# Safety Code 6 SAR basic restrictions (uncontrolled)

> 0.08 W/kg whole-body average, with peak spatially-averaged limits of 1.6 W/kg for head, neck and trunk and 4.0 W/kg for limbs — the same headline figure as the U.S.

- Canonical URL: https://emfbase.com/limits/safety-code-6-sar-limits
- Collection: Exposure limits
- Record id: `limits:sc6-sar-basic-restriction`
- Status: verified
- Last verified: 2026-08-12
- JSON: https://emfbase.com/api/limits/safety-code-6-sar-limits

## Key values

- **Limit value:** 1.6 W/kg — Guideline value — scientific recommendation — Uncontrolled-environment basic restrictions: whole-body average 0.08 W/kg; peak spatially-averaged 1.6 W/kg (head, neck, trunk) and 4.0 W/kg (limbs). Controlled-environment values are 0.4, 8 and 20 W/kg. SAR takes precedence over the field-strength reference levels from 100 kHz to 6 GHz. [hc-safety-code-6, hc-safety-code-6-pdf]
- **Quantity:** specific absorption rate
- **Frequency band:** 100 kHz–6 GHz
- **Population:** general public
- **Set by:** Health Canada Safety Code 6 (2015) (2015 revision)
- **Kind:** Guideline — scientific recommendation

## Related records

- [FCC SAR limit for phones and portable devices](https://emfbase.com/limits/fcc-sar-limit-phones): 1.6 W/kg averaged over any 1 gram of tissue — the number quoted on U.S. phone SAR sheets — plus 0.08 W/kg whole-body.
- [ICNIRP 2020 local SAR basic restriction (head and torso)](https://emfbase.com/limits/icnirp-local-sar-limit): 2 W/kg averaged over 10 grams of tissue for the general public — a different averaging mass than the FCC's 1 g, which is why SAR numbers are not directly comparable between regions.

## 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
- `hc-safety-code-6-pdf` Government of Canada Publications (2015). *Safety Code 6 (2015), H129-48/2015E-PDF — official PDF edition*. https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2016/sc-hc/H129-48-2015-eng.pdf — guideline, 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.