Current News Archive

ICNIRP Secretariat

The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) has released new guidelines for the protection of humans exposed to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF EMFs). These cover exposures from a range of technologies, including existing 3G/4G and the upcoming 5G mobile telecommunications technologies, as well as DAB radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, radar, and wireless power transfer devices.

This is the first revision of the guidelines since 1998. Since then there has been an extensive scientific research effort to identify and better quantify potential adverse health effects resulting from exposure to radiofrequency EMFs. This has enabled a thorough update of the guidelines, with the result a protection system that can deal effectively with both contemporary and future technologies.

There are important changes to both the structure and restrictions of the new ICNIRP (2020) guidelines. Regarding structure, greater transparency should make the logic and scientific basis of the guidelines easier for the health protection community to engage with, additional means of assessing compliance with the guidelines have been provided, and there is now greater specification of how to assess complicated exposure scenarios.

Under the topic of restrictions, a number of additions and changes were made to ensure that the guidelines are not only protective for current radiofrequency EMF exposure scenarios but will continue to be protective for future technological developments. These include the addition of a restriction for exposure to the whole body for EMFs >6 GHz, to restrict body core temperature rise; the addition of a restriction for brief (less than six-minute) exposures to small regions of the body for EMFs >400 MHz, to restrict localised temperature rise; and the reduction of the maximum exposure permitted over a small region of the body for EMFs >6 GHz, again to restrict localised temperature rise.

The full guidelines are published in Health Physics ("Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields [100 kHz to 300 GHz]") and can be accessed at ICNIRP.org. Additional detail concerning the differences between the ICNIRP (2020) and ICNIRP (1998) guidelines is available on the ICNIRP website.