Wireless Radiation Exposure in New York City
Thielens A, Salvatore Davi S, Hema S, Ricardo Toledo-Crow R. Urban Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure in New York City. Environmental Research. 2026. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2026.125040.
Abstract
This
study investigates Radio Frequency Electromagnetic Field (RF-EMF)
exposure across New York City’s five boroughs. The RF-EMF exposure was
measured in 39 bands across the 88 MHz to 5.925 GHz frequency range
using an exposimeter fixed in a backpack that was worn during walks
along 38 predetermined paths in various representative urban
environments of the city from September 2024 to May 2025.
We
calculated the summary statistics (minimum, p25, arithmetic mean,
geometric mean, median, p25, p50, p75, p90, standard deviation) in units
of electric field strength (V/m) and compared RF-EMF exposure
quantitatively across urban environment type: commercial, residential,
greenery, train underground, water ferry, indoor; across the five
boroughs of the City: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, and Staten
Island; and across six technology categories: radio and TV broadcast,
cellular downlink (DL), cellular uplink (UL), WiFi (WLAN), Time Division
Duplex (TDD), and Total Exposure. We also analyzed whether population
density and foot traffic in each area correlate with RF-EMF exposure.
A
mean total RF-EMF exposure of 0.97 (+/- 0.88 V/m) was measured in NYC.
We found that cellular downlink is the dominant contributor to mean
environmental exposure, accounting for 45% to 55% of the total exposure
in each borough. We found a moderate positive correlation (ρ = 0.5,
p-value < 0.05) between exposure and foot traffic, and a weak or
negligible, but statistically significant, positive correlation (ρ =
0.1, p-value < 0.05) between exposure and domiciled population
density.
The
study provides a detailed assessment of the RF-EMF exposure levels in
various urban environments offering a clearer understanding of the
extent of exposure in a densely populated city like New York where
wireless communication networks are continuously expanding. These
results are important for policymakers when establishing RF exposure
guidelines for the population of NYC and other urban areas in North
America.
Highlights
• Measurements of RF-EMF exposure across New York City’s five boroughs
• RF exposure is moderately and positively correlated to pedestrian foot traffic
• RF exposure is weakly correlated to residential population density
• Cellular downlink dominates environmental RF-EMF exposure in NYC
• RF exposure measurements are below ICNIRP and FCC reference levels
• Measurements of RF-EMF exposure across New York City’s five boroughs
• RF exposure is moderately and positively correlated to pedestrian foot traffic
• RF exposure is weakly correlated to residential population density
• Cellular downlink dominates environmental RF-EMF exposure in NYC
• RF exposure measurements are below ICNIRP and FCC reference levels
Excerpts
... in North America there have been, up to now, only four studies that measure this exposure: one in Los Angeles (Sagar et al., 2018), one in Columbia, South Carolina (Koppel and Hardell, 2022), and two that only consider Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) in Mexico City (Ramirez-Vazquez et al., 2023a, 2021). When compared with approximately 100 studies conducted in Europe to quantify this exposure (Jalilian et al., 2019), it is clear that we are currently lacking measurement data to quantify personal exposure to RF-EMFs in other major metropolitan areas in the U.S....
Micro-environmental personal RF-EMF exposure assessments were conducted
using an ExpoM-RF4™ exposimeter (Fields at Work GmbH, Zürich,
Switzerland) that measures electric field intensity in V/m, in 39
user-configurable frequency bands covering the 88 MHz - 5.925 GHz
frequency range as depicted in Fig. S1 (TOP) and Table S1....
We selected 38 different urban environments in New York City, which are
listed in Table S2 of the Supplementary Materials. Twenty-six were
outdoor urban environments located in the five boroughs. Additionally,
there were four indoor paths, five train measurements, and three water
ferry routes measured, covering important public transport hubs and
modes of transportation in NYC....
All data are available on our repository (github.com/NextGen-Environmental-Sensor-Lab/Urban-RF-EMF)....
Comparing
our results to those reported in a systematic review of multiple cities
(Ramirez-Vazquez 2023b, Table 3) would have New York City in 10th place
of total ranked mean exposures (0.97 V/m across all 5 boroughs).
However, we measured a maximum exposure value of 13.3 V/m in Wall Street
(Manhattan in the Financial District) which is higher than the maximum
reported in the cities of the systematic review....
Lastly, our indoor measured total mean values of 0.53 V/m (Table 4), although higher, are also within range of other reported values of 0.42 V/m by Kiouvrekis et al. (2020) and Panagiotakopoulos et al. (2023), and of 0.43 V/m by Ramirez-Vazquez et al. (2021)....
