Staff Reporter :
Mobile network towers in cross the country is not radiate anything harmful to human health and the environment, said Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BRTA) citing a survey.
“Radiation is found to be much lower than the threshold fixed by the BTRC and international standards, there’s nothing to worry about,” said Md Aminul Hasan, Commissioner of the BTRC said on Monday.
He said that radiation emitted by mobile phone towers is well below the World Health Organization’s (WHO) permissible limit and is not harmful to human health or the environment.
A survey has been conducted on mobile phone network tower radiation in parts of the country and BTRC will continue the study, said Aminul Hasan. “We found the radiation level satisfactory and uploaded the results regularly on our website,” he said adding that there is no alternative to setting up more towers to improve telecom services.
“Confusion surfaced over the mobile network tower radiation. We assured the government and private institutions and building owners that there’s nothing to worry about,” he said.
There are around 33,000 towers owned by telecom operators, according to BTRC.
“Radiation is of two types-ionising and non-ionising. Ionising radiation including nuclear waste, ultra-violate radiation, Gama-ray and X-ray is harmful to human health. It can affect the human health at DNA level,” said BTRC Deputy Director Shamsuzzoha as he presented a keynote paper.
“Radiation from the mobile network towers is low-powered and doesn’t harm the human health. We found the equipment used in network towers follow national and international standards and their radiation level is much below the ceiling,” he said.
A survey conducted in Dhaka, Chattogram, Khulna, Sundarbans, Feni, Rajshahi, Sylhet, Rangpur, Jamalpur and other parts of the country did not find the network tower exceeding the limits, according to Shamsuzzoha.
“We hope that the confusion among the people regarding mobile network towers will be gone. We have seen birds nesting and living on some towers for long. On some of the rooftops, we have seen vegetable gardens with good yields beside a tower,” he said.
“We need more sites in future when we introduce 5-G networks. We must not fall behind,” said AMTOB Secretary General SM Farhad, who moderated the event on the standards of mobile network tower radiation.
Earlier, the High Court in April 2019 ordered the authorities to do a survey to see if the radiation emitted by rooftop towers is causing harm to human health and the environment.
The High Court ordered the BTRC to submit a report in four months following the hearing of a writ petition. Besides, it also ordered the regulators to identify the specific absorption rate, a measure of energy absorbed by the human body when exposed to a radio frequency while using a mobile phone.
“The permissible amount of radiation exposure from mobile network tower is below both international and BTRC standards. So, there is no reason to worry,” Md Shahidul Alam, Director General of spectrum management at BTRC, said during a discussion meeting titled “Tower radiation measurement and recent survey”.
AMTOB Secretary General and CEO Brigadier General SM Farhad (retd), said, “We’ll need more sites when 5G will be introduced. So, there’s no reason to halt technology just by being scared. This will cause us to fall behind.”
He said rumours that exposure to radiation from mobile phones and mobile tower is harmful to human health is not true at all.
