The building biology profession has developed standards to provide exposure guidelines for the general public that are based on the precautionary standard. We rely on these guidelines every day to inform our environmental home and office evaluations and help clients and their families create a safer living and work environments. Nature is the gold standard.
Electromagetic field (EMF) guidelines from the profession are on page one under “Fields, Waves, Radiation.” Practically, our primary goal is get clients out of the Severe Anomaly and Extreme Anomaly columns on the table, which are the two right-hand columns, which can be equated with the “red zone.” When it comes to evaluating electromagnetic radiation, for example, we want to reduce exposures in sleeping areas and as many other living and work environments as possible to the Slight or No Anomaly levels for all three EMFs.
This means, below 100 milliVolts (mV) for electric fields when measured with a body voltage meter and below 1.5 Volts per meter (V/m) when measured with a free-standing triple axis meter. For magnetic fields, we want under 1 milligauss (mG) based on triple axis measurements. For radiofrequency digital signals, we want to sleep and live in areas that ideally have 10 microwatts per meter squared (µW/m2) or less, which is very difficult to achieve in urban and suburban homes.
Building BiologyTM Evaluation Guidelines for a safer indoor environment.