Finally, we did not measure RF-EMF exposure in the FR2 (24-28 GHz)
frequency band, even though this band is licensed and in use in NYC.
While we expect this band to mainly contribute to auto-induced and not
environmental RF-EMF exposure, we do aim at quantifying it in our next
study....
Conclusion
This
study revealed that the mean total environmental RF-EMF exposure in New
York City is 0.97 V/m across all five boroughs, which is within range
of similar exposures in other technologically developed cities and well
below the ICNIRP and FCC safety reference thresholds.
We
also found that there is a moderate and statistically significant
positive correlation between exposure and foot traffic (pedestrian
mobility) across all boroughs. A Spearman correlation analysis showed
correlations of with a p-value < 0.05.
We
also looked at exposure and population density (residential) and found a
weak to negligible yet statistically significant correlation in most
boroughs, with the Spearman coefficients ranging between , with a p-value < 0.05.
These
findings suggest that areas with a heavier human footprint coincide
with higher RF-EMF emissions and that there is an increased demand and
usage of mobile communication devices in these areas.
The
summary statistics revealed that Commercial areas in the 5 boroughs
exhibited the highest amount of total exposure (1.35 V/m). Manhattan
measurements showed a higher mean total RMS E-field strength (1.42 V/m)
than Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx. Throughout all
Boroughs, Downlink was found to be the highest contributor to RF-EMF
exposure (47%).
Our
future work will aim to measure personal exposure to RF sources
operating above 6 GHz, which are sporadically present in NYC, and to
perform a more detailed analysis of TDD exposure to separate the UL and DL components. Additionally we plan to conduct long term longitudinal
measurements with stationary devices at select locations in the City to
investigate the temporal nature of the exposure relative to time of day
and season, similar to Iakovidis et al. (2025). Lastly, a future study could use our findings to incorporate foot traffic and population density in machine learning models for the
estimation and prediction of RF-EMF exposure, for example through the
creation of exposure maps.
Supplementary data: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512601371X#appsec1
--
A study conducted by the EPA in the 1970's which assessed RF exposure in 12 cities in the U.S. included New York City (Tell and Mantiply, 1982). The study reported a median exposure for NYC of 0.022 milliwatts per square meter. In comparison, the new study reported a total mean value for NYC of 0.97 V/m or 2.5 milliwatts per square meter.
Thus, current outdoor RF exposure levels in New York City are about 114 times greater than what the EPA estimated fifty years ago.
A six nation RF exposure study (Sagar et al., 2018) in which I
was a co-author included a site in the U.S.: Los Angeles (see below for more information). In our study, the mean
total RF exposure in Los Angeles (1.13 V/m) was slightly
higher than the new study found in New York City (0.97 V/m). However,
the new NYC study found a much higher maximum exposure in Wall Street
(Manhattan in the Financial District) (13.3 V/m) than the highest value
we found several years earlier in a rural center of Los
Angeles (1.60 V/m).
Compared to the other five countries, Los Angeles had high exposure levels
ranging from 1.4 milliwatts per square meter (mW/m²) (or 0.73 V/m) in a non-central residential
area of Los Angeles to 6.8 mW/m² (or 1.60 V/m) in a rural center of the city. The median
total exposure to RF-EMF across all eight outdoor microenvironments in Los
Angeles was 3.4 mW/m² (or 1.13 V/m).
Thus, recent outdoor RF exposure levels in Los Angeles are about 70 times greater than what the EPA estimated fifty years ago.
Sagar S, Adem SM, Struchen B, Loughran SP, Brunjes ME, Arangua L, Dalvie MA, Croft RJ, Jerrett M, Moskowitz JM, Kuo T, Röösli M. Comparison of radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure levels in different everyday microenvironments in an international context. Environment International, 114: 297-306. 2018. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2018.02.036.
--
March 9, 2018
New Study Shows that Cell Phone Towers are Largest Contributor
to Environmental Radiofrequency Radiation Exposure
A new
study measuring radiofrequency electromagnetic fields shows considerable
variability in exposure in six countries. Cell phone towers are the most
dominant contributor.
(Los Angeles, CA, March 9, 2018) Today the journal, Environment International, published online a six-nation study of
outdoor exposures to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF).
Wireless devices and infrastructure emit RF-EMF. However, little is
known about how this affects environmental exposures around the world. In the
present study, RF-EMF measurements were taken in locations in Australia, Ethiopia,
Nepal, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States by means of portable
measurement devices. The devices considered exposure from cell phone towers, TV
and FM radio broadcast antennas, cell phone handsets and Wi-Fi.
