ARPANSA - Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency

For mobile telecommunications frequencies, the relevant standard enforced in Australia is the Radiation Protection Standard for Maximum Exposure Levels to Radiofrequency Fields – 3kHz to 300GHz (also called RPS3 or simply the ARPANSA Standard). At the frequencies considered in this study, the exposure limits it specifies are equivalent to those of the 1998 Guidelines published by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP).

These limits have been determined on the basis of established health effects and include safety margins. They are designed to protect all members of the public including those sometimes thought to be particularly vulnerable (the elderly, the infirm, pregnant women and children).

The most restrictive of the appropriate limits from the ARPANSA Standard is the reference level for time averaged general public exposure. These reference levels are used for all comparisons in this study.

Mobile phone base stations in Australia currently transmit in four frequency bands. Although the allowable limits vary within three of the frequency bands, for simplicity a single value will be used. The chosen values of the limit are more restrictive (slightly lower) than those allowed by the ARPANSA Standard.

 

Band Name	Frequency [MHz]	Services	Limit [mW/m2]
CDMA800	870 - 890	CDMA & UMTS	4250
GSM900	935 - 960	GSM900	4500
GSM1800	1805 - 1880	GSM1800	9000
UMTS2100	2110 - 2170	UMTS	10000

 

 

 

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