A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Russian View of IEEE RF Standard

May 19, 2006

How comprehensive and objective is the new IEEE RF exposure standard (C95.1-2005)? Not at all, says Vladimir Binhi of the General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and the author of Magnetobiology. In a recent short comment, Binhi claims that the IEEE standard is biased, arguing that it dismisses non-thermal biological effects and ignores a large body of work documenting their existence. For its part, the IEEE committee, chaired by C.K. Chou of Motorola and John D'Andrea of the U.S. Navy (at Brooks Air Force Base), maintains that, "All relevant reported biological effects at either low '("non-thermal') or high ('thermal') levels were evaluated." You can judge for yourself: The Swiss Research Foundation on Mobile Communication has posted a copy of the new standard, which covers the frequency range 3 kHz to 300 GHz, on its Web site. American and Russian researchers have long been at odds about what constitutes a safe exposure standard. At times, Russian limits have been up to 1,000 stricter than those in the U.S.