India has witnessed an unprecedented growth of wireless technology. This has lead to people living in close proximity to mobile phone base stations in densely populated metros. The aim of the study was to resort to a questionnaire-based survey of people (n=200) living around base stations in an urban and a rural locality in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. It was found that 49% of urban people lived around 6 or more base stations whereas it was less than 3 for 66% of the rural people (p<0.001); 76% of the rural people lived between 50-300 m of the base station, whereas 43% of the urban people lived within 50 to <10 m (p<0.001); 31% of the urban people were found facing the antenna, whereas 41% of the rural people were found living beneath the antenna of the base station (p<0.001); and 95% of the urban people used their mobile phones >20 minutes/day, whereas, it was 7% for the rural people (p<0.001). The rural people reported more non-specific symptoms (fatigue, difficulty sleeping, feelings of discomfort, difficulty in concentration, poor short-term memory, depression) when compared to the urban people. On the contrary, the urban people had more medical complications (gastrointestinal, ophthalmic, respiratory, endocrine, cardiovascular) than the rural people. Presence of electrical transformers was evident in the urban locality and very high-tension power lines in the rural locality. The authors concluded that constant monitoring of rising indoor and outdoor radiofrequency electromagnetic fields in India is essential under the prevailing conditions.
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