Does having cell phone towers near schools, parks, and your home concern you?

Not in the slightest.

 

No. Why should it?

Tom

 

A lot
because i personnaly think that radio radiation is part of headaches
and makes people more iritated.

 

If you really want to worry, consider that there's a giant, FULLY EXPOSED nuclear reactor only 93 million miles away, that everyone agrees affects our climate. Worse, this reactor is guaranteed to destroy the earth some time in the future, which in turn will have an enormous effect on "growing children."

The energy a person absorbs from this reactor can be a good fraction of a kilowatt, causing noticeable heating and burning. The energy absorption from a cell tower 500 feet away is milliwatts at most, typically microwatts. Worrying about it will probably cause more bodily damage than experiencing it.

(Seriously: There is no conclusive scientific proof of the total lack of danger of cell towers, or the logically more likely danger of holding a cellphone next to your brain. A low percentage of studies have seemed to indicate the possibilty that, especially in the latter case, there might occasionally be a small effect in very few people. If you count the chain of "maybe"s in that last sentence, you'll see why I'm not worried!)

 

You have a question that is very different than your situation.

The situation is that an extremely low intensity RF signal will be broadcast nearby, but you are worried about high intensity RF signal.

A cell phone is not high intensity. No harm will come from it. The worst possible scenario is that the tower is ugly and it lowers property values.

 

These are people who do not use electricity, right?



If they do use electricity, it is like smoking, but worrying about loud noises.

 

OK...first the disclosure. I work for "Big Phone", but I'm not in the cellular end of the biz. I'm a layer-1/2 guy in the Central Office, and I'll still have a gig no matter who's logo is on the company letterhead.

So having said all of that...you should be concerned about a cell tower that's 500 feet away from a school ONLY if the tower is over 500 feet in height, or you're afraid that their fragile little artistic sensitivities will be disrupted by a big old metal tower cluttering up the landscape.
If you're not worried about the RFI...keep it up.
That big old metal tower looks quite imposing, but it really does not blast out that much energy...usually not much more than 100 watts, depending on design.
That's right. ONE HUNDRED.
Usually...if you're standing at the base of a cell phone tower and you have a cell phone in your pocket, you're getting more radiation from the phone in your pocket (which also has a transmitter built into it) than you are from the tower.

Those concerned parents expose their little crumb crunchers to more RFI danger in their own homes and cars that they will ever encounter from the Cellular Base Station...and we won't get into distracted driving resulting from the handsets!

Really......if you're worried about blood-brain barrier issues, or thermal damage, or increased cancer issues, FIRST you should loose the handset. Then you can start tearing down cell towers.

Good Luck!

 

Not worried at all and I used to design radio communication equipment.

JeffD

 

you get more exposure from heating TV dinner in microwave

 

^
Generally speaking...3G and 4G represent third and fourth generation data rates, but 4G systems do operate (trnasmit) in higher frequency bands. IIRC.....3G lives around 1.8-2.5 GHz, and 4G systems transmit in the 2.5 to 8Ghz spectrum. I’m more of a fiber and wire guy, so all of this is really not my patch.
Occasionally, you'll hear where the FCC is auctioning off spectrum to Big Bell to allow them to operate in certain frequency bands for zillions of bucks.
Do you have a cordless phone in your home? Some of the newer ones brag that they operate in the XX-GHz range, which is allegedly "quieter" than the older models that operated at lower frequencies....but we're talking about wireless emitters, in your home (or maybe in theirs too) that crank out RF energy in the bands that your friends and neighbors are worried about. While we're in the home....let's look around a little. Do you (or they) have a wireless router??
Wi-Fi operates at 2.4 something GHz, and it's also spraying out RF energy into your home (if you have one.....a Wi-Fi, that is---not a home.) The Wi-Fi cranks out something like 100mW...or something like 1/1000ths of the energy that's being generated by that big ugly tower....HOWEVER (comma!) the energy that's present in your house from things like the Wi-Fi router (and connected devices---those transmit too!) and cordless phones, and other RF emitter are orders of magnitude higher than the signal that's present from a cell tower---even if it's in your back yard!

Your neighbor is ignorant. This isn't to say that he/she is an idiot, since they may not have thought all this through, and those cell towers are ugly, and those phone companies are rich. In the PRC.....those last two are reasons enough to tie up a Fortune-50 company's legal branch with paperwork I guess.
But really........If you want to worry about how cell phones are endangering our lives, I think that I would begin my search in the cockpit of an automobile, rather than at the base of a cell tower.


Reader's Digest Version:You have better things to worry about than RFI from a cell tower....really!
....Just sayin!

 

True for a point source, but not for other geometries.

The phones occasionally talk to the base, but it's not continuous. The same is true for WiFi Access Points; they beacon periodically, and transmit any data received on the wired connection. The difference is that there is almost always some traffic on a data network, even if it is just housekeeping traffic.

Tom

 

IIRC.....and remember, this isn't my forte, the cordless phone handset is just a receiver until you mash the talk button.
I could be wrong about that one, but if it transmits a "here I am" signal while it's latched to your belt, I'm thinking it'll be a short, infrequent burst.

The Wi-Fi transceivers in your connected devices, and the router itself are always transmitting. Well....OK...they're transmitting and receiving, since they have to stop talking (very briefly) to listen and vice verse...but practically speaking they're always transmitting.
Some computers and all cell phones have an "Airplane Mode", which makes them "Radio Silent".

Like I said.....I wouldn't worry about it much, but that's me. I used to live on nuclear submarines, so RFI really doesn't scare me much.
YMMV.

Edit. Tom's answer is better than mine (suprise-suprise!)

 

Only in the near field (a few wavelengths away - that's a few inches at 2.4 gigahertz). In the far field EM waves drop with the square of distance. The EM field from a cell tower is negligible compared to that of your cell phone inches from your head.

JeffD

 

There is no scientific evidence that non-ionizing radiation has any biological effect other than heating. Thus, radar technicians in the early days got glaucoma from sticking their heads in transmitter dishes and getting enough exposure to actually heat their eyeballs. But power lines and cell towers have really only two risks: 1. If they fall down and you're in the way and get hit. 2. They're ugly.

As someone said above, you probably don't want a cell tower (or any other kind of tower) close enough that if it falls over it might hit you or someone you care about. I'd want to be double its height from its base, since if it falls, it could send other stuff flying. So I'd want a 500 foot tower to be at least 1,000 feet from my house or a school.

 

Place a cellphone next to a speaker and you'll hear the occasional bit of bleeping. Assuming it's turned on, of course.

I'm not worried about cellphone towers. In fact, I think they should be sited on the north side of nice little 2-bedroom houses with double garages.

Or in school yards: then the kids will get good reception on their cellphones and it can double as a climbing frame.

 

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