Temporal Change of Outdoor Rf-Emf Levels Four in European Countries: A Microenvironmental Measurement Study

Abstract

Introduction

Over the past two decades, the amount of transmitted mobile data has increased rapidly. It is unknown whether the implementation of the new technologies enabling this has resulted in changes of outdoor radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) exposure.

Therefore, microenvironmental measurements were used to investigate temporal trends in RF-EMF exposure between 2016 and 2023, in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Spain, following a similar protocol across campaigns. This allowed for comparison of exposure trends between countries and years.

Methods

• Data collected as part of ACCEDERA (2016-2018), ETAIN (2023), and GOLIAT (2023) projects.
• Measurements conducted by repeatedly walking the same routes with RF-EMF exposimeters.
• Identical microenvironments were identified in each country and measurements of the exposure of mobile base station, contribution of mobile phones and the total levels were compared across years.

Results

• Between 6 to 14 unique microenvironments were measured in each country.
• Data did not suggest significant changes in the exposure from the mobile base station origin (total downlink exposure) between 2016 and 2023 for the four countries.
• Median values of mobile base station exposure ranged from 0.12 mW/m2 in Switzerland and 0.24 mW/m2 in Belgium in 2016 to 0.28 mW/m2 in the Netherlands in 2023, 0.20 mW/m2 in Belgium, 0.11 mW/m2 in Switzerland and 0.19 mW/m2 in Spain in 2023.
• No consistent trend in the individual microenvironments across the countries.

Conclusions

Measurements across included environment groups show that RF-EMF outdoor exposure levels do not indicate change in exposure levels between 2016 and 2023, despite an increase in mobile data traffic by a factor of 8 in Western Europe.