Why independent standards
Official exposure limits are built around the Specific Absorption Rate, which describes
how much energy body tissue absorbs as heat. Stay below the limit and you will not be
cooked. That is genuinely all the limit promises.
The effects documented in the independent literature are largely non-thermal: sleep,
oxidative stress, immune response, DNA repair. Because they are not heating effects, a
heat-based limit says nothing useful about them. Reporting against biology-based
thresholds is the precautionary approach, and it is the one we take.
See the health evidence
2012
Bio-Initiative
The Bio-Initiative Report (2012) was prepared by twenty-nine authors from ten countries:
ten holding medical degrees, twenty-one PhDs, and three with MSc, MA or MPH degrees. It is
the result of a meta-analysis of a large body of studies.
The report concludes that official standards are unsuitable, and even dangerous, for our
health. Bio-Initiative redefined threshold values intended to preserve the integrity of
human health. Disconnected refers to those threshold values in its assessments, by
precautionary principle.
More about Bio-Initiative
2015
SBM (Standard of Building Biology Testing Methods)
The Institute of Building Biology in Germany, which brings together leading experts on
both low and high frequencies, created the SBM-2015 standard. It is the most demanding
quality standard on the subject of electromagnetic wave exposure. It was updated in 2024 to SBM-2024, which is the version Disconnected uses for its reports.
The health department of the Salzburg region in Austria officially adopted these values
for mobile telephony. According to the underlying work, the first signs attributable to
electromagnetic exposure (insomnia, fatigue, difficulty recovering) appear beyond the
threshold values determined by SBM-2015.
More about SBM
2017
IGNIR: International Guidelines on Non-Ionizing Radiation
IGNIR is a set of guidelines based on the EUROPAEM EMF Guidelines 2016. The standard was
born in October 2017 in Oxford, in the United Kingdom. The guidelines have been updated and expanded in Jan-2021
The guidelines are the outcome of an independent multidisciplinary team including medical
doctors, scientists, and representatives of vulnerable and sensitive groups.
More about IGNIR
How this shows up in your report
Every measurement in your report is given as a raw value and as a comparison against these
references, room by room. That way you can see not only what was measured, but how far it
sits from the level independent researchers consider precautionary.
