Are neighbourhood cellphone towers really that harmful?
RANDBURG – While the World Health Organisation says that cell towers mean no harm, other studies suggest differently.
The jury is out as to whether or not radiation from cellphone towers in residential neighbourhoods can cause cancer.
The Randburg Sun has published two articles this year about residents who are concerned around the construction of communication towers.
Both articles followed the common concern about network antennas and the possible long-term health effects that whole-body exposure to the radio frequency (RF) signals may have.
ALSO READ: Rage against proposed Randpark Ridge RPR cell tower
Over the past 15 years, various studies examining a potential relationship between RF transmitters and cancer have been published.
The World Health Organisation argues that these studies have not provided evidence that exposure from the transmitters increases the risk of cancer.
According to the organisation, the only health effect from RF fields identified in scientific reviews has been related to a small increase in body temperature from exposure at very high field intensity found only in certain industrial facilities and not from commercial communication towers.
The levels of RF exposure from base stations and wireless networks are so low that the temperature increases are insignificant and do not affect human health.
Due to their lower frequency, the body absorbs up to five times more of the signal from FM radios and TVs than from base stations.
This is because the frequencies used in FM radio and TV broadcasting are lower than those used in cellphone technology and because a person’s height makes the body an efficient receiving antenna.
On March 22, scientists called on the World Health Organisation to re-evaluate the carcinogenicity of cellphone radiation after the Ramazzini Institute and US Government studies filed their own reports.
Evidence produced by the studies shows prolonged exposure to even very low levels of RF radiation remain unknown but makes rats uniquely prone to a rare tumour called a schwannoma.
The Ramazzini study exposed 2 448 rats from prenatal life until their natural death to environmental cell-tower radiation for 19 hours per day.
The exposures mimicked base-station emissions like those from cell tower antennas with low exposure levels.
The study noted that schwannomas are exceedingly rare in humans and only a handful of cases have ever been documented in medical literature.
