ESP32/ESP8266 - Health concerns

daronk
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat May 02, 2020 7:15 pm

ESP32/ESP8266 - Health concerns

Postby daronk » Sat May 02, 2020 7:25 pm

This is my first post, so let me say hello!
I have a pretty weird question:
I am doing a pretty specific project, when I plan to connect up to 130 devices, mostly depending on ESP32 and a few ESP8266 devices. All of them will be located in a tiny space of around 5-8 square meters. I started to wonder if you are aware of any research or norms (like ISO in Europe) that touches that topic? Is it healthy to have so many active devices in such a small space? So to sum up:

1. How many wifi devices (ESP32 or ESP8266) can be "mounted" in one square meter (Ideally some researches or legal norms, not "just experience" or "commons sense" because this project aims to be a commercial one)
2. Is this a really health concern? are there any research on that?

ESP_Sprite
Posts: 9766
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2015 4:08 am

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 - Health concerns

Postby ESP_Sprite » Sun May 03, 2020 9:01 am

I do not know of any regulations for this, but one thing to keep in mind is that WiFi does collision avoidance meaning that all WiFi modules will try to make sure that only one will transmit at any given time. As such, the total amount of radiation should not be much higher than if you have a single WiFi module that transmits/receives all the data given. (Well, technically it will be a smidgen more as there is a chance that two WiFi modules will try to start transmitting at exactly the same time.)

savage
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:24 pm

Re: ESP32/ESP8266 - Health concerns

Postby savage » Tue May 05, 2020 12:50 am

Looking around, this Australian radiation standards document gives information on RF limits and (in the appendices) summarizes a variety of health studies.

But given what ESP_Sprite said, the average RF exposure from your array is likely quite a bit lower than from using a cell phone, which is already well within RF limits.

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