KEY POINTS:
Wireless gadgets like cordless phones and baby monitors emit "minuscule" levels of radiation, according to an Australian study that rules the technology safe.
Scientists tested levels of electromagnetic waves in 20 Melbourne homes after some studies raised questions about health hazards.
"Essentially, everything was extremely low, ranging from being about 10,000 times lower than the national standards to being 10 times below," said lead researcher Professor Rodney Croft of the Australian Centre for Radiofrequency Bioeffects Research.
"With such minuscule levels, it's very hard to conceive of how there could be a problem at such low levels."
The team measured radiation emitting from various devices in the home and found small gadgets like wireless alarms, baby monitors, PDAs, wireless keyboards and mice had levels under one-thousandth of a per cent of the national standard.
Wireless internet, doorbells, cordless phones and mobile phones all came in under one per cent of the standard.
The average microwave oven reached just 0.65 per cent of the standard, with the worst example recording 16 per cent.
"For the highest emitting device that's still very low, but it's comparatively high, given we never would have thought that with microwave ovens," Prof Croft said.
The overall levels in the house were just 0.11 per cent of the national guidelines for safe household exposure, showing the cumulative effect was not of concern.
"There was a concern that with cumulative exposure we were being bombarded with electromagnetic waves but the difference between devices turned off and turned on was quite trivial."
He said the study, partially funded by the industry body Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, was the first in Australia to independently verify real exposure in homes, with the results "making sense in terms of the physics".
"The radio frequency of these devices is designed to be as small as possible to make it as little a burden on the battery as possible and these results are in keeping with that."
But Melbourne occupational and environmental medicine specialist Dr Bruce Hocking said there were too many unknowns to judge the technology safe.
"It's true that most houses have low fields but that doesn't mean that there aren't houses or parts of houses with higher fields that are concerning and impact negatively on health," Dr Hocking said.
"It's too soon to call that. We still don't know."
The results will be released at a Swinburne University of Technology forum next week.
- AAP
