City Life, Mobile Phones and the Environment

I was visiting my uncle living in the remote area of Orissa, India and the first morning at his home I woke up early at bird call. I went up to the terrace to see many beautiful birds flocking on the trees skirting around the house. I was thrilled to see the house sparrows and Indian Mynahs that have literally disappeared from Bangalore's cityscape. I filled my sense with the sight and sound of the birds that are my childhood friends. As a child, I would gaze at them freely flitting around in the sky and would observe them build nest in the corners of turrets of our house to raise their young and every morning, chirp from the tree by my bedroom window. My struggle for existence in the city had made me forget my childhood friends, these little birds and even the dear old garden lizard. 

To find the reason for their disappearance I checked the internet and came up with some rather shocking information that I am sharing with you.

The garden lizards are disappearing due to global warming and if we do not save them then there will be an unprecedented increase in insect population. Therefore, we need to drastically reduce carbon emission to curb global warming. The first step we city dwellers need to take to save our cold blooded friends, the garden lizards is by stopping indiscriminate felling of trees and planting more trees to ensure abode for them. You can get more information on this from: Jack Times
Deccan Herald 

Then I tried to find out the reason why my feathery friends have done the vanishing act from the cities. This is what I found out: House sparrow is a seed eating bird supposed to be found all over India. Some scientists reason their decline in the cities due to lack of breeding and nesting space, lack of availability of food due to indiscriminate rise in concrete structures that are replacing the cities' green cover and even kitchen gardens. In the rural areas, it is due to the rampant use of pesticides in agriculture, which is taking its toll on these poor creatures.
The scientists also observe that air pollution caused by use of unleaded petrol and the fossil fuel fumes too have affected the bird population. India, unlike the other countries has taken its bird population for granted and has never counted and regularly documented the dynamics of their population so that we can take timely action to control the factors causing the decline in their numbers.
A study conducted by Kerala Environmental Researchers Association (KERA ) reports that towers emit a very low frequency of  900 or 1,800 MHz. Continuous penetration of EMR through the body of birds would affect their nervous system. They become incapable for navigation and foraging.  In young birds, EMR could prove highly dangerous for their entire nervous system. The birds which nests near towers are found to leave the nest within one week. One to eight eggs can be present in a clutch.  Incubation lasts for 10 to 14 days. But the eggs which are laid in nests near towers failed to hatch even after 30 days. 
You can get more information on this from:
House Sparrow
India Together
India Environment Portal

This prompted me to find out how much does mobile phone radiation affect human life?
It is said that mobile towers, constantly transmit electromagnetic signals that can cause health hazards such as: cancer and also cause neurological, cardiac, respiratory and ophthalmological disorders. To prevent it, the base stations should comply to certain safety norms. According to WHO, the electromagnetic radiation does not directly affect the humans as it does the other animals. It is said that exposure to the electromagnetic rays beyond a certain limit can harm the humans too. How is it possible, you may ask. The response to it is that a living or biological tissuecan absorb the Radio Frequency (RF) energy emitted by the mobile phones and their base tower antennae. This capacity of a living tissue to absorb RF energy is marked by “specific absorption rate” (SAR) and it is measured in units of watts per kg (W/kg) of tissue. Absorption beyond the safe limit increases the temperature of the tissue thus damaging it. This is the major cause of various health problems such as: headaches, migraine, tumor, blood brain barrier, brain hemorrhage and even cancer.

In order to protect the population living around base stations and users of mobile handsets, governments and regulatory bodies adopt safety standards, which translate to limits on exposure levels below a certain value. There are many proposed national and international standards, but that of the International Commission for Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) is the most respected one, and has been adopted so far by more than 80 countries. ^{India is one of them.}

Mobile telephone service providers are, required to obtain construction licenses, provide certification of antenna emission levels and assure compliance to ICNIRP standards and/or to other environmental legislation.

Following are highlights of the guidelines that all of us must be aware of:

• The DoT (Department of Telecommunication, Government of India) has set up a Telecom Engineering Center (TEC)  to look into the technical issues arising from the adoption of the ICNIRP guidelines.
• All mobile handsets in India will compulsorily need a certification from manufacturers that they meet standards on transmission.
• Custom Authority of India to check all the mobile handsets being imported to India for the manufacturer's certification.
• Mobile phone operators should file in audit reports of their mobile phone base station antennae for certification that the base stations meet the operating standards and norms.
• TEC is working out in a detailed system of audit and certification of the base station antennae through a third party.
• cellphones cannot be officially sold without specifying SAR level.
• The ICNIRP has recommended RF exposure levels for general public, in terms of power densities, as 4.5 W/m2 and 9.0 W/m2 respectively for the 900 and 1800 MHZ frequency radiations. Exposures below these levels are harmless. This is in terms of mobile phone base stations.
• In terms of the base stations, The ICNIRP stipulates to keep the exposure below harmful levels, the peak power level should not result in a SAR of over 2 W/kg of the brain tissue.

It is for each one of us to realise how important each one of us is in maintaining the ecological balance and have we apply our wisdom and knowledge to maintain the natural harmony to save the environment from permanent damage, eventually harming our selves.