EMF COMP
EMF Regulations
Exposure to EMFs can harm employees.
The Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016 (CEMFAW) are there to protect your people, and they apply to every UK employer. You must assess your workers’ EMF exposure and, with five or more employees, write it down. With so many field sources in a modern workplace, that is not a job for a spare afternoon. So let us do it. EMF safety is all we do. Need to assess EMF in your workplace? Want a survey for a new development? Need an EMF risk assessment for a piece of equipment? Our award-winning, chartered specialists will give you a clear answer and a route to compliance. Request a quotation using the form.
The Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016
Every UK employer must assess the risks from electromagnetic fields at work, and those with five or more employees must record the findings. It is a statutory duty, and it sits alongside the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999.
Nobody should be made ill by their job. Strong electromagnetic fields (EMF) can do exactly that, which is why the law sets limits. The question is simple: how does your workers’ exposure compare with those limits? Until you know, you cannot show that you comply. Once you do, you can prove you have met the legal requirement, and usually a good deal more.
Where do significant fields come from? Electrical switchrooms, transformers, motors, heavy-current cables, magnets, welding, charging cables, induction heating and radiofrequency (RF) transmitters, to name the usual suspects. Each needs to be shown to comply with the Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations 2016 (Statutory Instrument 2016 No. 588). EMF can also interfere with medical devices, so the Regulations give special protection to “employees at particular risk”: people with pacemakers, ICDs or metal implants, and expectant mothers. For them, far lower levels apply.
Sectors
HSG281, the official guidance to the EMF Regulations, names the sectors most likely to need an EMF assessment. Industrial: switchrooms, transformers, plant rooms, motors, heavy-current cables, magnets, charging cables, induction heating and furnaces, demagnetisers, NDT, MPI, electric welding and antennas. Telecommunications: radio and TV transmitters, base stations and antenna arrays. Medical: MRI, electrosurgery, diathermy and transcranial stimulation. Energy: substations, switchrooms, overhead conductors, generators and transformers. Research: development rigs and prototype equipment. Construction, defence, IT and oil and gas processing are covered too. Recognise yours? It is worth checking where you stand.
You know your site. We know the fields. Put the two together and the assessment is quicker, cheaper and more useful. EMFcomp is small by design, so the work is shaped around you and you speak directly to the specialist carrying it out.
What We Do
We assess compliance with electromagnetic field legislation, and nothing else. With decades of experience behind us, we cut through the EMF radiation regulations and tell you plainly where you stand. If something needs to change, you get an action plan that achieves compliance at the lowest sensible cost. One room or an entire facility, the standard is the same: a detailed report you can rely on, and certainty that your site or project complies.
Fall short of the EMF Regulations and HSG281 and the consequences add up: enforcement, a damaged reputation, unsettled staff, sick pay, higher insurance premiums and fines. Health and safety fines in the UK are unlimited and regularly reach six figures. None of that needs to happen. We have completed more than 500 non-ionising radiation risk assessments across many sectors. After yours, you receive a detailed technical report that documents your compliance with the EMF Regulations and shows exactly how it was reached.
We are specialists in electromagnetic field health and safety, and we have worked with some of Europe’s largest companies. Our job is to protect your employees from the risks of non-ionising radiation, and to give your workforce the reassurance that someone has checked properly. Clear measurements, a clear verdict against the electromagnetic field legislation, and no jargon.
Decades of Experience
More than 500 assessments. Thirty years of hands-on experience. One aim: helping employers meet the Control of Electromagnetic Fields at Work Regulations without fuss. EMFcomp is SafeContractor accredited and an Affiliate of the Society for Radiological Protection. We take the risk of non-compliance off your desk, and leave you with the evidence that your health and safety standards are where they should be.
Frequently Asked Questions
01Why Do the EMF Regulations (CEMFAW 2016) Exist?
Anything electrical produces an electromagnetic field, and a strong enough field can harm the people working near it. At low frequencies the effects include tingling, dizziness, nausea and nerve stimulation. At high frequencies the body heats up, bringing a risk of RF burns, heat stress and hyperthermia. Above certain field levels these effects are well established, and the Regulations set limits to keep workers below them. Fields can also interfere with pacemakers, defibrillators and other active implanted medical devices, heat passive implants such as screws, plates and rods, and affect expectant mothers. That is why the Regulations single these people out as “employees at particular risk” and protect them at much lower levels. Talk to us to find out more.
02How Is Compliance with The EMF Regulations Assessed?
By measurement, by calculation, or both. On site, we use calibrated, state-of-the-art instruments and compare the readings with the Action Levels in the Regulations and HSE’s guidance. At 50 Hz, for example, the low action level for magnetic fields is 1000 µT. Where a reading is close to an Action Level, or the equipment is not built yet, we use computer modelling to calculate the electric fields or SAR actually induced in the body, and compare those with the Exposure Limit Values, the limits that ultimately count. You then receive a detailed report: the legislation and guidance, the methods, a full breakdown of results, and recommendations, action plans and mitigation measures. Those reports are one reason EMFcomp is an award-winning consultancy.
03Who Can Carry Out These CEMFAW Regulation Compliance Assessments?
The Regulations expect a competent person, and EMF is a specialist field. The recognised benchmark is the Society for Radiological Protection’s (SRP) Chartered Radiation Protection Professional (CRadP) qualification. It is a good question to put to any assessor.
EMFcomp’s assessments are led by a Chartered Radiation Protection Professional and Fellow of the SRP. The company is an Affiliate of the Society for Radiological Protection and an alumnus of the European Space Agency’s Business Incubation Centre. Our Managing Director is a past Chair of the SRP’s EMF Safety Committee and sits on international safety bodies including ICES. Add more than 500 assessments, and you have a depth of practical knowledge of the EMF Regulations that is hard to find elsewhere.
We co-wrote the European Commission’s ‘Practical Guide to the EMF Directive’. The UK’s Regulations were transposed from that Directive, 2013/35/EU, so the guide we helped write underpins how compliance is assessed here. Our advice, measurement and modelling rest on our own results, published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature: our Founder and Managing Director, Dr Richard Findlay, has more than twenty papers on electromagnetic fields to his name. When you want an authoritative answer on EMF safety, this is where it comes from
