It didn't really hit me until later -- several radio stations, and other communication services have towers and/or antennae there. How much RF did I get hit with? Is there a reason I didn't see a bird one (ok, that last one's a stretch)? And it's surprisingly low-security for something like that. We didn't enter the fenced area, but you could - there's a gate with a simple latch-thingy to drive up there.
RF in that range has no effects on living tissue other than simple heating. Which is not a big deal until the power is real high - walking in direct summer sunlight can result in plenty of heating as well - actually much more heat than a person can get from the tower at a distance. Same with the cup of hot coffee. Our bodies are designed to manage heat.
That being said, hugging an active cell antenna emitting tens and hundreds watts can easily overload heat management capabilities. Birds falling dead from high power radar beam, or horror stories of people suffering severe internal burns if stuck in operating radar antenna are almost certainly true - in high power military radar world, at least, where kilowatts of power are involved.
And they produce the exact same radiation at the exact same power level as the all cell phone handsets. When anyone who I'm discussing the subject with complains about supposed 'radiation' problems with those towers, I just cannot get through to them that for the towers to be more powerful than the handsets would be a complete waste of energy and money for the phone companies.
Mike
"Exact same" is an interesting way of describing broad spectrum of current RF communications, 5G range 1 is from 450 MHz to 6 GHz (and there is a range 2). Power of cell tower is also way higher than that of a single phone. If nothing else, one antenna communicates with multiple handsets, and there are multiple antennas in a single assembly.
