NEW DELHI: Even as the government has issued strict revised instructions relating to radiation hazards from mobile towers and phones followed by strict monitoring and enforcement, corrective action was taken in 83 cases where the Base Station Emissions were found to be more than the prescribed norms.
Although no tangible evidence is available linking radiation from mobile phones to health issues, the government had with effect from 1 September last year said that mobiles to be manufactured from that date will have one tenth of the radiation levels compared to the present mobiles.
The government also said that the present mobile handsets with existing designs which are compliant with 2.0 W/kg averaged over 10 gram of human tissue will continue to co-exist up to 31 August 2013.
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Thereafter, only the mobile handsets with revised SAR value of 1.6 W/kg would be permitted to be manufactured or imported in India.
With these measures, India now has one of the most stringent EMF exposure norms in the world, Parliament was told today.
The Department of Science and Technology constituted a committee on 1 October last year under the chairmanship of Dr NK Ganguly, former director general of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) with representative from IIT Chennai, Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), the Environment & Forest Ministry, ICMR and DST to examine the harmful effects from Cell towers on the population living in the vicinity and for developing the frame of reference for calling out request for proposals for scientific assessment of health hazards and adverse impact on ecology.
A Complaint Handling System for Electro Magnetic Field (EMF) Radiation from Mobile Towers has been launched by DoT on 4 October 2012 in Mumbai. Initially, this facility has been started for the residents of Mumbai. The online complaint facility is available on DoT website.
Though the Bio-initiative 2012 report has spoken of health hazards from mobile phones and towers, the ICMR observed that the report is not based on multi disciplinary weight – of evidence method leads to a scientifically sound judgment and objective and there is no balanced reflection of the current state of scientific knowledge. However, the evidence given in the report cannot be ignored and hence, need further investigation in this area.
