Human Exposure Standards

Human exposure guidelines provide recommended limits for the public and workers that are intended to provide protection against all established health hazards. They are structured around basic restrictions, measures of RF energy deposited in the body, and reference levels, external field levls that are more easily measured for compliance purposes. In general reference levels are used for base station compliance and basic restrictions for devices used close to the body.

It is important to emphasize that exposure limits are not emission limits, the former apply to locations accessible to workers or members of the general public. Thus, it is possible to achieve compliance by limiting access to areas where the exposure limits are exceeded.

The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) developed guidelines that are recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

The ICNIRP guidelines were developed following reviews of the scientific literature, including thermal and non-thermal effects, and are designed to provide protection against all established health hazards.

The ICNIRP guidelines have been widely adopted in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. A similar standard developed by the IEEE International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety (ICES) has been used in the Americas. China and Russia currently use standards that are fundamentally different to ICNIRP or ICES.

Some recent computational modelling has suggested that under certain exposure conditions the ICNIRP reference levels for frequencies close to 2 GHz may not ensure compliance with the INCIRP basic restrictions for shorter persons, inlcuding children. ICNIRP continuously monitors scientific developments and sees no urgent need to update the exposure guidelines due to the existing substantial safety factors and noting that the modelling conditions are unlikely to occur in practical situations. These recent reports have no relevance to handset compliance, which relates to partial body exposure and uses the basic restrictions directly.

The mobile industry continues to monitor the recommendations of international scientific bodies to assess possible operational impacts.