# Uncontrolled vs controlled environment

> The North American equivalent of the general-public and occupational tiers: 'uncontrolled' means people who are not aware of their exposure and cannot act on it.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/glossary/uncontrolled-environment
- Collection: Glossary
- Record id: `glossary:uncontrolled-environment`
- Status: verified
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/glossary/uncontrolled-environment

## Key values

- **Category:** regulation

## Definition

FCC and Health Canada tables are split into uncontrolled/general-population and controlled/occupational columns. Uncontrolled applies to people who have no knowledge of their exposure and no ability to limit it — residents, passers-by, anyone in a public area. Controlled applies to trained workers who are aware of the exposure and can control their time in the field, and is typically five times higher in power density and shorter in averaging time. Quoting an occupational figure as though it applied to a home is one of the commonest errors in EMF discussion.

## Sources

- `hc-safety-code-6` Health Canada (2015). *Limits of Human Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Energy in the Frequency Range from 3 kHz to 300 GHz (Safety Code 6)*. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/publications/health-risks-safety/limits-human-exposure-radiofrequency-electromagnetic-energy-range-3-300.html — guideline, link checked 2026-08-12
- `fcc-1310` U.S. Government Publishing Office (eCFR). *47 CFR § 1.1310 — Radiofrequency radiation exposure limits*. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/section-1.1310 — regulation, 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.