Dielectric Properties of Biological Materials

The dielectric properties of biological materials are a measure of their interaction with electromagnetic fields. When people are exposed to non-ionizing radiation, such interactions take place in the human body at various levels of organization and may initiate biological responses. While these biological effects may or may not be desirable, they should, however, be well understood for safety regulation purposes and in order to exploit beneficial effects to their full potential. Dielectric spectroscopy, or the study of the frequency dependence of the dielectric properties, helps elucidate such mechanisms of interaction at the cellular and molecular level. This subject has been widely reviewed.1,2