Why our cell-tower norms on radiation are meaningless

Smug in the knowledge that our public understands zilch about a technically complex subject like cell-tower radiation, the Indian government two years ago accepted a set of outdated and dubious norms formulated by the International Commission for Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), ostensibly to limit such emissions.

Then, realising that a small but growing section of the population is getting restive about the potential health dangers of cell-tower radiation, the government last month went into overdrive: it decided to enforce those norms post-haste, announced a November 15 deadline that is patently impossible for the cell-tower operators to meet, warned of random checks thereafter, and stipulated a Rs5 lakh penalty for non-compliance.

The stern posturing is designed to dispel public fears. But with just a handful of radiation-measuring companies available for testing nearly 4.5-lakh cell towers countrywide, the deadline is simply impracticable. And by demanding compliance in the form of self-certification by the operators themselves, the department of telecommunications (DoT) has cleverly pushed the onus of measurement to the operator.

The threat of “random checks” by the department’s Telecom Engineering and Resource Monitoring (Term) cells has a distinctly ominous ring, though. Will these cells — administered by an eminently corruptible class of Indian society called “government officials” — go the way of state-run pollution control boards which are known to deploy such checks primarily to harass those who don’t toe the hafta line?

Also, pollution of the radiation kind — unlike the more palpable air and water pollution which can be seen/smelt/tasted and measured with not-very-sophisticated equipment — is invisible and difficult to ascertain. That restricts the “watchdog” role of whistle-blowing citizens.

A larger problem concerns the perception that an implementation drive of this sort tends to create. The very act of enforcing the ICNIRP norms — most notably, the alarmingly high cell-tower radiation limit of 9.2 watts/sq metre for the GSM 1800 band — serves to implicitly legitimise that limit, however unsound and therefore unacceptable its basis.

Even if we ensure the strictest compliance with the most diligent enforcement possible, the high emission limit set forth for the unstated benefit of multinational cell-tower operating companies would itself render the norms meaningless, and our people hopelessly vulnerable to the harmful consequences of radiation exposure.

Several pointers should have cautioned India against the perils of adopting ICNIRP norms. Rapid strides in research during the last decade have left the 1998-vintage norms looking all but irrelevant.

They were intended to curb short-term thermal effects (the late 1990s saw a heightened awareness over global warming) and were not calibrated for the adverse biological effects of long-term radiation exposure such as cancer and genetic damage.

Most environmentally-progressive countries (in Europe, for instance) have rejected the norms outright as being dangerously lenient. Even China has opted for an admirably stringent radiation limit of 0.1 w/sq.m.

Ongoing research studies have yet to prove conclusively that cell radiation is life-threatening. It’s equally true that this lack of certainty has been abused in India as a licence for rampant cell-technology “penetration” and for lax policy-making as well. But even allowing for so-called “scientific uncertainty” over the long-term deleterious impact of cell-phone and cell-tower radiation, India’s acquiescence of ICNIRP norms and its zealous insistence on enforcing them betray more than a craven tilt toward MNC investment and an exaggerated nod to populist expediency.

They reveal the utter callousness with which our government has ignored a key tenet of international environmental law — the Precautionary Principle — which is the starting point for the National Environment Policy approved by the UPA in 2006.

Recognising that this principle “has an established genealogy in policy pronouncements, jurisprudence, (and) international
environmental law,” the NEP posits: “Where there are credible threats of serious or irreversible damage to key environmental resources, lack of scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."

If a policy carries a suspected risk of causing harm to public health or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those implementing the policy.

As far back as justice Kuldip Singh’s 1996 judgment in Vellore Citizens’ Welfare Forum v Union of India, the Supreme Court had accepted the Precautionary Principle “as part of the law of the land.”

By embracing the ICNIRP norms without question however, the government of another Singh — Manmohan — has
effectively reduced this principle of prudence to a mere paper sentiment.