What was going on when I was born?

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to recommend that the Federal Government for the first time limit the strength of radiation from the antennas of radio and television transmitters because of possible human health risks. New studies have raised a question whether broadcast radiation under certain conditions may cause disorders in the nervous and immune systems. As a result, sources at the E.P.A. and the broadcast industry say, the Federal Government is moving for limitations. Although some scientists disagree with the new studies, Federal officials and some health associations have concluded that prudence calls for increasing the margin of safety. ''It's a long-deferred and very welcome Federal action,'' said Dr. Leonard R. Solon, director of the New York City Health Department's bureau for radiation control. ''The proposed standards are a significant defense of the public health.''

New York State was penalized $58.6 million by the Federal Government yesterday on the ground that the state had failed to correct health, living and safety violations at five of its centers for the retarded and disabled. The penalty, which was announced by the Federal Department of Health and Human Services, was described as the largest of its kind ever imposed against any state. It represented nearly 17 percent of the Federal Medicaid contribution of $329.4 million last year for providing care for New York's retarded and disabled. In a statement, Margaret M. Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services, said: ''This is not a bolt out of the Federal blue, cavalierly invoked. For more than 10 years, New York, and indeed all 50 states, have been on notice that in return for a generous, continuous supply of Federal dollars, we expect mentally retarded individuals in state institutions to be treated with dignity and exemplary care.''

-improvement season, time for such things as repairing roofs, adding rooms and replacing windows. Summer, therefore, is also the season for homeowners' problems with less-than-scrupulous contractors, ranging from some who place bricks on a lawn, claiming that they have fallen from a chimney that must be rebuilt, to the capable worker who begins a job but leaves in the middle because the project cannot be finished alone. This year, local enforcement agencies are using new tools to help combat these practices. Both Nassau and Suffolk Counties conducted operations this spring to expose unlicensed contractors and New York City officials are using a recently enacted law allowing them to seize the trucks and tools of such workers. But, these officials say, the best weapon against home-improvement fraud is still consumer caution. ''Year in and year out, home improvement will top the list of complaints,'' said Gary Walker, a spokesman for the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, which received 1,471 such complaints in 1983 and 631 through April of this year. ''And more problems show up this time of year.''

House and Senate tax conferees agreed today on about $30 billion in tax increases over four years - more than half of their goal of $50 billion in additional revenues. The increases, which are intended to shrink Federal budget deficits, include restrictions on tax breaks in leasing deals by such tax-exempt entities as colleges and municipalities, extension of the 3 percent telephone excise tax through 1987, curtailment of income averaging for individuals and repeal of an interest income exclusion that was scheduled to become effective in 1985. But even as the conference committee moved ahead with its business of reconciling tax bills passed by the House and the Senate, there were new signs that final passage of a tax measure as part of an overall deficit-reduction package of $140 billion to $180 billion through 1987 could get hung up over spending reductions.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg of New Jersey was having breakfast yesterday morning at his home in Montclair when Walter F. Mondale called. The primary voting Tuesday, Mr. Mondale said, had left him a handful of delegates short of the number needed to sew up the Democratic Presidential nomination, and he was hoping Senator Lautenberg, until then uncommitted, would pledge his support. The Senator, having thought about the matter overnight, said that he would. Then he called Gary Hart to tell him of the decision, and later in Washington Senator Lautenberg said: ''Now is the time for our party to pull together behind a nominee. I believe it is time for Gary Hart to come home to the Democratic party and behind the nomination of Walter Mondale.''

An international team of scholars has produced a three-volume edition of James Joyce's ''Ulysses'' that corrects almost 5,000 omissions, transpositions and other errors included in previous editions of the seminal 20th-century novel. Scholars predict that the new edition, subtitled ''A Critical and Synoptic Edition,'' will shed new light not only on particular passages, but also on the interpretation of entire episodes and characters. They say also that the new edition will prompt a fresh round of studies of what is already one of the most thoroughly analyzed novels ever written. The new edition corrects an average of seven flaws for every printed page of ''Ulysses'' - errors involving punctuation, omitted words, phrases and even entire sentences. Joyce himself was greatly vexed by the errors, but managed to correct only a handful of them before turning his attention to other books.

