Celebs to advertise how mobile phone towers are ‘safe’

Affirming that mobile phone towers are not hazardous to human health, a parliamentary committee has directed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to start massive advertising campaigns involving various public figures, film stars and artistes — both at the national and regional levels — to allay the public’s fears about electromagnetic radiation (EMR).

The parliamentary standing committee on information technology has noted in its report, titled ‘Issues related to quality of services and reported call drops’, that Resident Welfare Associations (RWA) are obstructing the construction of new mobile towers in residential colonies and are insisting on the removal of existing ones owing to the imagined fear of health risks from EMR.

“The objections and protests raised by RWAs against the installation of mobile towers is one of the factors that is impacting the quality of services, leading to frequent call drops in the country,” the committee’s report said.

The Department of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications has been making an effort to educate people about the radiations not being ionizing radiations and, thus, not having an impact on human health, as proven by 25,000 articles that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has analysed. Plus, the norms in India for EMR are 10 times stricter than those in the US, Japan and other countries, and robust monitoring systems have been put in place to ensure that these norms are adhered to.