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."

Comments

If you are worried about it...

[AlexiaDeath]

Dont buy it. You will worry yourself sick whatever we say.

Re:If you are worried about it...

[Tim C]

In addition, if you are worried consider that future buyers may also be worried. Unless you plan to either die in the apartment or leave it to your children, resale ability and ease of resale may be things you wish to consider.

Re:If you are worried about it...

[mcgrew]

You're probably right, since they've studied the hell out of the effects of EMF radiation for years and years and found no correlation between EMF and illness. There's nothing special about microwave frequencies, but people think there is because microwave ovens cook meat.

Here's a study of one: My dad, like hundreds of thousands like him was an electrical lineman for forty years. He worked with alternating current next to voltages up to 90 kv. He couldn't wear a wristwatch because the magnetic fields would magnetize that steel parts, which stopped working.

He'll be 79 this June, and he still goes square dancing every Saturday.

He did get some cancers from radiation -- solar radiation, not EMF. Working outside for forty years gave him some minor skin cancers on his face. The big fusion generator in the sky puts your puny EMF to shame. Worried about cancer? Stay out of the sun and don't smoke cigarettes.

Re:If you are worried about it...

[Remus Shepherd]

In addition, if you are worried consider that future buyers may also be worried. Unless you plan to either die in the apartment or leave it to your children, resale ability and ease of resale may be things you wish to consider.

Look on the bright side: if he really does die from the microwave radiation, he won't have to worry about resale value.

Even better: If he buys the apartment, he may never have to worry about having children.

Re:If you are worried about it...

[HangingChad]

Don't worry until you have had a radiation team doing measurements in your apartment and found out that the levels are near what's considered unhealthy.

Time, distance and shielding are your friends. But that's really immaterial here, the perception is what you have to consider. Not just for yourself but when you want to sell it sometime in the future.

I can go on for hours about why it's safe to live under power lines, but if it's your house, it's not going to sell. I'd take a pass. Not because of the microwaves, but because of the resale issues.

Re:If you are worried about it...

[the biologist]

"On a walk last summer, he ran into one of his few neighbors, a man who lives in a cottage about 100 yards away. During their chat, the man’s cellphone rang, and Segerbäck, 54, was overcome by nausea. Within seconds, he was unconscious."

The guy in the article only develops symptoms of exposure when he realizes he's being exposed. He's a paranoid lunatic to a severe degree. It is probable that medication will help him, but not until he accepts that the problem is internal not external in nature.

I'd pass

[mariushm]

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.

Every visitor will ask

[Moskit]

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.

Do you use a cell phone?

[afc_wimbledon]

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.

Re:The facts about urban wireless towers

[matt4077]

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.

Re:recent cellphone radiation reports

[jabuzz]

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...

[DiSKiLLeR]

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...

Re:Yes, you are being a jackass

[Anonymous Coward]

If exposure to asbestos was of any danger to the public health,[sic] there is no way you would be seeing asbestos anywhere near apartment complexes.

Do you know this expression?

[BerntB]

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:

Regulatory capture.

You can afford

[kenh]

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...

Re:...and pick a better title...

[umghhh]

• tell the current owner that you are concerned but your concern may go away if price goes down
• sue the 'major cellular operator' till they move the antennae away to save time and money
• sell apartment for a good price it deserves
• profit

Re:...and pick a better title...

[TheCarp]

You are assuming that any other potential buyers even notice the cell towers. I garauntee about 90% of them see that they have full bars on their phone and think no further of it.

-Steve

Re:...and pick a better title...

[ElectricTurtle]

That's because those arguments are utter crap. Just like there was an article on /. not long ago (too lazy to search for it) about a transmission tower in Africa where a group of crackpots were saying they were allergic to its signals; however, they found out later that it had been turned off for weeks during a period they supposedly had 'symptoms'.

It's non-ionizing radiation. It doesn't impart enough energy to have harmful effects.

So yeah, thank you, Congress. At least you get things right occasionally.