Govt to start own radiation testing laboratory

New Delhi: To reduce dependency on private laboratories for reports on radiation emitted from mobile phones and telecom equipment, the telecom department is in process to start its own radiation testing laboratory under telecommunication engineering centres (TEC) from March 2012. “This will be the first government lab to test radiation by various telecom devices and equipments. We expect to start this lab from March. This will reduce our dependency on private laboratories and the report will be more reliable,” said a senior telecom ministry official.[caption id=“attachment_159202” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Radiation threat. Reuters”]  [/caption] Under existing rules, there is provision to impose Rs 5 lakh penalty on a tower for non-compliant of radiation norms. In November, DoT has further adopted recommendations of Inter-Ministerial group which is stricter than earlier radiation norms. Earlier, DoT adopted International Commission On Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guidelines where it fixed Specific energy Absorption (SAR) rate at 2 Watt per kilogramme in the frequency range of 10 MHz to 10 GHz for a mobile phone. Under the latest guidelines, the SAR level has been lowered to 1.6 Watt per kilogramme averaged over a six minutes period and taken over a volume containing a mass of 1 gram of human tissue. This means that a the device should emit maximum of 1.6 watt of energy over duration of six minutes that is absorbed by body of mobile phone user when he is using it. The SAR levels are the rate at which human body absorbs electromagnetic power radiated from mobile phones. The radiation levels fixed are assumed to be safe for health of mobile phone user. For mobile phone towers, the new radiation norm issued by DoT also lowered limit of emission from telecom towers by one-tenth compared to earlier adopted levels. Under the new guidelines, emissions from telecom antenna mounted on mobile towers should be equivalent to frequency range in which the antenna operates and exposed area under the antenna is now 10 times larger compared to 200 square meter mentioned in earlier guidelines. Like, an antenna operating in the frequency range of 400 Mhz will be allowed to emit 400 watt of energy per 2,000 square meter of area. PTI