Date of review by ARPANSA
February 2025
Article publication date
1 February 2025
Summary
This study measured the personal radiofrequency-electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposures associated with mobile networks (including 5G) across different micro-environments in Switzerland. The exposure was measured during three different mobile use scenarios: with an inactive device (environmental), while a device is continuously uploading (max UL) and while a device is continuously downloading (max DL). The highest levels were measured during the max UL measurements, particularly in rural micro-environments. Compared to environmental exposure (e.g., median 1 mW/m2 for urban business areas), exposure levels increased considerably during the max DL measurements due to the 5G band at 3.5 GHz mostly in urban areas (e.g., median 12 mW/m2 in an industrial area). The highest RF-EMF levels (e.g., median 37 mW/m2 in a rural centre) were observed during the max UL scenarios in rural areas. In conclusion, inducing mobile DL and UL traffic networks substantially increased personal RF-EMF exposures.
Published in
Environmental Research
Link to the study
ARPANSA's commentary
This study generated new knowledge by pioneering an activity-based approach to exposure assessment. The findings indicate the relevance of including near-field and far-field personal exposures to estimate cumulative RF-EMF exposures in future epidemiological studies. This has been highlighted in some recent literature (e.g., van Wel et al., 2021; Birks et al., 2021), which estimated personal RF-EMF exposures originating from near-field RF-EMF sources. A key strength of this study is that it characterized exposures associated with different types of mobile use scenarios such as no mobile phone use, and phone use with continuously downloading and uploading a file. Further, this study supports the application of its methodology to a larger European study, which is expected to provide more comprehensive exposure assessments. A notable limitation of the study is that the use of the measurement device on a specific body area to estimate the personal exposure might have resulted in some measurement uncertainties. Importantly, while mobile handset originated (i.e., auto-induced UL) exposures contributed the highest amount of personal RF-EMF exposure levels, these levels lie below the safety limits recommended by the 2020 ICNIRP guidelines and Australian standard (RPS-S1). According to the standard, the general public safety limit is 2-10 W/m2 depending on the operating frequency of telecommunication infrastructure. RF-EMF exposures in Australian public environments are generally far below the limits given in the standard (Henderson et al., 2023; Bhatt et al., 2024). The standard is designed to protect people of all ages and health statuses from the adverse health effects of exposure to RF-EMF exposures. Furthermore, it is ARPANSA’s assessment that such low-level RF-EMF exposures do not pose any health risk in populations.
