What is established
At high intensity, radio-frequency energy heats tissue. That effect is well understood and measurable, and the international reference levels exist to keep public exposure far below the level at which heating occurs — typically with a safety factor of fifty for the general public. Below those levels, the large majority of expert reviews, including the World Health Organization's assessments and the ICNIRP 2020 guidelines, find no established adverse health effect.
In 2011 the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified radio-frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (group 2B). That classification is based mainly on limited evidence from long-term mobile phone use, where the phone is held against the head and tissue absorption is far higher than anything a base station produces. Group 2B is a hazard classification, not a statement about base-station exposure, and it sits in the same category as coffee and pickled vegetables.
What is genuinely uncertain
- Whether any non-thermal biological effect exists. Some laboratory studies report oxidative stress or changes in cell behaviour at low intensities; others do not reproduce them, and the results are not consistent enough to support a causal claim.
- Whether very long-term, very low-level exposure has any effect at all. The epidemiology here is hard: exposure is difficult to estimate retrospectively and mobile use patterns change faster than studies can follow.
- Whether the shape of 5G signals — beam steering, higher peak-to-average ratios — changes anything. Present evidence does not show a difference in biological effect at comparable average exposure, and measurements in Switzerland and elsewhere have found average 5G exposure in the same range as 4G.
The precautionary argument
A substantial minority position, held by some researchers, medical organisations and public-health advocates, is that "no established effect" is not the same as "no effect", and that limits which are set purely to avoid heating are not protective enough. Precautionary proposals such as the Salzburg Resolution (1 mW/m²) and the BioInitiative Report (5 µW/m²) follow from that position, and several countries and regions write stricter limits into law. The Swiss installation limit value, ten times below the international immission limit, is itself an expression of the precautionary principle.
About the BioInitiative Report
The BioInitiative Report is the most frequently cited source for very strict limits. It was first published online in 2007 and updated in 2012 by a self-selected group of authors led by Cindy Sage and David Carpenter, and its central recommendation is an outdoor cumulative limit of 5 µW/m² — two thousand times below the ICNIRP reference level for high frequencies.
It is also criticised heavily. It was not peer-reviewed, the Health Council of the Netherlands concluded that it is a selective review of existing research rather than a balanced analysis, and former ICNIRP officials have described it as advocacy rather than objective assessment. This page reports it because people genuinely rely on it, not because it represents a scientific consensus.
Electromagnetic hypersensitivity
Some people report headache, sleep disturbance, fatigue, skin sensations or difficulty concentrating that they attribute to electromagnetic fields. The WHO recognises these symptoms as real and potentially disabling, while noting that controlled provocation studies have not shown that exposure reliably triggers them; it recommends treating the symptoms and reducing exposure where a person finds that it helps. Whether or not the mechanism is electromagnetic, the distress is not imaginary, and this map is meant to be usable by people who experience it.
Where this site stands
Radioguard takes no position on whether current limits are adequate. It shows what the official site data implies, labels its models as models, and puts the regulatory and precautionary figures side by side. If your concern is health-related and specific to your situation, the useful next step is a measurement and a conversation with a clinician or a cantonal environmental office, not a modelled heat map.
Main sources to read next
- World Health Organization — electromagnetic fields and public health: base stations and wireless technologies →
- ICNIRP — guidelines for limiting exposure to electromagnetic fields, 100 kHz to 300 GHz, 2020 →
- IARC — monograph volume 102 on radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, 2013 →
- The BioInitiative Report →, and the critical reviews by the Health Council of the Netherlands and other national bodies.
- Swiss Federal Office for the Environment and the Federal Office of Communications — NISV guidance and the federal measurement reports, quoted on Radiation levels.
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