# Research Note — 2026-06-02 (NIPSCO preliminary work / property documentation)

> **Status: Confirmed-context update — not a protocol change by itself**

## Confirmed facts
- The NIOSH *Manual for Measuring Occupational Electric and Magnetic Field Exposures* remains the reference for industrial-hygiene EMF measurement logic and distinguishes spot, personal, area, source survey, and walkthrough monitoring. [^1]
- EPA’s Northwest Indiana Program Contacts page still lists Victoria Wittig, Ph.D. as the Northwest Indiana Urban Waters Ambassador at Purdue University Northwest in Hammond, and the page was last updated on 2026-01-30. [^2]
- EPA’s Grand Calumet River AOC remediation page was last updated on 2026-02-19; Junction Reaches construction is scheduled to begin in Fall 2026, and Lake George Canal monitoring continues through 2027 with possible follow-on remediation in 2028. [^3]
- NIPSCO’s AMI overview says the rollout has been underway since March 2024 and is being installed in phases for approximately 500,000 electric customers and 900,000 gas customers. [^4]
- NIPSCO’s system-upgrades page says crews may document the property’s current state with photos or video, perform preliminary work such as locating and marking underground utilities, temporarily block streets / lanes / driveways, and briefly interrupt service while work is completed. [^5]

## Practical interpretation
- Treat NIPSCO property documentation and underground-marking activity as route context, not exposure signal.
- Keep that context in `preliminary_work` / access notes so it does not get confused with `source_state`, `construction_context`, or the field reading itself.
- This is a bookkeeping improvement, not a reason to change the exposure protocol.

## Hypotheses
- Separating property-documentation context from construction context may improve later comparisons of AMI and system-upgrade stops against ordinary utility-adjacent background.
- It may also reduce false positives when access is blocked or a crew is only marking utilities before work begins.

## Sources
- [^1]: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-154/default.html
- [^2]: https://www.epa.gov/urbanwaterspartners/program-contacts-northwest-indiana-indiana
- [^3]: https://www.epa.gov/great-lakes-aocs/remediation-and-restoration-projects-grand-calumet-river-aoc
- [^4]: https://www.nipsco.com/services/work-in-your-neighborhood/advanced-metering-ami
- [^5]: https://www.nipsco.com/services/work-in-your-neighborhood/system-upgrades