference problems at the workplaces, and that about the 1% of all the workers can be interested by this problem.