Residents say no to Cellphone mast

One of the radars on one of the SA Navy's ships safe distance is more than 40 m...
 
grim said:
How can a magnetic field disrupt the development of the human brain. Common people put a magnet next to your head... feel anything?????? NO, THE HUMAN BRAIN IS NOT MAGNETIC DAMMIT. It's because of people like these that don't like technology or scared of it that things like this happen. Oh and those that claim it can harm you are only looking for a bit of fame for themselves they are not trying to protect anyone by what they are saying, just looking to make a quick buck. People open your eyes just because one guy says that something is not good because he has some form of "proof" why are you gonna believe him while there is 10's or 100's of other studies that prove him wrong?

A classical example of this is about how dangerous second hand smoking is. The difference in someone's chance of getting lung cancer who has inhaled second hand smoke and someone who hasn't is the differnce between 12.5 out of 1000000 and 10 out of 1000000 that is a difference of 0.00025%, but by manupulating the figures someone said it's 25% now as far as i know 25% of 1000000 is 250000 not 2.5. The study that said it's 25% was thrown out of a federal court bexause of this. Point i'm making: DON'T BELIEVE STATISTICS OR ANYONE'S STUDY THEY CAN BE MANIPULATED BUT IF THERE ARE MORE THAN ONE ACCREDITED STUDY GIVING THE EXACT SAME RESULTS THERE MIGHT BE SOMETHING TO IT BUT MORE STUDIES ARE NEEDED TO PROVE IT.

Ps. I'm not saying smoking is good for you.
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It is an electromagnetic field, not magnetism. Electromagnetic radiation includes light, microwaves, radio, television etc.

One way to test whether the ailments people claim are caused by cellphone are in fact psychosomatic would be to put up a bunch of dummy towers and see if people still get sick.

Secondhand smoke - you are referring to a common statistical deception. Your chance of getting lung cancer if exposed to secondhand smoke is 25% greater than if not - it goes from 10 in X to 12.5 in X, 2.5 is 25% of 10. What they deliberately fail to mention is that the initial chance of getting lung cancer is near zero.

Any time you hear something increases your risk by x% demand to know the base risk. Invariably you'll find the base risk is near zero so they have used the percentage increase in risk to make it sound scary.
 
dominic said:
enter the precautionary principle - as a parent of young kids would i want to expose them to an situation where i do not know whether it will affect them or not?
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The precautionary principle seems like a good idea at first glance, but is it? More and more we have a risk averse society. Everyone wants life made 100% safe with everything mapped out for them. We bar children from doing anything that might be deemed risky.

How do you even manage to be a parent if you want 100% certainty on the outcome?
 
Part of the danger of blaming EMF due to ignorance is that people easily assign the problem to the bad antennas on the roof and then don't investigate any further. Seven brain tumors in 6-7 years may or may not be significant depending on a lot of factors. How many people are working there. Are they living healthy lives. Is the water or air conditioning within safe limits. Do they build e-bombs in their spare time etc etc.

It may even be that the antennas is or was outputting more power than it should. There are so many factors to consider. The media is not helping by just reporting stories about people saying they got cancer from cell towers before they know it for sure.

People are always looking for something to blame
 
Did he watch Special Assignment?

Maybe he prefers real news and investigative reporting? Special Assignment does seem to be several steps above 3rd Degree, but that's not saying much. 3rd Degree is true tabloid trash.
 
If you do the research, you'll find literally thousands of scientific and clinical studies showing all kinds of health problems from very low-level exposure to microwave radiation, of the type you'd get living near a base station. The ICNIRP limits (used in South Africa -- the government has withdrawn ALL its regulations regarding RF and health, and there is currently absolutely no protection for the SA public, as confirmed by the Dept of Health guy in the Special Assignment programme) -- are based only on the fact that microwaves may heat you up a bit. The thousands of studies showing that coherent (fixed-frequency) microwave radiation does catastrophic damage to all kinds of body structures like DNA (confirmed by the recent EU "Reflex" study), nerve sheaths, the blood-brain barrier (confirmed by the Finnish government nuclear and radiation protection board) -- all of this is ignored by the dogma that non-ionising radiation ONLY heats the body and has no biological effect. This is a complete scientific insanity, and will be overturned in the next 10 years. In the meantime, young men with cellphones in their pockets are contracting testicular cancer, all kinds of strange and highly malignant tumours that were previously very rare (like epithelial tumours under the skin of the head, just where the cellphone is held) are occurring -- I investigated a case where Wits University medical school said they had never seen such a malignancy, and the guy, a heavy cellphone user otherwise perfectly healthy, was dead within months.

