There's no conclusive short answer, because there's still conflicting evidence on safety and threshold limits, health links, etc. Any form of excessive long-term radiation exposure can be detrimental to one's health, non-ionizing or not, but the safe daily threshold at various frequencies varies and for some parts of the spectrum, we're not entirely sure what levels are safe for lifetime and chronic exposure. There's some safety exposure limit guidelines for workers regarding frequencies ranging from ELF (extremely low - 3Hz) to FIR (far infrared - 300GHz) published by the
ICNIRP, which the WHO and many governments pull their own exposure guidelines from, and most base this off of their
1998 guidelines (warning, highly technical).
What many people forget or don't understand when just blindly citing that cellphone radiation is non-ionizing is that even non-ionizing radiation has tentative links to cancer, leukemia, and can be deadly in high enough exposures as well. There's a link between increased leukemia incidence and sub 100kHz ELF radiation. The early days of line of sight microwave communications had a few accidents with field techs being accidentally cooked standing in front of the base station at peak load - but that can mostly be attributed to stupidity. There's also a link between many of these older microwave and RADAR techs having higher incidences of cancer after a career in these fields. There's even debate over the longer-term safety of millimeter wave whole body imaging. A good starting point is the
American Cancer Society's page on the subject where they note that even the WHO's IARC have cited limited evidence and classifies RF as possibly carcinogenic. But it's not quite that cut and dry, and it's obvious that we're only beginning to understand the longer term risks.
The part of the spectrum that is concerning you, however, is UHF (specifically between 700-2200MHz as this is the specific frequency range which Verizon will be broadcasting) which is as others have pointed out is non-ionizing radiation... and there's been some hotly debated studies on the subject of safety exposure thresholds in this frequency band. Though there's not the free radical concern of ionized radiation, this end of the spectrum can still excite molecules in the body and cause varying levels of heat, and enough of a heat increase can denature proteins - this is how a microwave heats food, after all. Unfortunately, the scientific method can be bought at times, statistics can be manipulated, and there's a lot of money at stake in the communications industry with this chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum, and this problem hurts both sides of the argument... but it doesn't mean that there isn't a fair bit of good science already outlining some health risks and exposure limits for the spectrum that's concerning you. All cellphones in the United States, for example, are limited to a maximum output of
1.6 SAR against the body, or 1.6 watts per kilogram (W/kg) - which measures electromagnetic energy absorption by the body, and is generally regarded as the safe chronic exposure limit without causing secondary health risks - though what those longer term health risks are with ongoing lower chronic exposure, exactly how high or low is really safe in the new normal of society, and how quickly the body recovers from it is what's hotly debated currently. Cellphones in the United States average about 750-1000mW broadcast output that's mostly omnidirectional with this 1.6 SAR limit. You're probably already familiar with the debate on whether this is too high or not high enough, especially given the EU has a SAR threshold of 2.0. It also doesn't help that most longer term studies don't have sufficiently rigorous control over the exposure to conclusively determine correlation or causation, because we're talking exposure times spanning years or decades, even with cases such as
Tiffany Franz's.
The good news is, given how radio communications propagate, it means that for a phone that pumps out radio communications strong enough to hit that 1.6 SAR hard limit when placed against the body only needs to be held a couple feet away to drop that exposure by roughly half. The difference in exposure levels between holding a omnidirectional broadcasting antenna, standing near it, and standing in its general proximity are
very different things with increasingly higher safety margins the farther you get. Going back to the Tiffany Franz breast cancer case, if the phone
was the cause, you'll note that it would have only caused cancer in the immediate area where the phone itself made contact... not the other breast, not her brain, and not the tips of her fingers and toes. This should help you get a better idea of how quickly RF exposure drops the farther you get from the broadcast antenna.
The bad news is, a cell tower base station is a considerably higher power broadcast antenna than a cellphone (though we're only talking between 10-50W) and gets more into the microwave tower and RADAR concerns, but it's not omnidiretional and the antenna arrays are static and focused. This is both a good and bad thing. The bad of this? If you stand in direct line of sight, exposure is higher than the same power broadcast from an omnidirectional antenna at the same distance (because the waves are focused), so the distance increases before you hit safer levels from the antenna for the broadcast power it's rated at. The good, though? They're aiming the antennas to maximize area coverage, which means closer physical proximity to the base station on the ground are substantially safer than with the same power broadcast done with an omnidirectional antenna. That's why there's multiple panels on these towers, it's to maximize coverage distance with broadcast wattage restrictions. Don't believe me? Stand as close to directly under a cell tower for your carrier as you can get in a rural area and you'll note that reception won't be that great. You usually have to get a good 300-500 feet out at minimum before you receive a good signal. The linemen working on the stuff have far more elevated health risks than the general public given their direct proximity to the panel arrays when they're operational.
I do believe that we're being a bit foolhardy rapidly increasing background radiation levels as we are without any sane checks and balances, but that's what humans do. Short-term convenience over long-term consequences. Hard to ignore that pattern, and the next few decades are going to get interesting in that regard as more and more money pours into wireless communications and general RF background radiation exposure increases with fewer and fewer quiet zones for the body to possibly regenerate in if there truly
is the possibility of long-term increased exposure damage at lower wattages. It's foolish to be as flippant as some people are about the subject, but it's not something that warrants excessive paranoia, there are methods to reduce exposure, and I guess in some regards ignorance can be bliss.
As for your own specific circumstances, though... it's going to be a judgment call. It'll probably be okay from a long term exposure standpoint, but it also might not. There's really not enough information about the general longer term low level cumulative exposure issues to base hard conclusions off of as yet - though we mustn't forget that it is at least thankfully non-ionizing; nor is there sufficient information about your specific situation, such as physical distance, elevation, direction, wattage, etc. However, there's a line between actual safety, perceived safety, and the gray areas that exist between and other things to consider such as property values. The thing to remember is that at this end and chunk of the spectrum, it
can be dangerous, but mostly at considerably higher levels in direct line of broadcast or coming in direct contact with the physical broadcast antenna, which means that wireless phones themselves are technically the bigger concern than the base stations for most near everyone... and even that is not the sort of dangerous that stuff like radioactive waste is. How much exposure you limit yourself and your children to are ultimately a personal judgment call. There's no shame in prudence, but foolish decisions can also easily be made in fear.
