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Killer Apartment Vs. Persistent Microwave Exposure?
An anonymous reader writes "I am considering buying a penthouse apartment in Manhattan that happens to be about twenty feet away from a pair of panel antennas belonging to a major cellular carrier. The antennas are on roughly the same plane as the apartment and point in its direction. I have sifted through a lot of information online about cell towers, most of which suggest that the radiation they emit is low-level and benign. Most of this information, however, seems to concern ground-level exposure at non-regular intervals. My question to Slashdot is: should the prospect of persistent exposure to microwave radiation from this pair of antennas sitting twenty feet from where I rest my head worry me? Am I just being a jackass? Can I, perhaps, line the walls of the place with a tight metal mesh and thereby deflect the radiation? My background is in computer engineering — I am not particularly knowledgeable about the physics of devices such as these. Please help me make an enlightened decision."
Dont buy it. You will worry yourself sick whatever we say.
If exposure to mobile carrier antenna radio waves was of any danger to public health, there is no way you would be seeing these antennas anywhere near apartment complexes, the FCC or whatever is the appropriate authority is in your country would be all over this. On the contrary, you should be happy that your apartment is going to get some pretty damn good coverage :)
I wouldn't risk living there.
As far as I know (and I'm no expert, just good at googling) , the radiation levels from antennas are relatively safe about 3-5 meters away from them but depending on the type of antenna their beam can kind of focused in one direction so that 3-5 meters estimation could mean a measurement ouside the beam direction and if the apartment is inside the beam the radiation could be above safe levels. For example, I've heard that in my country, if you live on the last floor of a building and an antenna is above, the antenna must be on a pole at least 2-2.5 meters high so that distance between the apartments below and the emitter is around 3 meters.
Cellphone antennas would not be uni-directional so there shouldn't be any focused beam or whatever it's called but who knows what other antennas will be installed in the future on the same pole.
So from a radiation point of view you may be safe, but you never know how sensitive you are or how sensitive your family / children etc will be.
Second, while you may not care so much, the property will be harder to sell in the future because of that antenna.
Even if you get some information from /. and you buy it, you will need to explain that it's safe to every visitor who notices these antennas.
In 2004 the Dutch laboratory TNO investigated the influence of UMTS and GSM radiation on two groups of people, one with health complaints they ascribed to GSM base stations and one without. The tests were double blind. For both groups a small, but statistically significant relationship was found between exposure to "UMTS-like" radiation and the sense of wellbeing reported by the subjects. This result was a disappointment to the Dutch government, that had commissioned this investigation. They had subsequent research done by a Swiss institution which did not confirm the findings. Anayway, the city of Hoofddorp, where I live, forbids the placement of cellular base station antennas on top of residential buildings. I support this policy; better safe than sorry.
Every time you do you are holding the antenna of that right next to your head. Yes it's lower power, but there's an inverse square distance law at work to, so the intensity is massively greater than that from the one 20 feet away. So either buy the apartment, or stop using cell phones. They are the only two logical choices.
The intensity of the radiation varies inversely with the square of the distance, not the cube of the distance.
I find it interesting that after many years of stories about the impossibility of cellphone radiation having any damaging effect due to its low power, we suddenly hear this story about the positive effects it has. One of the two can't be true. I don't share the paranoids' obsession with radiowaves, but I'd like to know what if anything was wrong with the earlier assessments.
Fleur de Sel
And then fail utterly to find a controlled study that shows repeatable results.
Lets make this clear, in over fifty years of trying nobody and I repeat nobody has yet managed to do a REPEATABLE study that shows harmful effects of low level non-ionizing radiation.
The key factor here is REPEATABLE. If it cannot be repeated it is just a meaningless statistical fluke.
Normally I wouldn't worry at all.
But the fact that,
1) It's only 20 feet away,
2) It's in the same plane as you, and,
3) It's pointed AT you...
That worries me some more. Obviously you want to talk to someone who really knows this stuff, and can also measure the EM radiation in your future apt.
I also assume its a 'killer' apt because its in a great location and its CHEAP. And of course, its CHEAP because everyone is scared of the antenna pointing right at it...
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Ok, there's alot of sentiment that EM radiation has no effect on DNA, etc etc. But I had read somewhere that people that live near power lines out in the country seem to develop extremely rare forms of cancer at a higher percentage than people living in the city. Of course, coincidence is not causation.
