Is it safe to live directly underneath a large number of radio and/or cell towers?

January 8, 2007 3:24 AM

Is it safe to live directly underneath a large number of radio and/or cell towers?

My friend wants to move into a building where she would be living on the 20th floor (there are 21 floors) and all along the roof are a LOT of antennas. (This building is on a hill and is the tallest point anywhere around.)

Other mefi threads contain good, long debates about this issue but they are all from the perspective of someone living beside, rather than right below, the towers.

I don't know whether the antennas are radio only or radio and cell. From googling the building address I assume at least some are radio (since one result is a report of a company being cited for moving their radio tower from another building to this building without a permit). According to cellreception.com, there are no *FCC-registered* cell towers there, but that site says "The FCC does not require every antenna structure to be registered, and the map may or may not list all the towers in the area."

Thanks for your thoughts, pro or con, or any advice about researching building addresses to see what antennas are on them!

posted by lorimer to health & fitness (21 comments total)

BTW, here is a really interesting technical FAQ I found (or, technical info but explained for the lay user).
posted by lorimer at 3:43 AM on January 8, 2007

For what it is worth, most cell/radio towers have a radiation pattern that produces a fraction of the rated output straight down/up. Any radiation that does travel up/down is usually from poor antenna tower quality.

I ran a local radio station for a few years in College, and we had a 300 watt FM radio station. You couldn't even pick it up in the station (which was directly below the tower, 2 floors).

On the other hand... I wouldn't live under em!. (or high tension power lines).
posted by SirStan at 4:17 AM on January 8, 2007

Yes, antennas are designed very carefully to have very specific and controlled beam patterns (i.e. the directions in which the energy goes) and to waste RF power on radiating in the vertical direction would be pointless, just like leaving the window open with the heat running. Even if somebody purposefully installed an antenna pointing straight down (which would be immediately noticed since it would be effectively worthless as an antenna) there's still the matter of the actual roof structure (and in your case a whole other storey) in between the business end and any humans.

Or put differently, from a purely logical standpoint do you really think that it would be possible that this wouldn't be safe? Do you honestly think that a landlord would rent the space if it wasn't inhabitable? It's kind of like asking if you have to worry about poison gas or deadly bees.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:03 AM on January 8, 2007

Oh, and also:

If this is the tallest structure in the area then there's a pretty good chance that most of the antennas are point to point microwave links. They are the solid white round-ish dishes, and they are used to transmit data over long distances (like dozens or hundreds of miles). They are incredibly directional as they are used to link to fixed points to each other, not as a many to one type of broadcast. Think of a laser pointer as opposed to a light bulb. With links like this there is almost no radiated energy off the beam path, as that is the whole point. So you could live nearly anywhere around one of these and get almost no exposure as long as you aren't in the direct line of sight of the beam path.
posted by Rhomboid at 5:18 AM on January 8, 2007

Thanks, Rhomboid, for reminding me I should've been clearer since this is clearly not a binary question ("safe-or-unsafe"). It's more "how much is this a factor, if at all, in your opinion"? Personally I would already be weighing the factors differently than she would but I wanted to get further opinions.

So far it sounds like your opinion is "not at all" and SirStan's might be "I wouldn't live there, but I recognize the evidence points to rf levels being very low in that apartment."

As a New Yorker close to the bottom of the economic spectrum, I think I have a very different perspective than you do on the question of whether "currently being rented" automatically equals "safely habitable." :)
posted by lorimer at 5:21 AM on January 8, 2007

Does your buddy sit in front of a computer for part or most of the day? Watch TV? Do they have a cell phone? All of those probably give off more RF energy than the cell towers on the roof would. In the end it's a crapshoot. You don't want to get zapped, but you also don't want to live in fear. To answer the question, I wouldn't let it bother me.

But I glow in the dark.
posted by Geckwoistmeinauto at 5:37 AM on January 8, 2007

Now we're getting int othe questions I should let her answer for herself, but I do know she doesn't have a TV, CRT or microwave, and ony does cell w/ a headset.
posted by lorimer at 5:49 AM on January 8, 2007

I worked in radio in the late seventies / early eighties. Never thought a thing of it until I heard a report that radio waves weren't a problem unless you spent several years within a few yards / meters of the transmitter. I stared at the glowing tubes maybe five to six feet away for around seven years.

My guess is that your friend has nothing to worry about.
posted by michswiss at 5:54 AM on January 8, 2007

Just to add, the 5kw AM transmitter was 5 feet away. The 50kw FM unit was, oh 15 or so feet. Any one here ever listen to WTAW / KTAW in College Station Tx in the 70's?
posted by michswiss at 5:58 AM on January 8, 2007

Thanks, Rhomboid, for reminding me I should've been clearer since this is clearly not a binary question ("safe-or-unsafe"). It's more "how much is this a factor, if at all, in your opinion"? Personally I would already be weighing the factors differently than she would but I wanted to get further opinions.

