The Discrepancy between Maximum In Vitro Exposure Levels and Realistic Conservative Exposure Levels of Mobile Phones Operating at 900/1800 MHz

Gernot Schmid and Niels Kuster, Bioelectromagnetics, Volume 36, Issue 2, pp. 133–148, February 2015, online January 30, 2015

The objective of this paper is straightforward: to quantify the discrepancies between SAR levels applied during in vitro experiments and actual SAR levels observed in vivo.

The main findings are summarized as follows: 

• The exposure of skin, blood, and muscle tissues with devices satisfying the regulatory safety criteria may well exceed 40 W/kg at the cellular level
• In 51 of the 80 in vitro studies reviewed, the highest exposure level averaged over the cell medium including evaluated cells (monolayer or suspension) was 2 W/kg or less
• It is recommended to include additional exposure levels well above 2 W/kg for any future experiments involving risk assessments (the authors proposed this recommendation over 20 years ago when research on the risk assessment of mobile communications first began).

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