Mobile phone base stations are low-power multi-channel two-way radios. A mobile phone (cell phone) is a low-power, single-channel, two-way radio. When you talk on such a mobile phone, you (and perhaps dozens of other people around you) are talking to a nearby base station. From that base station your phone call goes into the regular land-line phone system.

Because mobile phones and their base stations are two-way radios, they produce radio-frequency (RF) radiation (that's how they communicate), and they expose people near them to RF radiation. However, because both the phones and the base stations are low power (short range), the RF radiation exposure levels from them are generally very low.

The consensus of the scientific community is that the power from these mobile phone base station antennas is far too low to produce health hazards as long as people are kept away from direct access to the antennas.

It is critical to be aware of the difference between antennas, the objects that produce RF radiation; and towers or masts, the structures that the antennas are placed on. It is the antennas that people need to keep their distance from, not the towers that hold the antennas.

It is also important to be aware that there are many different designs of mobile phone base stations that vary widely in their power, their characteristics, and their potential for exposing people to RF radiation.

Scientists are not seriously concerned about possible health risks from mobile phone base station antennas. There are some reasons to be concerned about human health effects from the hand-held mobile (cellular) phones themselves (although it is not certain that any risks to human health actually exist). These concerns exist because the antennas of these phones deliver much of their RF energy to very small volumes of the user's body . Base station antennas do not create such "hot spots" (unless you are standing directly in front of one), so the potential safety issues concerning the phones have no real applicability to the base station antennas.