Questions have been asked about health issues related to the use of RFID. In broad terms these have focused on three main areas:
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Is there a risk to users of readers, users of tags or those in the immediate area from the radiation used to exchange data between the tag and the reader?
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Is there risk associated with injecting tags beneath the skin?
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Is there a risk to patient from using tags in a medical environment for patient identification or other applications?
Research has been limited to date, and findings in relation to healthcare have been largely limited to assessing the suitability of RFID for use in hospital environments or to its use in animal tagging applications. These findings may have only limited significance but nevertheless are worth examining. The risks to public health associated with RFID were evaluated by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (the body that monitors research in this area) as part of its advice to the European Commission on the risks to the public of devices using electromagnetic fields.
The risks associated with injectable RFID tags have been most fully evaluated by the British Veterinary Association and by the American Veterinary Medical Association. In 2008 concerns were raised over the possibility that injectable RFID tags could be linked to the development of cancerous tumours. However there has been almost no evidence of this occuring outside the laboratory in spite of over ten million animals having been tagged in this way in the UK and the USA. (The particular study noted the incidence of tumours occurring in mice that had been injected with microchips.) The use of injectable RFID chips in humans was approved by the American Food & Drug Administration in 2004 and the FDA have made no move to change the status of this approval in spite of the introduction of new technologies. US consumer groups have campaigned against the use of injectable tags in humans and have alleged that the FDA did not consider all the available research.
In the area of patient risk associated with the use of RFID in clinical environments, the limited number of studies have had mixed results. In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an RFID reader and tags were demonstrated to have interfered with other equipment but industry commentators have suggested that the study failed to use real-world situations and used equipment that did not conform to legal power limits. However, recent research by the US FDA indicated possible problems in relation to certain RFID readers and implanted pacemakers. (Details in our downloadable Fact Sheet)
In October 2008, AIM (the Asociation for Automatic Identification & Mobility) announced that their RFID Expert Group was to develop test protocols for RFID devices to ensure that they have only a benign effect in a healthcare setting. Working with three American universities, AIM expects to enable testing of devices with these protocols to begin by October 2009.