Actually, it is a binary question. The answer is safe.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:05 AM on January 8, 2007

Your friend's decision on whether to live in the building or not is not should ultimately be based on which camp she buys into. If she is willing to follow the scientific/rational approach - links and logic as above - then she will probably conclude that there is no significant risk (and will perhaps enjoy the slightly cheaper rent for a place with a good view at the expense of the paranoid camp).

On the other hand - if all this evidence fails to convince her and if she suspects that there are potentially harmful effects which may not have been discovered/published - then she will never be relaxed living in the building and should try somewhere else.

It is a little like deciding whether a sea view is an acceptable price to pay for being first port of call for tidal waves.
posted by rongorongo at 6:10 AM on January 8, 2007

I think I have a very different perspective than you do on the question of whether "currently being rented" automatically equals "safely habitable." :)

Nicely put.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 6:40 AM on January 8, 2007

Former broadcast engineer here, with thousands of hours of operating high power microwave, television, FM and AM commercial transmitters over many years. No cataracts, no cancer, no physical ailments of any kind due to exposure to broadcast emissions. One quasi-dead finger from an accidental arc of high voltage energy in a transmitter cabinet undergoing maintenance, many years ago. And I've lived "under" 240KV TVA transmission lines for many years, in the 80's.

Radio waves are not ionizing radiation, meaning that they have no biological effect, except that at extremely high field intensities, they can inefficiently produce heat in water solutions, as a microwave oven does. For reasons stated upthread, this kind of behavior is completely contrary to the purpose of radio antenna, including microwave link antenna, and therefore, living below radio and microwave antenna farms represents, for all practical intents and purposes, zero health risk for your friend.

We have now, more than 100 years of experience with high power radio emissions, and zero definitive, reproducible studies that demonstrate ill effect in human health for people exposed long term to such fields. And there are now, literally, billions of people who have been exposed to high power radio emissions, for many years of their lives. You can dig up wing nut "studies" to the contrary, to buttress personal beliefs that radio waves cause cancer or other health problems, but to sell that to someone else is crossing some kind of ethical Rubicon, IMHO.
posted by paulsc at 7:58 AM on January 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

YES!

It's actually safer for you to live closer to a transmitter than further away.

The inverse square-law that radiation follows means that if you double your distance away from a source your exposure goes down to a quarter of what it was. Therefore the radiation from your 'phone is far higher than the radiation from a tower. If you live near a tower your phone will switch itself into low power mode and therefore you get less of an overall dose.

I've done work on this subject before, e-mail me for full details.
posted by alby at 9:04 AM on January 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

It's more "how much is this a factor, if at all, in your opinion"?

In my opinion, you receive more harmful radiation being in sunlight for an hour than you would living two floors underneath some radio gear for 5 years.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:10 AM on January 8, 2007

No, Please don't let anyone you care about do this.
posted by nintendo at 10:32 AM on January 8, 2007

Because . . . ?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 10:36 AM on January 8, 2007

I thought you were concerned with the tower physically coming down on you, until I read the thread. I still think the only thing you should worry about is tower failure.
posted by geoff. at 11:49 AM on January 8, 2007

No, Please don't let anyone you care about do this.
posted by nintendo at 10:32 AM PST on January 80

Please take note: on the side of reason we have literally hundreds of years of experience and countless man-hours of exposure. Also note that there is no evidence - none whatsoever - that nintendo here is right. Sadly, he should know better.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 12:12 PM on January 8, 2007

I think paulsc summed my feelings up better than I could have.

I've also worked with lots of EM-radiating equipment over the years, and the worst thing that's ever happened to me were thermal burns from putting my fingers where they shouldn't have been around RF equipment. Not all "radiation" is alike; electromagnetic waves produced and radiated by electric current are not the same as the ionizing radiation produced by a nuclear reactor.

If EM fields were half as dangerous as some folks think they are, it would be trivial to find disease patterns in people who've lived near transmission lines or whose occupations expose them to a lot of EM fields. It's an arational phobia.

Your friend would probably be better spent looking at things like the air/water quality, type of plumbing and paint used, and construction methods used in the building, since they are all far more likely to have terato/carcinogenic or other ill effects than the antennas on the roof will.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:39 PM on January 8, 2007 [1 favorite]

officially, youre fine

really tho, no way would i live under them

and according to fung shui, you're screwed living that high
posted by phritosan at 4:10 PM on January 13, 2007