Elf measurements in Greece conducted by the Greek Atomic Energy Commission

The Greek Atomic Energy Commission (E.E.A.E.) is the competent national authority for the protection of the general public and the environment from artificially produced non-ionizing radiation. To this end, E.E.A.E. carries out measurements in the vicinity of all kinds of facilities emitting E.L.F. electric and magnetic fields (e.g. power lines, high voltage substations) and RF electromagnetic fields (e.g. audio, radio and television antennas, mobile phone base stations, radar and satellite earth stations and other microwave communication systems), in order to monitor whether the general public exposure limits are being adhered to. Regarding the electromagnetic fields emitted by antenna stations, the safety limits in Greek legislation were recently set to 70% of the I.C.N.I.R.P. values and to 60% of them if the antenna station is closer than 300 m from the perimeter of day nurseries, schools, hospitals or elder-care facilities, while in the case of extremely low frequency fields, the limit values are set exactly the same as the reference levels in I.C.N.I.R.P. guidelines. Regarding the levels of E.L.F. electric and magnetic fields in Greece E.E.A.E. has conducted many measurements around the elements of the electric grid where the main interest of the public is focused. Theoretical estimations and typical values based on actual measurements of the fields in the vicinity of the power lines used in Greece are presented. Measurement results in the vicinity of substations are also presented. In general, the levels of the magnetic field in the vicinity of the power grid elements are well below the established safety limits; whereas the levels of the electric field may reach values comparable to the safety limits very close to extremely high voltage lines. However, there is no case where the measured values of elf electric or magnetic fields were higher than the safety limits. There are a few exceptional cases where measurements of RF fields conducted by E.E.A.E. in the vicinity of radio and T.V. broadcasting antennas have revealed excess of I.C.N.I.R.P. reference levels. The results of one such case are presented. About 70% of the RF measurements conducted by E.E.A.E. concern cellular phone base stations E.E.A.E. has conducted measurements in the vicinity of 1100 such stations and virtually in all measurements the results are from tens to thousands times below I.C.N.I.R.P. reference levels for general public protection. However, the number of measurements regarding cellular phone base stations is increasing due to the constantly increasing relevant requests from municipal authorities, individual citizens and even the mobile phone network operators. (authors)