Study Spotlight: How Much RF Radiation Are Surgeons and Nurses Exposed to During Surgery?

Part of our Study Spotlight series — breaking down new EMF research into plain English. No jargon. No agenda. Just what the science says.

The Study at a Glance


📄 Title	Ambient RF-EMF exposure in surgical operating rooms from telecommunication antennas and Wi-Fi sources
📰 Journal	Frontiers in Public Health (January 6, 2026)
🏫 Researchers	Ramón Peyró-Sánchez, Jesús Gonzalez-Rubio, Manuel Gerónimo-Pardo, & Alberto Nájera — University Hospital Complex of Albacete, Spain
🔗 DOI	10.3389/fpubh.2025.1721454
📊 PMID	41567788
🔓 Access	Open Access (CC BY 4.0)

Why This Matters

Operating rooms are one of the most device-dense indoor environments you’ll ever encounter. Surgical teams spend 6-12 hours a day surrounded by electronic medical equipment, WiFi networks, and nearby cell tower antennas — and staff often check phones during waiting periods between procedures.

If you’re a surgeon, nurse, anesthesiologist, or surgical technician, you’ve probably wondered: am I absorbing more RF radiation than the average person just by doing my job?

This study went inside 10 operating rooms across two Spanish hospitals, measured RF levels during 67 actual surgical procedures, and came back with a clear answer.

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What They Did

The Setup

Researchers placed a calibrated RF exposimeter (Satimo EME Spy 140) in 10 operating rooms at two hospitals in Albacete, Spain:

7 operating rooms at the General University Hospital (HGU) — covering pediatric, orthopedic, emergency, vascular, ENT, general, and urological surgery
3 operating rooms at the Perpetuo Socorro Hospital (HPS) — covering ENT, general surgery, and traumatology

The exposimeter was mounted on a plastic tripod in a central, unobstructed location away from walls and electronic equipment, recording measurements every 5 seconds from 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM.

What They Measured

The device tracked 7 frequency bands spanning the major RF sources you’d encounter in any modern building:

GSM + UMTS 900 MHz (uplink and downlink) — cell phone signals
GSM 1800 MHz (uplink and downlink) — cell phone signals
UMTS 2100 MHz (uplink and downlink) — 3G data
2.4 GHz WiFi — wireless networks

They monitored only active surgical periods — from when the patient entered the room to when they left. Total measurement time: 120 hours and 45 minutes across 67 surgical procedures.

Variables They Tracked

To understand what drives exposure levels, they analyzed by:

Hospital location (proximity to cell towers)
Individual operating room
Number of people present (<10 vs. >10)
Surgery duration (<2.5 hours vs. >2.5 hours)
Surgery type (scheduled vs. emergency/complicated)

What They Found

The Bottom Line

All ambient RF-EMF exposure in every operating room stayed below 0.4% of the ICNIRP safety limit. Even under the worst-case conditions.

That means the highest exposure they recorded was 250 times below the threshold that international safety guidelines consider potentially concerning.

The Numbers

The dominant source of RF in operating rooms was WiFi — not cell towers, not phones:

2.4 GHz WiFi: Mean exposure of 58.82 µW/m² (highest of any band)
GSM 1800 MHz uplink: Mean of 15.2 µW/m² (phone transmissions from staff)
GSM + UMTS 900 MHz uplink: Mean of 11.0 µW/m²

To put those numbers in perspective: the ICNIRP reference level for 2.4 GHz is 10,000,000 µW/m² (10 W/m²). The highest mean they measured was 58.82 µW/m² — that’s 0.0006% of the limit.

What Drove Higher Exposure?

More people = more RF. Operating rooms with >10 people present showed higher uplink (phone transmission) levels, likely because more staff had active wireless devices.

Shorter surgeries had slightly higher ambient WiFi. This seems counterintuitive, but shorter procedures involve more prep/transition time when staff are more likely to use phones and tablets.

Hospital location mattered. The HPS hospital, surrounded by more cell tower antennas, showed higher downlink (tower-to-phone) levels on the 900 MHz band. But even there, levels remained far below limits.

One room was an outlier. Operating room Q22 at HPS had the highest WiFi exposure (mean 58.82 µW/m²), likely due to its specific position relative to nearby antennas and internal WiFi access points.

Emergency vs. Scheduled Surgery

No significant difference in RF exposure between emergency and scheduled surgeries. The surgical environment’s ambient RF is remarkably consistent regardless of urgency or complexity.

How This Compares to Other Environments

The exposure levels in Spanish operating rooms were comparable to — and sometimes lower than — levels measured in other indoor environments across Europe:

Environment	Typical RF Exposure
Operating rooms (this study)	0.2 – 58.8 µW/m²
Libraries	Similar range
Schools	Similar range
Public transport	Often higher (more active phone users)
Outdoor near cell towers	Often higher (direct line of sight)

The takeaway: operating rooms aren’t special RF hotspots. Despite all the electronic equipment, the concrete/metal construction of hospitals actually provides decent shielding from external tower signals.

The Caveats

What This Study Didn’t Measure

Electrosurgical equipment — cauterizing tools, diathermy devices, and other medical instruments that intentionally emit RF energy during surgery. These are known sources of occupational RF exposure in operating rooms, but they operate at different frequencies and serve therapeutic purposes.
5G signals — measurements were taken in early 2020, before 5G deployment was widespread in Spain.
Personal device usage — the exposimeter measured ambient room levels, not the specific dose absorbed by any individual. A nurse holding a phone to their ear would have higher personal exposure than the room average.

Measurement Limitations

Fixed-point measurement — placing the exposimeter on a tripod avoids body-shadowing effects but may not capture the exact exposure at a surgeon’s head or hand level.
Single-city data — results from Albacete, Spain may differ from hospitals in dense urban centers with more cell tower infrastructure.
Pre-5G timing — the 2020 measurement window predates widespread 5G rollout. Future studies should include 3.5 GHz and mmWave bands.

Our Take

This is a reassuring study for healthcare workers — and by extension, for anyone spending time in modern indoor environments.

The key insight isn’t just that operating rooms have low RF exposure. It’s that even in a worst-case indoor scenario — packed with people, electronic devices, WiFi networks, and located near cell towers — ambient RF levels barely register compared to international safety limits.

What this means for you:

If you’re a healthcare worker: Your ambient RF exposure from telecom sources during surgery is negligible. The bigger occupational question is exposure from electrosurgical instruments, which this study didn’t address.
If you’re a patient: The RF environment during your surgery, from wireless communications at least, is extremely low-level.
If you’re concerned about indoor RF generally: These measurements add to a growing body of evidence that typical indoor environments — even device-dense ones — have ambient RF levels far below safety guidelines.

The one thing this study reinforces: WiFi is the dominant source of indoor RF exposure, not cell towers. If you’re thinking about reducing your daily RF exposure, your home WiFi router matters more than the nearest cell tower — though even WiFi levels were a tiny fraction of safety limits.

Read the Full Study

📄 Full paper (open access) — Peyró-Sánchez et al., Frontiers in Public Health, 2026.

More Study Spotlights

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🔬 Are Cell Phone Safety Limits 100x Too High? — A provocative benchmark-dose analysis
🧠 Does Working Around RF Equipment Cause Brain Cancer? — A population-based study says no
📡 First Controlled 5G Human Exposure Study — What happened when scientists exposed volunteers to 3.5 GHz
🚇 How Much RF Radiation Do Subway Workers Absorb? — Simulation reveals exposure levels far below limits

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Study: How Much RF Radiation Are Surgeons and Nurses…