With that in mind, do I exclusively use a cell phone? Yes. I just don't know if I'd want to live next to a tower that might focus EM radiation right at my room while I sleep 8 hours a day.
Many of the solar coatings used on windows are electtrically conductive.
This was probably why the glass was absorbing a lot of the FM radio energy.
You are probably right, because it would need a conspiracy to hide research results. But... remember the tobacco companies' bought research.
A while ago, I learned a new expression which I've never seen in my native Swedish media -- which do say something about at least Sweden's political trustworthiness:
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
"Killer Apartment Vs. Persistent Microwave Exposure"?
If the 'persistent microwave exposure' turns out a bad thing, the place may indeed be a 'killer apartment'... ;-)
Re re-saleability - even if you plan to stay there in the long term, you should still make your offer reflect the antennae... ...after all, your current vendor already faces a lower sellability on the place because of the antennae. Bid lower and leave it to the vendor to decide whether and how much more time to invest to try and line up another buyer...
Wait a minute, you can afford a penthouse apt in manhattan, but you are unsure about the safety of living next to a cellular antenna array that (to use your words) is pointed right at your apartment, so you turn to Slashdot? I don't believe it.
I also don't believe that any company would install a cellular antenna array and point it at a structure - it would seriously impact the coverage area of the antenna, and they could probably just as easily installed the antenna on a taller building and avoid interference...
Ken
Telcos use microwave antennas to get carry phone lines over great distances for lower cost than fiber, but they would never point one at a building, as that would defeat the line-of-sight nature of their operation.
Ken
If exposure to mobile carrier antenna radio waves was of any danger to public health, there is no way you would be seeing these antennas anywhere near apartment complexes, the FCC or whatever is the appropriate authority is in your country would be all over this. On the contrary, you should be happy that your apartment is going to get some pretty damn good coverage :)
You have waaaaaayyyy too much trust in Government; their competence, their inability to be swayed by industry, and that they're human too.
Case: Tuna. The Tuna industry made sure that the FDA said that appropriate levels of mercury in food were above what is in Tuna - even though in reality, Tune has too much mercury in it. You will find no reference to this because everyone at the FDA who was party to it is too afraid to say anything for fear of losing their jobs.
When it comes to toxicity, always go to outside sources. Then you run into the problem with organizations with their own agendas.
It really sucks being a consumer.
Who says you can't have both? With traditional medicine, they're called side effects. Perhaps chemotherapy qualifies too (attack everything, hope the cancer cells die first).
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
The basic physics say you're more than okay.
Very well. Expose yourself to direct sunlight 24/7 and let's see how long it takes for you to get skin cancer.
Just because "the basic physics" you mention in your claim point to there being less energy involved than sunlight, this does not eliminate the possibility of risk - especially when sunlight is a KNOWN carcinogen.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The FCC may have something to say about that though. If he is close enough, his mesh may block enough of the signal to put the antenna out of use.
Any passive blocking that he puts on the walls or windows as an owner is something that he can't he held liable for(as opposed to active blocking or putting up a billboard or similar). I'd love to see the judge's face when the cell phone company tries to explain how their antenna requires his apartment to be non-shielded to operate properly(ie - we need to beam the signal *through* it because we put it in a bad location).
Good point. Also if it does become useless and they relocate it you probably increased the resale value.
But in today's world, being without tv, radio, wireless, and so on in such a place in NYC would be horrendous.
maybe not if you have cable.
It does not make sense that a cell phone tower's panel antenna would be blasting straight into an adjacent apartment as the article poster describes. This is counterproductive to achieving good coverage from that antenna.
The article poster says "roughly" on the same plane, how is "roughly" defined? Those panel antennas can have some pretty significant directionality in the vertical plane, such that even if "roughly" means "one or two stories difference", the antennas are probably shooting OVER this apartment and not INTO it. Especially since, as I said before, it makes no sense for these antennas to be shooting into it.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Get the apartment, and then create a resonant chamber that creates interference for the transmitters/receivers. If the equipment can get interference from something you're doing in the apartment, then it is clear that the microwaves are penetrating the walls of the unit.
BTW, why did the previous owner leave the apartment? Died of brain cancer?
Best regards.