Electromagnetic Safety Standards

Voluntary standards have been developed by several organizations to act as guidelines for the design of equipment that can generate electromagnetic fields so that the safe operation of that equipment can be assured. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for example, uses standards to ensure that AM/FM/TV broadcasting equipment is operated within safe limits of electromagnetic field levels for all who live nearby.

The two most widely accepted standards in the United States for electromagnetic fields are NCRP Report No. 86 (1986), developed by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), an organization chartered by Congress, and ANSI/IEEE C95.1-1992, developed and regularly updated by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), both of which have been conducting research and setting standards over the last 30 years. ANSI/IEEE C95.1-1992 was developed by a team of 125 experts including physicians, engineers and scientists. The ANSI/IEEE standard references 321 papers originally published in peer-reviewed journals. The standards contained in NCRP Report No. 86 are based on nearly 1000 scientific and medical papers. These papers summarize an even larger body of laboratory and epidemiological studies and serve as the basis for defining the limits of safe exposure to electromagnetic radiation for devices ranging from cellular phones to amateur radio transmitters, to TV broadcasting stations.

HAARP complies completely with all existing safety standards for electromagnetic radiation at all locations on or off the site. At the closest public access to the site, the fields haave been measured to be more than 20,000 times lower than the safe level specified in the standards. At more distant locations, HAARP fields are much lower. In the High Frequency (3 - 30 MHz) range, ANSI/IEEE C95.1-1992 specifies the power density in milliwatts per square centimeter, will be less than 180/$f2$ (where f is the frequency in MHz). This is shown in the figure below for the frequency range where HAARP will operate.

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