Long-term exposure to low-level radiation from cellphone masts can have catastrophic effects on health. Dr Neil Cherry, a New Zealand biophysicist, reviewed 400 studies and found that the level at which headaches, fatigue, sleeping disorders and memory/attention problems occurred, was ONE-MILLIONTH of the ICNIRP level. The levels at which cancer started to increase significantly was ONE TEN-THOUSANDTH of the ICNIRP level.

Anyone who thinks there is no problem, please answer one question for me: given that there are many studies showing a link between microwaves and ADD, WHY has there been an epidemic of ADD amongst urban schoolkids in the last decade? We've had TV for 30 years, pop music, fizzy drinks, all the other causes, for years. Now just about EVERY parent I know who has a kid has problems with ADD, and entire classes in normal schools in Johannesburg are being dosed with Ritalin. The brains of an entire generation of children are being destroyed right in front of our eyes.

I can go on and on. But anyone who thinks there is no problem, needs to do some research and wake up.
 
Highly argued debate this issue is.

Bottom line for me...Proven vs Disproven, I would be pretty damn upset if a basestation got erected next door to my house...I cant have 100% guarentee in life however, there are choices I can make that would attempt at limiting the percentage of potentially fatal threatening possibilities.

But that's just me...
 
***sigh*** why don't you start with
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4113989.stm
-- there is a long history to this one. Profs Lai and Singh of Washington University found single- and double-strand DNA strand breakages with low-level cellphone radiation more than a decade ago. The industry pooh-poohed them, saying the results needed to be replicated. After a huge study, the EU came to exactly the same conclusion -- permanent genetic damage done by cellphone radiation. (The first known side-effect of microwaves incidentally was sterility in men, reported by Soviet radar operators in WW2).

However, the EU study was done "in vitro" ie in test-tubes. Therefore they say they cannot make health findings. The entire multimillion-dollar experiment was designed, in other words, in such a way that WHATEVER their findings were, they would not make health conclusions.

As far as I'm concerned, DNA damage in a test-tube is enough to sound alarm bells. If a drug was found to cause DNA damage, that drug would not reach the market.

That Finnish research on the human blood-brain barrier was also done in vitro. It followed research on rats at Lund University in Sweden where Prof Leif Salford found that two hours of low-level cellphone radiation caused the blood-brain barrier to leak, meaning the brain was flooded with toxins. In what Salford called "teenage" rats, with developing nervous systems, there was wholesale and irreversible destruction of brain cells. Salford said kids using cellphones extensively now would be "senile at 30". Now the Finnish research, which found that 400 proteins in the human blood-brain barrier were damaged by cellphone radiation, was "in vitro", but the lead researcher -- I can never remember his name, it's Dariusz Lesczenski or something like that -- was prepared to say that he was certain that the same leakage across the BBB was occurring in humans. He was in this country in 2004 for a conference at Tshwane University of Technology, and gave an interview to Business Day where he said that NO ONE should use a cellphone handset for more than 10 minutes, specifically to avoid damage to the brain (Business Day Nov 9 2004). This is the Finnish government's lead researcher, and we all know that Finland's biggest moneyspinner is cellphones, so this guy won't say this without good cause.

Leif Salford said that the bathing of entire populations in microwave radiation is "the biggest experiment ever conducted on the human race". Hungarian research showed that men who were heavy cellphone users had 30% lower sperm counts, and sperm motility of the remaining sperm was down another 30%. I have no doubt that the single greatest artificial mutation of the human race is now under way, being caused by microwaves.
 
