BRASILIA, Brazil-Brazil’s lower house social and family safety commission has approved a bill to create rules for the installation of wireless communications towers.
The bill calls for wireless operators to share towers in urban areas, construct them 30 meters high and 500 meters apart, and at least 6 meters from neighboring plots of land. In addition, towers cannot be installed within 100 meters of churches, schools, hospitals or other buildings that attract large concentrations of people.
Rafael Guerra, the commission member appointed to review the proposal, supported it, citing studies that link certain types of cancer, including leukemia, to radio-frequency emissions. Three other lower house commissions in Brazil must pass the bill before it can become law.
The bill would likely fail in the United States due to clauses in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that say governments must produce “substantial evidence” to deny requests for wireless facilities and wireless tower siting cannot be regulated on the basis of possible environmental or health effects from RF emissions.
