  Concern has been widely acknowledged about human health---e.g., heating of
the eyes and skin--from exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) produced by
wireless transmitters. Mobile telecommunications rely on an extensive network
of base stations (BSs) and handheld devices that transmit signals via EMF.
There is chance of aggravation due to two important changes that will be seen
in future cellular networks. First, the number of BSs will remarkably grow with
the proliferation of small-cell networks, which will expose humans to EMF more
often. Second, highly concentrated EMF beams will be generated by employing
larger antenna arrays to overcome faster EMF energy attenuation in
higher-frequency bands such as millimeter wave (mmW) spectrum, which will
increase damage if the main beam points to the human body. However, the two
changes can be exploited as leverages for (i) wider selection of alternative
BSs and (ii) more precise beamforming to a desired user equipment (UE) with
less EMF leakage to other directions, respectively. Harnessing the two changes,
we have been investigating the human health impacts of 5G wireless systems.
This extended abstract summarizes our findings thus far.
