The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is continuing its efforts to ensure that electro-magnetic radiation from mobile phones and towers across the country is within prescribed limits.
It had established an inter-ministerial committee for this purpose. The committee had concluded that the emissions from base transceiver stations (BTSs) were one-hundredth of prescribed limits, and hence safe for human beings. It had also prescribed certain guidelines for operators to follow to keep radiation levels in check.
This included lowering the electro-magnetic radiation from telecom towers by one-tenth from the current levels.
Operators had to implement these guidelines by April 2012. Now, DoT has extended this deadline to September this year.
However, this extension does not apply to mobile handset companies. These players are still required to ensure that all handsets sold in the country from September 2012 onwards have lowered their radiation emmission from SAR 2 to SAR 1.6.
