Many of the internationally recognised safety limits, including Australia and France’s, are set at conservative levels, well below where harm is expected to occur. Australia and France impose the same safety limits on the energy that is absorbed by the body from a mobile phone.

While it’s not ideal, and we do not condone safety breaches, there should be no immediate danger from exposure slightly above the limit. Health effects may occur from exposure to radio waves, namely body tissue heating. But this would occur at levels much higher than the safety limit.

In Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority regulates the exposure from mobile phones and is responsible for any matters of compliance.

Although it was reported by French authorities that exposure from the iPhone 12 is not compliant with their regulations, it is important to note that this will not have any impact on health.

The international guidelines that the French regulations are based on (ICNIRP, 2020) specify that adverse health effects of this type of exposure have not been demonstrated below 40 W/kg, whereas the exposure level from the iPhone 12 was only reported to be 5.7 W/kg (i.e., 1.7 W/kg higher than the ICNIRP 2020 limit of 4 W/kg).

The maximum exposure that the iPhone 12 can produce is thus many times lower than would be required to cause any harm. To put the exposure level into context, 5.7 W/kg would only cause a temperature rise in the limbs of less than 1°C, and only in a very localised region; this is far less than normal temperature variation during the day.