According to Dr. Martin Röösli, Associate Professor at the Swiss
Tropical and Public Health Institute and senior author of the paper, “The study
demonstrates that total RF-EMF exposure levels in the environment vary widely
between different areas. Cell phone tower radiation is the dominant contributor
in most outdoor areas.”
Los Angeles was the
study site in the United States.
Compared to the other five countries, the US had high exposure levels
ranging from 1.4 milliwatts per square meter (mW/m²) (or 0.73 V/m) in a non-central residential
area of Los Angeles to 6.8 mW/m² (or 1.60 V/m) in a rural center of the city. The median
total exposure to RF-EMF across all eight outdoor microenvironments in Los
Angeles was 3.4 mW/m² (or 1.13 V/m).
Today’s outdoor RF-EMF
levels in Los Angeles are about 70 times greater than what the EPA estimated
forty years ago.
The last time RF-EMF exposure was systematically measured in Los Angeles
was in the late 1970’s as part of a 12-city study conducted by the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Tell and Mantiply, 1982; Hankin, 1985). The EPA
assessed RF-EMF in 38 outdoor locations in Los Angeles and found that the
median population-weighted exposure was 0.048 mW/m² (or 0.13 V/m). At that time television
and FM radio broadcast antennas were the most important contributors. Hence, since
the 1990’s, the implementation of cell phone tower networks has resulted in
substantial increase in RF-EMF.
Although this measurement study demonstrates that environmental exposure
levels are substantially below regulatory limits, there are still uncertainties
about whether the strong increase of RF-EMF in the environment in recent years
poses a health risk. Switzerland has implemented precautionary limits for
RF-EMF and indeed exposure levels were lowest among all countries participating
in the study.
Röösli and his colleagues emphasize that this measurement study
contributes to a better understanding of the exposure situation of the general
population all over the world and foster the design of future health studies.
Sanjay Sagar, the first author of the paper, and Martin Röösli, are with the Swiss Tropical and Public
Health Institute in Basel, Switzerland. Co-authors from the U.S. include Michael Jerrett
and Tony Kuo with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Michael Brunjes
and Lisa Arangua with the Los Angeles County Health Department, and Joel Moskowitz with the UC Berkeley School
of Public Health.
--
Sagar S, Adem SM, Struchen B, Loughran SP, Brunjes ME, Arangua L, Dalvie
MA, Croft RJ, Jerrett M, Moskowitz JM, Kuo T, Röösli M. Comparison of
radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure levels in different everyday
microenvironments in an international context. Environment International, 114: 297-306. 2018.
Highlights
- •
- We measured RF-EMF in 94 matched microenvironments in six countries.
- •
- We applied a common protocol for direct comparison of RF-EMF.
- •
- Downlink and broadcasting exposure was most relevant in outdoor microenvironments.
- •
- Uplink is only relevant in public transport with the highest in Switzerland.
- •
- Exposure in urban areas tended to be higher.
Abstract
Background: The aim of this study was to quantify RF-EMF exposure applying
a tested protocol of RF-EMF exposure measurements using portable devices with a
high sampling rate in different microenvironments of Switzerland, Ethiopia,
Nepal, South Africa, Australia and the United States of America.
Method: We used portable measurement devices for assessing RF-EMF
exposure in 94 outdoor microenvironments and 18 public transport vehicles. The
measurements were taken either by walking with a backpack with the devices at
the height of the head and a distance of 20–30 cm from the body, or driving a
car with the devices mounted on its roof, which was 170–180 cm above the
ground. The measurements were taken for about 30 min while walking and about
15–20 min while driving in each microenvironment, with a sampling rate of once
every 4 s (ExpoM-RF) and 5 s (EME Spy 201).
Results: Mean total RF-EMF exposure in various outdoor microenvironments
varied between 0.23 V/m (noncentral residential area in Switzerland) and 1.85
V/m (university area in Australia), and across modes of public transport
between 0.32 V/m (bus in rural area in Switzerland) and 0.86 V/m (Auto rickshaw
in urban area in Nepal). For most outdoor areas the major exposure contribution
was from mobile phone base stations. Otherwise broadcasting was dominant.
Uplink from mobile phone handsets was generally very small, except in Swiss
trains and some Swiss buses.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates high RF-EMF variability between the
94 selected microenvironments from all over the world. Exposure levels tended
to increase with increasing urbanity.
Supplemental Material: http://bit.ly/6nationsupplement
--
Tell and Mantiply. Population exposure to VHF and UHF broadcast
radiation in the United States. Radio
Science. 17(5S):39S-47S. 1982. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/RS017i05Sp0039S/epdf
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