''As of 11:59 this morning, central daylight time, over 2,008 delegates had pledged their support to me.

Last month's near-collapse of the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company has set back lawmakers, mostly Republicans, who want to deregulate the nation's commercial banking system. And those legislators, mostly Democrats, who want to keep banks from expanding into other financial services have new strength. As a result, Congress is likely to pass either a very limited banking bill this year or none at all, rather than the broad measure sought by the Administration, interviews today with Congressmen and their staffs indicated. The Administration and Paul A. Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, have been pressing Congress for a deregulation bill. But the forum in which it is supposed to take shape, the Senate Banking Committee, now appears to lack a majority in favor of such action.

Rising crime in the subways has renewed the longstanding debate about who is ultimately responsible for the city's transit police force - the Transit Authority or the Police Department. ''The problem with the transit police is that there is no one in charge, or rather, too many people in charge,'' said Thomas Reppetto, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a private group that monitors criminal-justice agencies in the city. ''This is a force at loose ends now,'' said Carol Bellamy, the City Council President and a member of the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Transit Authority's parent agency. To improve the 3,381-member transit force and its management, Mr. Reppetto recently called for the transit police to be placed directly under the control of the Police Commissioner. Miss Bellamy recently called for the transit police to be directly under the control of David L. Gunn, the Transit Authority president.

The Economy About $30 billion of tax increases were agreed on by House and Senate conferees as they began their effort to raise $50 billion in added revenues over four years. The taxes would be part of a package to reduce the deficit by between $140 billion and $180 billion through 1987. But there were signs that a dispute on spending cuts could delay or even prevent passage of the measure. (Page D1.) Hearings on overhauling the Federal income tax opened as a prelude to writing a report to the President on tax revision. (D17.) Momentum toward bank deregulation has slowed in Washington after the near-collapse of Continental Illinois. Instead of a broad banking bill being passed this year, as the Administration would like, a narrow one, or even none at all, appears likely. (D1.) As lobbyists battled, Illinois legislators delayed action on a bill to aid Continental Illinois. (D13.)

Walter F. Mondale claimed victory yesterday in the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, and a number of party leaders united behind the former Vice President to urge his main competitor, Senator Gary Hart, to fold his campaign. Mr. Mondale declared that his victories in New Jersey and West Virginia and a flurry of endorsements from uncommitted delegates had pushed him past the total of 1,967 delegates required for the nomination. Of the 210 delegates he won Tuesday, 104 were in New Jersey. However, Mr. Hart, who won the California primary Tuesday, garnering 207 delegates, refused to concede. He and his top advisers said they would continue to urge Mondale delegates to take advantage of party rules that allowed them to switch candidates if they chose.

LAST week my daughter was graduated from a college that no one ever leaves. I see 40- year-olds wearing sweatshirts that say Property of . I know 60-year-olds I suspect of sleeping with their alumni directories under their pillows. And I imagine all of them hoisting their wineglasses at the annual dinner and emitting baritone roars. But that she roars in a different octave, my daughter will probably do the same. Their college looks like the college of one's imagination - old buildings, ancient trees, shaded quadrangles - and you know all its afternoons are golden, in memory if not in fact. The light was golden on her last afternoon too, and it colored a desolate landscape. At the rear of the dormitories car doors stood open for cartons, trunks, clip-on lamps, posters, pillows - the detritus of four years away from home. The graduates were out of their robes and back in their shorts and mortal again, and parents who'd been smiling a few hours before were snapping, ''Do you have to take that, too?'' as box after sloppily packed box appeared. Meanwhile the buildings, empty now, seemed to have pulled themselves together and gone back to sleep: the class of 1984, it seemed, hadn't made a dent.