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Measurement protocols

Sleeping-area assessment (full four-quantity survey)

The combined survey building-biology practice applies to a bedroom: RF power density, AC magnetic field, AC electric field and body voltage, each graded against its own band.

power density

Last verified 12 August 2026.

Also searched as: bedroom EMF survey, sleeping area survey

Quantity measured
power density

Goal

Produce a single defensible picture of a sleeping area across all four exposure quantities, with mitigation ordered by measured contribution.

Equipment

  • Broadband RF power-density meter
  • ELF gaussmeter (power-frequency magnetic field)
  • AC electric field meter
  • Body-voltage measurement kit
  • Logging EMF instrument

Procedure

  1. Run the RF room survey, the ELF magnetic survey and the body-voltage measurement in that order, at the pillow position.
  2. Grade each result against the corresponding SBM-2024 band, and separately against the applicable regulatory limit, and report both.
  3. Rank the four quantities by how far each sits into its own precautionary band — this ranking, not intuition, determines what to fix first.
  4. Apply one mitigation at a time and re-measure only the affected quantity before proceeding.
  5. Re-run the full survey after all mitigations and archive both datasets with dates.

Pitfalls

  • Buying shielding before measuring, which is the most common and most expensive mistake
  • Fixing the most-discussed source rather than the largest measured one
  • Treating SBM precautionary bands as legal limits, or regulatory limits as safety targets — they answer different questions
  • Changing several things at once, leaving no way to attribute the improvement

Interpret results against

  • Building Biology SBM-2024 RF band: no anomaly
  • Building Biology SBM-2024 AC magnetic field bands
  • Building Biology SBM-2024 AC electric field bands
  • EUROPAEM 2016 night-time target value for WLAN and similar pulsed sources

Related records

  • Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN)

    The German institute behind the SBM building biology testing methodology and its precautionary evaluation bands, and the training body for building-biology consultants.

    Organizations

  • RF room survey

    How to measure radiofrequency exposure in a room so the result is reproducible: peak and average, at body positions, with the dominant direction identified.

    Measurement protocols

Sources

  1. sbm-2024 Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines for Sleeping Areas (SBM-2024) — Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN), 2024. ngo, link checked 2026-08-12.
  2. europaem-2016 EUROPAEM EMF Guideline 2016 for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of EMF-related health problems — European Academy for Environmental Medicine, 2016. ngo, link checked 2026-08-12.

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