HEALTH CONCERNS OF MOBILE PHONES

It is true that mobile phones have brought in revolution is telecommunications industry. These devices keep people from anywhere is the world connected. The expected mobile phone usage is projected to be 500 million within a short period of time. As per the recent reports, of the service providers have projected erection of over 90,000 base stations all over India to meet the ever increasing demand from rural areas.

Communication between a mobile phone and the nearest base station is achieved by the microwave emissions from the transmitters connected to the antennas mounted at the base stations, located on top of buildings or specially built towers. The beams from the antennas spread out with distance and tend to reach ground level at distances in the range 50-300 meters from the antennas. With larger capacity base stations having multiple transmitters, the output power can vary over time and with the number of calls being handled. The total radiated power from an antenna could be up to around 100 W with multiple transmitters present.

In view of this exponentially increasing and prolonged usage of the mobile phones, there is much apprehension worldwide about the long term health effects. Some of the health effects of exposure to the microwave radiation can be thermal effects such as heating of the exposed tissues. The exposure is reported to increase the risk of malignant tumors on the side of the head. Many other non-thermal health effects such as cellular genotoxicity are also reported in the literature. Most of the results could not be confirmed due to limited exposure period of 10 to 15 years available. Indirect effect can be just increase in the road accidents due to mobile usage during driving.

Keeping in mind of the above uncertainty, scanty nature of the studies and the gaps in our knowledge about the health effects, it is advised to keep the exposure much below the international guidelines. There is a need for strict regulation with respect to the manufacturers maintaining the limits on the radiation emission levels of the mobiles much lower than the standards. The required numbers of the base stations should be minimized and optimized by way of sharing of the base stations by the different service providers. Regulators should periodically monitor the ambient levels near base stations for compliance of the limits by the service providers.