The burning issue of cellphone radiation that poses health hazards seems not to have caught the attention of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
The burning issue of cellphone radiation that poses health hazards seems not to have caught the attention of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). For, a proposed policy report by the regulator just focuses on reducing CO2 emissions.
The report recommends going green and targets reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from telecom towers that contribute to more than 1% of the country’s total CO2 emissions.
This is the first bold initiative by TRAI to prescribe broad parameters to measure emissions from telecom equipment as well as telecom operations.
However, experts say that TRAI has missed the concerns of monitoring cellphone radiation level. Dr Girish Kumar, professor of electrical engineering at IIT Bombay, said: “The TRAI’s proposed policy has completely missed the demand of protecting the health of people from harmful effects of cell tower radiation.”
Kumar is a researcher on cell radiation health hazards, and one of the experts behind the recommendations.
With increasing use of mobile phones and widespread adoption of ICT worldwide, the ICT sector is expected to contribute around 3% of the global emissions of GHGs by 2020, notes the TRAI report titled ‘Approach Towards Green Telecommunications’.
“While globally, the telecommunication sector contributes around 0.7% of the global GHG emissions, the corresponding figure in India is 1%,” says the report. The rapid growth of telecommunications envisaged over the next decade calls for a targeted effort to contain and reduce the carbon footprint. The report notes that the CO2 emissions in the country have increased by 52% from 1994.
The TRAI report says that if the recommendations are implemented from this year, in the next five years, at least 50% of all rural towers and 33% of urban towers can be powered by hybrid power (renewable energy technologies (RET) + grid power) by 2015, while all rural towers and 50% of urban towers can be hybrid powered by 2020.
One of the key alterations TRAI has prescribed is that performance of telecom products, equipment and services in the telecom network must be assessed and a certified Green Passport (GP) be given to determine the energy consumption rating (ECR) by 2015.
TRAI also prescribes that by 2015, all mobile phones should be free of brominates and chlorinated compounds and antimony trioxide in accordance with the e-waste rules 2010, proposed by the ministry of environment and forests to be followed by all telecom manufacturers.
All mobile manufacturers/distributors are required to place collection bins at appropriate places for collection of e-waste - mobile phones, batteries, chargers and other items so that e-waste can be safely disposed of or recycled as per the prevailing standards.
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