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Karl Muller said:
If you do the research, you'll find literally thousands of scientific and clinical studies showing all kinds of health problems from very low-level exposure to microwave radiation, of the type you'd get living near a base station.
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Living near a base station within approved safe limits will never get close to the levels they used in the study from the link you posted.

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4113989.stm:
The radiation used in the study was at Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) levels of between 0.3 and 2 watts per kilogram.
The SAR is the rate at which the body absorbs emissions from the phone handset.
Most phones emit radio signals at SAR levels of between 0.5 and 1 W/kg.
Mobile phones cannot be sold to unless they fall within the SAR of 2 watts per kg.
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EMF from base stations are MUCH lower than that - unless you climb up the pole and sit on the antenna.

Please post another link out of the thousands that show effects from the level you will get living near a base station.
 
mikef said:
I believe it is better to be safe than sorry - there are normally alternative sites for a mast so why take any chances.

http://mastaction.co.uk/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=48
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There is no debate that EMF exposure could affect your health and cause cancer. That has been proven.
But so does a lot of things in life. Sitting in the sun will give you cancer as well. Should we now play it safe and not let the kids play outside?

The debate is or should be about where to set the safe limits. But the only way to do that is to be informed of the risk involved and to understand how it would effect you.
Scaring people and letting them believe that you will get cancer if you live near a base station is irresponsible. Unless you have undeniable proof, which until now no one could manage to produce.
 
Those of you who do NOT object to having a cellphone mast next door, please submit your names to Vodacom, MTN & CellC. Note that the value of your property will take a bit of a dip and you will not be insured for future damages.

Oh ... it's suddenly gone all quiet, apart from a distant electrical hum!
 
A typical high power UHF TV transmitter is about 10KW or more....and more or less 5 of these per tower (50 KW) with an antenna gain of say 10db...that makes 500KW erp.........so cellphone tower radiation is peanuts !!!!!!!!!
 
I have been present when MTN did measurements of a mast, finding values of about 1% of the ICNIRP limit. This agreed with our own findings (this is about 5 microwatts per sq cm, the limit is 450 microwatts per sq cm for 900MHz). MTN were very, very satisfied with this, showing that they were within the limits. The maximum beam from this particular mast, located on a school playground, was set for 135m from the mast, according to the MTN guy from the angle tilt given for this mast. This was exactly where the classrooms of this primary school (and creche) were located, and we indeed measured the highest radiation levels right there. The Stewart Commission in the UK has said that if a mast is constructed on school grounds, the maximum beam should NOT fall on the school. This is blatantly ignored by MTN and the other operators. This value of 1% of the ICNIRP level is thousands of times higher than the level at which the whole range of health disorders (including cancers) has been reported. Don't tell me that the levels near masts in SA are "safe". I've done stories and interviewed dozens of people near masts, all over Johannesburg, and they could not possibly have constructed all these matching stories of similar ailments. It's a very real problem. The crucial thing is that everyone reacts differently to EM fields. If you are unlucky enough to be sensitive to these things, does this mean you have no rights? Does section 24 of the Bill of Rights of the SA Constitution, which says we have the right to a healthy environment, not apply to radiation just because it's invisible?

The local cellphone operators say that they "follow international guidelines", specifically those of the World Health Organisation. You may have seen the Dept of Health's guy saying on Special Assignment that there are no regulations in this country, he follows the WHO. When exactly the World Health Organisation was elected as the de facto and de jure administrators of our nation's health, I don't remember, perhaps you do. The WHO's fact sheet says among other things: "Open communication and discussion between the mobile phone operator, local council and the public during the planning stages for a new antenna can help create public understanding and greater acceptance of a new facility." Please ask the public about just how much open communication and discussion they were allowed before MTN started building that mast on municipal property in East London. It's an absolute joke when they say they follow international guidelines.

And ask yourself this: what is the World Health Organisation, a public health body, doing when they set it as their objective to "help create public understanding and greater acceptance of a new facility"? Why does a public health body see it as its mission to facilitate microwave technology, instead of researching the issue and protecting the public? The answer can be found in a list of the WHO's radiation consultants, published recently by www.microwavenews.com, which shows that almost all their consultants are industry people -- as is exactly the case with SA, and just about all the radiation "protection" boards. As one Canadian commentator said in a very good Candadian Broadcasting Corp documentary put out in the late 90s (called Cone of Silence), "the protection agencies are there to protect the industry from the public".

