Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Aug 17: Taking serious note of the general complaints that Electro-Magnetic Radiations from the cell-phone towers have been leaving adverse impact on wildlife especially birds and bees, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has issued detailed advisory containing the actions to be undertaken by various agencies in order to avoid the impacts of radiations on such species.
The advisory would be of immense importance for Jammu and Srinagar cities where each and every cellular service provider has installed large number of towers instead of chalking out a strategy for sharing of infrastructure of each other to minimize the impact of radiations on the birds’ population.
Official sources said that the advisory has been communicated to Chief Secretary and Secretary, Environment and Forest Department of Jammu and Kashmir and other States of the country by Vivek Saxena, Deputy Inspector General (Wildlife Division) of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests with the mention that Expert Committee constituted by the Ministry has revealed that Electro-Magnetic Radiations of the cell-phone towers have been interfering with the biological systems.
On the basis of report of the Expert Committee and subsequent deliberations with the stake-holders, the Ministry has issued list of actions to be undertaken by various agencies involved in providing, regulating and dealing in any other manner with the EMR-based services, sources said, adding the advisory has been issued with the objective to avoid and mitigate the impacts of the Electro-Magnetic Radiations (EMR) on wildlife including birds and bees.
“The Electro Magnetic Radiations from the communication towers may have varying negative impacts on wildlife especially birds and bees as such the information on impacts related to different forms of wildlife as well as humans should be provided to the concerned agencies for regulating the norms for notification of standards for safe limits of EMR”, the Advisory said while asking the State Government and user agencies to strictly adhere to the suggested actions.
About the roles to be played by the Local Bodies, the advisory stressed that regular auditing and monitoring of EMR should be conducted in urban localities, educational, hospital, industrial, residential premises and especially around the protected areas and ecologically sensitive areas and the problematic towers from EMR point of view should be suitably relocated or removed.
It is pertinent to mention here that in Jammu city cell phone towers have also been installed on the educational institutions thereby exposing the children to radiations right under the nose of the concerned authorities, who never dared to check regular auditing of EMR status of such towers.
Stressing that messages on the dangers of cell phone towers and associated radiations should be displayed in and around the structures of the towers, the advisory said that before according permission for construction of towers, ecological impact assessment and review of installation sites should be essentially conducted in ecologically important areas and the Forest Department should be consulted before installation of cell phone towers.
“Regular awareness drives should be conducted by the State Government and concerned departments to make people aware about various norms and standards with regard to cell phone towers and dangers of EMR from the same”, the advisory said.
To prevent overlapping of high radiation fields, new towers should not be permitted within a radius of one kilometer of the existing towers, the advisory further said, adding, “it should be ensured that the telecom service providers share infrastructure of each other to minimize the need of having additional towers”.
“If the situation demands setting up of new towers, the same must be raised with utmost care and precautions so that the flight path of birds don’t get obstructed. Moreover, it should be ensured that combined radiations from all the towers in the area don’t get increased”, the advisory said, adding “the location and frequencies of cell phone towers should be made available in public domain and location-wise GSI mapping of all cell phone towers should be maintained which would help in monitoring the population of birds and bees in and around the mobile towers and also in and around wildlife protected areas”.
“The security lighting for on-ground facilities should be minimized and as far as possible point downwards or be down-shielded to avoid bird hits”, the advisory said.
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