The community concerns on the possible harmful effects of electromagnetic fields and the pending safe labor conditions in the Member States were substantiated by the European legislative body through the Directive 2004/40/EC on the workers’ exposure to hazards arising from physical agents (electromagnetic fields) and the related minimum safety and health requirements. After a decade of intensive consultation and debate on practical implementation issues with representatives of national authorities, labour organizations, scientists, stakeholders, etc. and following several postponed deadlines for its enforcement, the European Commission replaced this Directive with a revised version, the Directive 2013/35/EU, on 29 June 2013. The transposition deadline for the new document was set on 1 July 2016, raising administrative and technical challenges for employers and authorities responsible for occupational protection, for standardization and control. The scientific community is therefore expected to recommend implementation solutions, such as good manuals of practices and normative documents, required for the compliance with the provisions of the Directive, for specific working environments. The paper aims to illustrate practical issues on the analysis of low frequency magnetic fields in working environment, like: specific features related to field measurement methods, characteristics of currently available equipment, complementarities of measurement and computational approaches. Four illustrative assessment studies are finally presented and discussed.

Keywords: Environmental monitoring, Low frequency magnetic field exposure, Magnetic field measurement, Occupational exposure