New stringent mobile tower emission norms come into force
03 Sep 2012
With new guidelines coming into force from Saturday, radiation emission from telecom towers are expected to reduce to 1/10th of the present level, a development that is expected to go a long way in addressing public health concerns.
Further, the handsets that would be rolled out from domestic manufacturing units or to be imported would have reduced absorption capacity, as per the new guidelines.
The minimum distance of a tower (with two antennas) would be 35 meter from a residential building. Of the 7 lakh towers for mobile phones throughout the country 95 per cent are already said to be compliant with the new emission norms.
Telecom minister Kapil Sibal said on Friday said that, non-compliance with the standards would attract a penalty of Rs5 lakh per tower.
He added, public health came first and though technology needed to be embraced, it ultimately needed to be subject to public health.
On mobile handsets, the specific absorption rate (SAR) value would be now 1.6 watts / kg averaged over one gram of human tissue, as against the earlier 2 watts/kg measured over 10 grams of human tissue.
