A dedicated website will be set up to let the public know how much emission occurs from every tower in the country.
The DoT will create a national EMF Web portal to provide the public access to the status of compliance with the prescribed EMF norms of all BTSs [base transceiver stations that produce electromagnetic fields] and mobile towers and related relevant information.
DOT will continue the extensive audit of self-certificates being provided by the telecom service providers in order to ensure compliance with the prescribed stricter norms of EMF radiation.
At present, the department has no permanent mechanism to check emissions on a daily basis and it depends on “self-certification” from the operators. It carries out random checks and penalizes operators whose towers emit excess radiation.
The DoT adopted the EMF radiation limits prescribed by the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) in 2008, which were further reduced to one-tenth of the safe limit prescribed by ICNIRP with effect from 2012. All telecom service providers have to comply with these prescribed limits.
WHO has been investigating the health effects of electromagnetic fields for last 18 years
The EMF project noted in September: “Despite extensive research, to date there is no evidence to conclude that exposure to low-level electromagnetic fields is harmful to human health. The limits in international standards have not changed for over 15 years because no research has found any health effects below these levels. There are needs to be research on the effect of mobile phones on children. Studies conducted so far have not shown that they are more sensitive to EMF than adults.
Another area of concern is the radiation emitted by the fixed infrastructure used in mobile telephony, such as base stations and their antennas, which provide the link to and from mobile phones. This is because, in contrast to mobile handsets, it is emitted continuously and is more powerful at close quarters. On the other hand, field intensities drop rapidly with distance away from the base of transmitters because of the attenuation of power with the square of distance.
In order to protect the population living around base stations and users of mobile handsets, governments and regulatory bodies adopt safety standards, which translate to limits on exposure levels below a certain value. There are many proposed national and international standards, but that of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) is the most respected one, and has been adopted so far by more than 80 countries. For radio stations, ICNIRP proposes two safety levels: one for occupational exposure, another one for the general population. Currently there are efforts underway to harmonize the different standards in existence.
Radio base licensing procedures have been established in the majority of urban spaces regulated either at municipal/county, provincial/state or national level. Mobile telephone service providers are, in many regions, required to obtain construction licenses, provide certification of antenna emission levels and assure compliance to ICNIRP standards and/or to other environmental legislation. The safety standards in the U.S. are set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC has based its standards primarily on those standards established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), specifically Subcommittee 4 of the “International Committee on Electromagnetic Safety”.
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