Govt mulls ban on cellphone towers

These include: biological damage through heating effects, neurological changes, including changes in the blood-brain barrier, decreased attention and slower reaction time, increased blood pressure and the risk of leukaemia. While international experts warn that mobile-phone towers are huge health hazards because they emit electromagnetic radiation.

Recent research shows that mobile tower radiation also causes symptoms including headaches, earaches, blurring of vision, short-term memory loss, numbing, tingling and burning sensations, bad sleep, fatigue and anxiety, other horrendous effects could include cancer, cardiac and respiratory and ophthalmologic disorders.

Workers at telecommunication companies, who spend a lot of time near these poles for the purpose of testing, maintenance or installation, are at greater risk of exposure. Base stations are rarely turned off during maintenance so as not to interrupt service.

Survey revealed that standing mobile towers at every nook and corner of our country depict the rapid development of the IT and telecommunications sector.

The provincial capital alone hold over 1,000 mobile towers with the remaining being in pipeline. Mobile phones have become a necessity.

The bright side of the picture is the backbone role of these antennas and mobile towers in the telecommunication circle.

A Telecommunication Engineer from a very large Pakistani cellular company said that an organisation is bound to have at least 'over 25,000' mobile towers or antennas to introduce acceptable network coverage in a country as large as Pakistan.

According to an estimate, one Pakistani Telecom giant is said to have over 10,000 mobile towers. With minor differences, other cellular networks are in this race to take over the mobile airwaves too. A rough estimate indicates that the total number of mobile towers is 25,000 across the country.