# Electrical service panel and meter base

> The highest-current point in a building: readings in the tens of milligauss are normal within a metre, falling to background within two to three metres.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/emitters/electrical-service-panel
- Collection: Sources & emitters
- Record id: `emitters:electrical-service-panel`
- Status: verified
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/emitters/electrical-service-panel
- Also known as: breaker box, distribution board, consumer unit

## Key values

- **Category:** elf magnetic
- **Emission bands:** Power frequency and harmonics
- **Environments:** home, workplace
- **Duty cycle:** Continuous, proportional to total building load.

## Field strength by distance

- **30 cm:** 10–100 mG — Measured range — Typical range within arm's reach of a residential panel under normal load. [niehs-emf, sbm-2024]
- **1 m:** 2–20 mG — Measured range — Typical range at 1 m. [niehs-emf, sbm-2024]
- **3 m:** 0.2–2 mG — Measured range — Usually indistinguishable from background by 2–3 m. [niehs-emf, sbm-2024]

## Mitigations, most effective first

- **Do not place a bed, desk or child's play area on either side of the panel wall.** — Two to three metres of separation reduces the field to background; magnetic fields pass through walls unaffected.
- **Have an electrician check for net current on the neutral and for shared or crossed neutrals.** — Wiring faults, not the panel itself, cause the elevated whole-house readings that do not fall off with distance.

## Measure with

- ELF gaussmeter (power-frequency magnetic field)

## Related records

- [Building Biology SBM-2024 AC magnetic field bands](https://emfbase.com/limits/building-biology-ac-magnetic-bands): Sleeping-area grades at 50/60 Hz: below 0.2 mG no anomaly, 0.2–1 mG weak, 1–5 mG strong, above 5 mG extreme.
- [Household background magnetic field (50/60 Hz)](https://emfbase.com/emitters/household-background-magnetic-field): Away from appliances, homes typically sit below a few milligauss; the WHO's epidemiological association with childhood leukaemia begins at a daily average of 3–4 mG (0.3–0.4 µT).

## Sources

- `niehs-emf` National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. *Electric and Magnetic Fields*. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/emf — government, link checked 2026-08-12
- `sbm-2024` Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN) (2024). *Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines for Sleeping Areas (SBM-2024)*. https://buildingbiology.com/site/downloads/SBM-2024_EVALUATION_GUIDELINES_EN.pdf — ngo, link checked 2026-08-12

Data licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Dataset version 2026.08.1. Retrieved from EMFBase, https://emfbase.com.

This record is reference data, not medical or legal advice. Regulatory limits, scientific guidelines and precautionary values are labelled separately and answer different questions.