I am working with a home owner to place an AP in thier yard, they asked for information regarding RF effects on humans and or if our antennas put out any radiation. Does anyone, or cambium have any links I can forward to my customer that may explain what cambium antennas do and do not emit? Thanks folks.
We've had people ask us this too... I ask them if they have a cel phone or use a microwave oven... the homeowner typically figures out the point of these questions within a few seconds... 'nuff said.
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I'd tell them the radios have the same power output and use the same radio frequencies as a home wifi router.
If you want to get more detailed than that, you can calculate FCC (assuming you're in USA) MPE values. If I remember correctly, the MPE distance of a 23dbm transmitter with a 13dbi antenna is about 6" general public.
I just love when people use the word radiation, like it's some scary dangerous thing.
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@jonathanderek wrote:
I am working with a home owner to place an AP in thier yard, they asked for information regarding RF effects on humans and or if our antennas put out any radiation. Does anyone, or cambium have any links I can forward to my customer that may explain what cambium antennas do and do not emit? Thanks folks.
Hi,
The community members have provided good advice based on thier experience. All Cambium radios emit radio frequency energy and Cambium recommends minimum safe distances to avoid excessive human exposure to this RF energy. For ePMP, this information can be found in the ePMP User Guide under the section titled "Human exposure to radio frequency energy" on page 357.
Thanks,
Sriram
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The other thing to remind people of - the radiation from your towers and from the competitor's towers, and from the Satellite TV Satellites in space, and from the CelPhone towers, and from the GPS Satellites, etc, etc, etc... all that is hitting their house regardless of if they even own a Cell Phone or a GPS or whatever. Some people feel that having a Satellite TV dish 'attracts' the Satellite TV signals, but of course all these signals are hitting your house regardless of if you're watching TV or not.
So, yes, having an Internet Antenna is a little bit different because it is transmitting, but as everyone has said - it's less than 1 watt (about like their cell phone) and it's transmit is focused and aimed away from them, and it spends 75-90% of it's active time 'listening' and not 'transmitting' anyway. :)
SIDE BAR:
We had a similar discussion with a customer who wanted a tower in their yard in exchange for internet. Her husband wanted it, she wanted nothing to do with it.
I was ready to walk away from the whole deal until her husband asked if we had a tool to read RF. I said I did in fact have an EMF strength meter, but I didn't know what good could come from letting his wife use it.
A week later the following things transpired:
-We got the okay to put a micro pop on their little tower.
-Their microwave oven, 60" flatscreen TV, and every CF lightbulb in the house ended up on the curb.
-The owner of the AM radios station a mile away from them called to ask me "Why theF&%$K I allowed this womon to use my test equipment"? Apparently she called and demanded they stop transmitting so close to her house.. I don't know how that deal panned out.
@Isaac Uban wrote:SIDE BAR:
We had a similar discussion with a customer who wanted a tower in their yard in exchange for internet. Her husband wanted it, she wanted nothing to do with it.
I was ready to walk away from the whole deal until her husband asked if we had a tool to read RF. I said I did in fact have an EMF strength meter, but I didn't know what good could come from letting his wife use it.
A week later the following things transpired:
-We got the okay to put a micro pop on their little tower.
-Their microwave oven, 60" flatscreen TV, and every CF lightbulb in the house ended up on the curb.
-The owner of the AM radios station a mile away from them called to ask me "Why theF&%$K I allowed this womon to use my test equipment"? Apparently she called and demanded they stop transmitting so close to her house.. I don't know how that deal panned out.
That's hilarious!!!!!
we had a similar issue with a couple that lived next to a cell tower we collocated on. apparently. adding our gear with ATT and verizon was going to give them cancer. didn't think to give her a RF meter and send her on her way!
I think I need to buy a bunch of cheap EMI meters from ebay to give to these types of people! :)
I have a couple of sites that didnt work out due to this mentaility. Usually I explain that their wireless thermometer radiates more than our equipment does, but that doesnt stop them from worrying about the radiation from our equipment.
The best advice I have recieved on this subject is dont get discouraged over these people. They only have a small part of the information regarding EMI radiation and do not understand the effects of even using electricity for lighting.