Preliminary investigation of rf exposure levels from mobile telephone base stations in abia, south east Nigeria

Health for all is one of the objectives of the millennium development goals. Our effort to secure a more enabling communication environment should not compromise the health of the people. This paper tries to obtain a clue to the health impact of radio frequency exposure to the general public. It therefore reports results of preliminary studies carried on radio frequency exposure level of electromagnetic energy originating from mobile telephone base station antennas in Aba, a city in south east Nigeria. Densitometric measurement of mainly CDMA 800 and GSM900 signals were performed at distances of over 10 to 100m from 8 base stations. The exposure levels obtained from these base stations were found to be well below the general public exposure limits recommended by ICNIRP. The highest recorded level from a single base station was 2.20x10-6/Wm-2 which corresponds to 4.9x10-5 % of the general public exposure limit.