FCC regulations for my station says no more than 2 minutes work time in the hot zone of the AM tower area since the entire tower is hot with RF it actually floats on top of a large base insulator which isolates it from the ground thats why the RF is much more insense than an Fm or TV tower ask any amatuer radio operator.I have to have a 20 ft fenced and posted barrier around my towers .
The feds were in site today and worried the vandals took more than the allowed amount and the bad thing is it may not show up for a long time but reproductive ,eyesight,lucemia various cancers etc are all possible side effects. remember were dealing with 5000 watt erp AM not FM entirely different set of rules and regs as far as handling RF the vandals actually touched and climbed the hot tower so they could be facing serious future health problems.
if they had climbed an FM tower the effects would be negligible till they got up top.
I have seen engineers get burns on there fingers working on transmitters were the wound looks and acts like an electrical burn and actually gets worse over a 24 hour period.
I have suffered electrical burns and ice burns from freon and they tell me it is more intense than any of those burns and some are still suffering from the side effects..so i realy do not want to know what a RF burn feels like.
Many people down play the effects of RF but when you go on the FCC site and see all the permits needed studies done etc. they would think twice about it.
It is easy to cite something out of a text book its a whole different deal when you have to actually work with it.