I have to correct a bad error I made in a previous posting, about Professor Dariusz Leszczynski's (correct spelling!) statements to Business Day. He actually said (as I recall, I don't have the article to hand) that no one should use a handset for more than FIFTEEN minutes, to avoid brain damage. This value of 15 minutes is interesting. The strongest government guidelines in the world by far are those of the Russians. Russian doctors have had a disease called "microwave sickness" or "microwave syndrome" (fatigue, headaches, muscular weakness, sleep disorders, heart palpitations, memory and attention problems, anxiety, neurological disorders, immune disorders, cancer etc etc) on their clinical books for 30 years. The Russians, who are not known for their environmental protection laws, have radiation limits for cellphones 1000 times more stringent than the West. The WHO has a "harmonisation" programme for EMFs, which sounds all very melodious, but it mostly consists of them trying to hammer the Russians to adopt Western radiation levels, so they can sell their phones in Russia. So far (as far as I know) the Russians have refused to budge.

Now, the Russian government guidelines say: NO cellphone use whatsoever by children under 16 (the Stewart Commission in the UK says no use by those under eight years -- have you heard any government warning about kids and cellphones in SA?), NO use at all by people with nervous system illnesses like epilepsy, Parkinson's and MS, NO use by pregnant women -- and then they say, use a cellphone for no more than THREE minutes at a time, and then allow FIFTEEN minutes between calls. So there is that value of 15 minutes again. This is specifically to allow the blood-brain barrier to regenerate, as it starts being affected within seconds of you sticking a microwave transmitter next to your head. The Russians have known all about this for years. I've been told that microwave ovens were banned in Russia until Gorbachev took over and allowed the West to start marketing its goodies in Russia, but I haven't checked this.

So that value of 15 minutes is quite important. Any of you who are conducting long cellphone conversations daily on your handsets, please don't say you've not been warned.
 
Oh, and a PS. Saturday Star in Johannesburg did a story (written by Lindi van Rooyen) in 2004 about how property values are affected by a cellphone mast. There was consensus that it could knock 35% off the value of your house. In some cases, houses become unsellable. I spoke to the estate agent who tried to sell Dino Anastassiou's house in Hurlingham in Sandton (Dino featured in the Special Assignment programme). Vodacom put this mast up in the parking lot of a commercial garage. The parking lot is zoned for "no structures whatsoever, including car ports or canopies". Vodacom put the mast up without any advertising the paper as required (the advert appeared a year after the mast went up). The Mayor of Jo'burg himself, Amos Masondo, has written two letters to Vodacom instructing them to remove the mast. Vodacom are fighting it in the High Court. Their arguments have been that the mast is "not a structure" (sic -- there was a big dictionary definition argument in the High Court as to what a "structure" is, a thing with different component parts intended to perform different functions etc, and I think they eventually did decide that a mast, disguised as a tree, with antennas, earth leads and a red light on top was indeed a "structure"...) and now they're saying it's "not a land use".

So they put up a mast bang in front of your house, wrecking your view, wrecking your health (believe me, these health problems in that neighbourhood were very real -- what you saw in the TV programme was the tip of the iceberg, there was much more), and then you can't sell your house because people take one look at the mast and say "no". The estate agent told me he brough 100 people to this house (advertised in Wendy Machanik's Millionaire's Club feature) and he said 50 of them didn't even get out of the car, they took one look at this monstrosity and said "no thanks". The mast is 11 metres away from the house.

So -- you are trapped in a health-threatening situation through no fault of your own, by an illegal mast, and then you can't sell to escape. Nice people to have in your neighbourhood, the cellphone operators.

Incidentally, there was a public day held by the Gauteng Dept of Agriculture, Conservation and the Environment last year to talk about the "Green Scorpions" and people coming clean about illegal polluting facilities, they could apply for "rectification" but very few had. It was stated by GDACE as the prime example of problem people they knew about, who had not come forward, were "hundreds" of illegal telecoms masts in Gauteng. Good neighbours.
 
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