Last week, I received a notice from my school explaining the criticism the local community was expressing towards the proposal of a 20 meter cellular tower near the premises of our school. Our school, housing more than 800 students from the surrounding communities, is adjacent to the Church ground where a large service provider is proposing to operate the cellular tower. Approximately 90 meters from our school building, the cell tower causes multiple risks, all of which should prevent its clearance. Cell Towers, despite being an important invention, used by millions of people every day, are carcinogenic, a property which has proven to be cancerous.
Cell Towers are tall structures, usually between 15 to 35 meters in height. They provide service for cell phones, and other gadgets. They receive and send radio-frequency (RF) signals. Cellular towers only have a certain distance of service from the facility. Each of these are called cells and with multiple cells, they can create overlapping, continuous reception. They are normally found in industrial areas or commercial property and not often near residence property.
The need for cell towers is growing, as more people start using the infrastructure. With more phones being purchased and used, existing cell towers might not have the capability to handle such bandwidth (amount of service needed). With the construction of more cell towers, it will allow for more capacity. Also, with new types of technology, such as smart phones and tablets, bandwidth increases significantly. Average smart phone usage uses 35 times more bandwidth than that of a regular cellphone. With this change in bandwidth, service providers have the need to construct new cell towers.
As seen, cell towers are of great use to us and are of great profit to service providers, but they can be detrimental in other ways.
Tower emissions must comply with Canada’s “Safety 6” guideline. The guideline monitors tower emission under only one criterion: thermal effects. 90 meters from the school, the cell tower has no thermal effect, but it menaces non-thermal, carcinogenic effects on human health. The radiation emitted on the human body, constantly, from such close proximity, can cause the abnormality of cells, and lead to the uncontrolled growth of these cells. This is called cancer.
The emissions of the tower can also cause 1 to 5 percent of the population within 100 meters, to suffer “electromagnetic hypersensitivity”. This syndrome can lead to headaches, depression, sleep disturbance, and many more. With 800 students, the idealists of the future, under these circumstances, 8 – 40 of them undertake the risk of the consequences.
Many other countries, like Italy and Switzerland have regulations on a cell tower’s proximity to a school, irrespective of the thermal effects. Canada has a limit of 10W/m2 of radio-frequency while some others(still based on thermal effects) have much more austere regulations, at 0.01W/m2. The highest densities of the signals occur between 50 to 250 m. My school, regarded as one of the best academic, social, and athletic enrichment environments in Calgary, is 90 m from the tower. Community and society should respect, uphold and protect the health of students, the sculptors of tomorrow.
Ultimately, we should not be making friends with carcinogens, commonly known as cell towers.
Sources
City of Calgary – http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/DBA/Documents/development/cell-tower-faqs.pdf?noredirect=1
Wiki – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_site
Celltower.ca – http://celltower.ca/wordpress/?page_id=12
Cancer.ca – http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/cellular-phone-towers
Hey Sunand! I have a friend who goes to Tom Baines, so I’ll ask him about it (or you of course). I really like how you used the bold font to express your writing too. 😛
KEEP IT UP.
you can also just use the hyperlink function next time when you want to provide sources too, just a tip 😛
Thanks, Wentao!
Who’s you’re friend?
I just might know him!
The wattage of the signal is less than a light bulb at ground level, add some facts to your article from here:
National Cancer Institute
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones
This deals with using phones close to your head, no studies show any conclusive RF issues or correlation.
For towers from The American Cancer Society
At ground level near typical cellular base stations, the amount of RF energy is thousands of times less than the limits for safe exposure set by the US Federal Communication Commission (FCC)
and other regulatory authorities. It is very unlikely that a person could be exposed to RF levels in excess of these limits just by being near a cell phone tower.
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/cellular-phone-towers
Do cellular phone towers cause any other health problems?
High levels of RF waves can cause a warming of body tissues, but the energy levels on the ground near a cell phone tower are far below the levels needed to cause this effect. So far, there is no evidence in published scientific reports that cell phone towers cause any other health problems
From the FCC with a PDF at the bottom
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/human-exposure-rf-fields-guidelines-cellular-and-pcs-sites