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“LET the headlines be that mobile towers are safe,” declared Rajan Mathews, director of the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). He said this while presenting the findings of a survey commissioned by cell phone service providers to measure radiation from mobile phone towers in Delhi. The survey conducted at 180 spots in the Capital found radiation levels from the towers extremely low.
These findings were meant to counter an earlier survey by a media house and a private company, Cogent EMR Solutions that provides radiation safety solutions. It reported high levels of radiation from mobile phone towers last June and led to an increase in court cases by residents associations worried by radiation risks from the city’s mobile phone towers (numbering about 6,000).
COAI and its ally, the Association of United Telecom Service Providers (AUSPI), commissioned reputed institutions— IIT Madras, Thiagarajar College of Engineering in Madurai and Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology at Chennai—to carry out the survey. Cell phone towers in India operate between radio frequencies of 400 MHz and 2,000 MHz.
The researchers measured the frequency and power field of a particular spot to calculate the electrical and magnetic fields; they included both GSM and CDMA wavelengths. At the lowest level, electric and magnetic fields measured 4.3 million times below the standards prescribed by the International Commission of Non-ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guidelines. The highest level measured was also low—68 times below the ICNIRP standard of 9,200 milliWatt per square metre (mW/sqm).
Discrepancies
Mobile phone service providers used their study to dismiss Cogent’s, saying it was faulty and was meant to serve the company’s business interests. But the new survey has raised doubts because its radiation level measurements are drastically lower than that of Cogent’s (see table). Girish Kumar, a professor of electrical engineering at IIT Bombay said, “the readings (by service providers) must have been taken at spots away from the main beam of the transmitter.”
COAI and AUSPI, during the media conference, had shown a video clip of the survey which showed persons taking measurements with instruments shielded by a technician on one side and a car on the other. The objects or persons acting as shields would have absorbed part of the radiation, Kumar said.
Zafar Haq, former chief executive officer of Cogent, defended his company’s findings. “Radiation levels do not remain static. High fluctuations happen due to traffic movement and usage patterns. It is less prudent to compare or claim any two readings contradicting if they are not taken at the same time, location and under same conditions,” he said.
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