This appeared in today’s issue of the ARRL Letter…..Dan
ARRL RF Safety Committee Develops New Guidelines to Communicate RF Safety
Radio amateurs now have a new tool from ARRL to help answer questions about their stations. Neighbors of amateur radio operators are sometimes concerned about transmissions and radio frequency exposure from amateur stations.
The ARRL RF Safety Committee, with their international counterparts at the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB), the Irish Radio Transmitters Society (IRTS), and the Swedish Society of Radio Amateurs (SSA), has developed a new set of guidelines to help amateurs interact with and talk to their neighbors about RF exposure.
Chairman of the ARRL RF Safety Committee Greg Lapin, N9GL, said the new informational PDF, Helping Amateurs Interact with Neighbors Asking About Radio Transmissions, was developed after a year of discussions about RF safety.
“Neighbors may be alarmed by some of the misinformation about RF safety that is available from a variety of sources. By following the exposure regulations from the Federal Communications Commission, we can be confident that our families and neighbors are safe,” Lapin said.
Lapin added that RF exposure regulations are based on decades of trustworthy research. He also encouraged all amateur radio operators to perform exposure assessments for their stations to make sure they meet those regulations.
It’s a rather long document, but here are some key points:
- Be sure that the amateur radio station about which the neighbor has questions has been evaluated for EMF exposure compliance.
- Be prepared to offer the results of the evaluation to the neighbor.
- If the station has not been evaluated for compliance, be prepared to indicate that the licensee will evaluate it soon and will provide the results to the neighbor.
- Be able to contrast the relevant exposure limit to the maximum strengths of the amateur radio station.
- Be fluent with terminology for specifying units of RF exposure such as electric and magnetic field strengths and power density and averaging time.
- Be prepared to comment on the margin of safety inherent to the RF exposure limits.
- Have a point of contact with the local jurisdiction regulatory authority to provide to the neighbor if they have additional questions about exposure.