Siting Cell Towers Needs Careful Planning

Placing cell towers 500 meters away from schools and hospitals could save companies trouble down the road.

No one can overengineer like an engineer. So introducing a little more caution into an existing engineering process is nothing much to ruffle feathers. A new paper published in Environmental Research offers insight on how to include simple precautionary approaches to siting cell towers.

And there are many cell towers – and more coming – since almost everyone has a cell phone and the towers are being used for more data intensive applications. In the U.S., the Pew Research Center reports 96% of Americans own a cell phone of some kind, and smart phone ownership today has risen to 81% from 35% in 2011. Industry data reported by GSMA Intelligence estimates more than five billion people worldwide use mobile devices. All these devices work using electromagnetic waves, which expose people to low levels of radio-frequency radiation (RFR).

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