Keeping The Soldiers Safe: SAR Now Being Tested In Israel

Keeping The Soldiers Safe: SAR Now Being Tested In Israel

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As part of an ongoing effort of protecting soldiers from radiation caused by equipment and tools used by the military, the Israeli Medical Corps has issued new instructions that require that all the equipment being used will meet an international parameter called SAR. This parameter is the rate at which energy is absorbed by the human body when it is exposed to radiation.

So far, suppliers and manufacturers of radiant equipment had to test it in labs overseas – a procedure of considerable costs as well as time, postponing equipment being integrated in military use. There is also the matter of confidentiality, being considerably easier to keep when products are being examined by labs that offer services and tests for military equipment in Israel.

ITL rose up to the challenge and together with HIT (Holon Institute of Technology) has established an Israeli lab for SAR testing. The lab is used to test industrial products in order to make sure that equipment being used by the military isn’t emitting radiation on the soldiers using it.

“The medical corps especially needed a certified lab for testing any radiant equipment that is as close to the body as 20 cm,” said prof. Motti Haridim, Vice President for Academic Development in HIT. This measurement system also includes phantoms – dummies simulating the human body which allow tests to estimate the level of radiation absorbed in the human body.

While the lab has existed for some time, using mostly for research and development, the certification for SAR testing was received last summer and now the lab is a national infrastructure for measuring the international SAR standard.

Work being done in the lab offered the development of, among other things, a method to reduce radiation in the user’s head, said prof. Haridim. The HIT lab is the only lab in the country that tests for radiation in the human body.

itl

Certifying the ITL lab in Israel offers greater comfort in the approval procedures to use radiant military and civilian equipment. The time needed to receive approval has been considerably shortened, since as the measuring itself takes much the same amount of time abroad or in Israel, the procedure of shipping the equipment overseas, testing it and sending results back is now redundant. Furthermore, the IDF isn’t forced to reveal details it has no interest in revealing to foreign laboratories, thus confidential or secret details and guarded with no fear of information leaking at any time during tests.

Tests are conducted under ITL authorization as a certified laboratory approved by the American Administration for Laboratory accreditation.