Do I need to shield a house from cell phone tower radiation?

Part 1

First of all, like the title of the book in the ‘Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’, ‘Don't Panic!’. 

Not every house near a cell phone tower requires shielding from the radio frequency radiation or RFR emitted from the transmitters. But is that number increasing? Yes, simply because more cell phone towers are being erected and established ones are being upgraded and turning up the output power (in many cases but not all) according to government data. And many of those new towers are installed closer to homes and as you can imagine the big push for high density housing equates to more dwellings having RFR from telecommunications influencing their indoor environments.

Typically, if there is a cell phone tower down your street, lets say around 100m away, unless there is a direct line of sight into your bedroom or lounge, in most cases, the orientation of your house, your neighbours houses, their roofs, garages, trees and bushes all add to reducing the amount of RFR entering your house. The materials of your home will also help to some degree. 

Common house cladding like weatherboard and plaster board lining adds only a little to the reduction effect. Take note, if you are interested in building a house consider using magnesium oxide board (mag board) over standard plaster board in some if not all rooms, as by default the compounds within the material block and reflect high levels of RFR.

Homes with stucco type plaster like cladding have a higher reduction of RFR than weatherboard. A proper brick built house with 90mm wide bricks acts as a good material to markedly reduce RFR. The 50mm brick fascia cladding is not as good as the 90mm brick but still effective.

The best cladding by far is corrugated iron or other similar steel cladding. Aluminium style weatherboards are also excellent. If I was to build a house, I would have a combination of these two materials and use mag board as a wall liner in the bedrooms. This would eliminate the need to use dedicated shielding paints.

With a cell phone tower down the street and if your property is surrounded by trees, then these have an excellent reducing effect of RFR. And as you would expect, evergreen trees that remain green all year are far more effective than deciduous trees. More RF radiation will pass through a tree with no leaves in autumn and winter. The best natural RFR screen by far is bamboo.

The radio frequency broadcast from cell phone towers is very invasive. The high volume of frequencies both purposefully generated and unintentionally created (noise) will bounce around, reflect, be absorbed by, pass through and infiltrate the area within its path unless physically stopped or you are far enough away for the radiation to scatter.

Think of RFR as a different type of light, very intense close to the source like light bulb, but scatters with distance everywhere. Light also passes through windows, just like RFR, even double glazing. Windows do very little to block RFR radiation.

Most homes won’t be candidates for shielding because of all these factors.

Even with no natural shielding from the flora, or neighbours roof lines, ineffective cladding and other materials, other factors come into play to dictate whether shielding is required. Such as height and orientation of the antennas, the strength of the signal, number of transmitters etc.

The best option if you are unsure is to contact us for an EMF survey. Taking actions gives you peace of mind.

If you do find yourself in the unfortunate position of having a cell phone tower erected where it broadcasts into your home. Same thing applies, contact us for an EMF survey which also allows us to work out if shielding is required, where that shielding is best placed and how to successfully protect your environment from this invasive electro pollution. 

For full details on how to shield a home, see part 2 in this series.