The Cellular Operators’ Association of India (COAI) on Wednesday said the exposure limit of radiation due to mobile phone towers in the city is safely below permissible limits as per international standards.
In its latest report, the World Health Organisation has classified radio frequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans.
“This classification falls under Group 2B, meaning that there could be some risk. However, such a classification needs to be investigated further,” said Jack Rowley, senior director of GSM Association, which internationally studies safety of mobile communications.
Even as the telecom ministry has adopted an exposure limit of 9.2 watts/sq m as ‘safe’, countries like Switzerland and Italy have exposure limits as low as 0.095 watts/sq m.
“The department of telecom is considering reducing current exposure limits by less than 1/10th the current limit up to 0.45 watts per square metre by September this year,” said Rajan Mathews, director general, COAI.
The reduction of radiation exposure limits for mobile phone towers is the need of the hour, say experts. As opposed to China which has at the most two to three mobile phone operators, India has close to 10, who set up individual towers on residential rooftops.
“In India, the exposure limit is applied to individual carriers, so the radiation multiplies by several times depending on the number of transmitters in that area,” said professor Girish Kumar, department of electronic engineering, Indian Institute of Technology–Bombay.
