If the aim of the Concord wireless bylaw is to reduce our exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiation, then it is having the opposite effect. The reason for this is that almost all of our exposure to RF radiation comes from our cellphones and devices, not the cell towers. The farther a device is from a tower, the more power it needs to transmit for a detectable signal to be received by the tower. In fact, this power increases with the distance to the tower squared, meaning that when the tower is 10 times farther away, 100 times more power must be transmitted.
While the bylaw may be minimizing the amount of power that residents are exposed to from cell towers, having fewer towers and weaker signals maximizes the amount of radiation that residents receive from their cellphones and other cell-enabled devices (e.g., iPads, etc.). A week of exposure to a tower at 1,000 feet transmitting its maximum power is equivalent to using a cellphone with a poor signal for only a few seconds!
If the goal is to minimize our exposure to RF radiation, an effective solution would be to reduce the power transmitted by their devices. The only way to do this is by reducing the distance between a cellphone and a cell tower, by increasing the number of cell towers in the town. By reducing the cellphone to tower distance by a factor of 10, users connecting to that tower will be exposed to 100 times less radiation.
David Millar
Old Marlboro Road
