War over iBurst tower erupts

Do you think staying close to a cellular/wireless mast adversely affects your health?

  • Yes

    Votes: 83 36.4%
  • No

    Votes: 101 44.3%
  • Uncertain

    Votes: 44 19.3%

  • Total voters
    228
pics or it didn't happen; well a photo of the tower would be nice for those who don't live there please.
 
Maybe these are all employees of opposition 3g companies and this is a conspiracy theory.
 
In my personal experience....

Some people are affected by RF. At least one person, known to me, develops an array of headache symptoms when exposed to most kinds of RF.

Everyone is different, some people get affected, others don't.

The way forward in this case is to do conclusive testing, which I believe, has been agreed to by the parties, with the aim of establishing whether the RF levels are excessive into people's dwellings. RF is a tricky subject and anything can happen given the right conditions, as I know only too well.

I also think that if the residents are dissatisified with the mast being there, then creedence should be given to their complaints, and the mast moved to a more suitable location. To my knowledge, nobody has complained about the other basestations nearby, so perhaps the can move it to an agreeable location slightly further west.
 
Iburst should have switched the tower off without informing the residents. Then all the moaners who keep on moaning about rashes know what to do about their complaints...
 
I recall about 4 years back when I very first started using a blue-tooth dongle to connect pc to the internet via cellphone everytime I connected via this method I would immediately get a headache. It is only after frequent use that my body eventually adapted and got used to it that is when my headaches eventually subsided.

:eek:

Now I have heard it all...
 
In my personal experience....

Some people are affected by RF. At least one person, known to me, develops an array of headache symptoms when exposed to most kinds of RF.

RF as in Radio Frequency? Do they wear a funny hat then?
 
I guess a lot has to to with community hysteria...

Something like the placebo effect - people get better when given a sugar pill without any active ingredient.

Do those people use cellphones?
 
I wonder how many if these "tower residents" have a cellphone on their bodies all day...
I wonder if any of them have bluetooth switched on? Bluetooth runs in the 2.4GHz space, the same place your kitchen microwave radiates......

........
 
Ridiculous!

Consider that we're being BOMBARDED daily by charged particles from outer space which are infinitely more powerful than then the comparatively minuscule power output from cellular towers and you know that somebody is talking out of their rear-end.

The earth itself gives off powerful enough radiation to deflect supercharged particles from the sun high up in the stratosphere and beyond, so radiation is a very naturally occurring phenomenon which wireless technology harnesses for the benefit of our civilization.

Why is this particular errant tower in Fourways any different from the millions of towers deployed globally? Wireless technology has been in effect for a very long time so we're sitting on significant amounts of accrued data to show that this task force is talking a load of cr@p!!

It's very difficult to prove that terrestrial RF is the source of people's ailments as there is so much volatility on the surface of the sun that it even influences satellite communication...so what makes people think that they can isolate the problem with any certainty, to a particular tower? I fail to understand what the problem here is...
 
All the health issues mentioned have been experienced in my househould this month.

Turns out it is a combination of allergies (my son, daughter and me) and a hectic ear infection (me) - seasonal stuff.

Oh, and the nearest iBurst tower is 2km away from me. When I cycle past it (nearly every day) I do not get any strange signals going through my body either.
 
For the record:

that site transmits roughly 20 watts into the air, in the 1.7 ~ 1.9GHz range. The info is on Kyocera's website you can confirm that for yourself. Depending on antenna gain the ERP could be higher. I don't know. I have never had the opportunity to get down with iBurst's equipment.

Considering that, when I was at the Hillbrow Tower, some years ago that 10 watts @ 3GHz and up, was considered a health hazard if you stood in front of one of the dishes, if the conditions are right, there is a probability that the energy due to unknown causes could be deflected at the residents and their homes. It is as yet unproven, and in the theoretical domain, but, there is a chance, it could be small, that their ailments are real.

As for the health hazards, all this stuff about cooking your flesh and burns etc is utter scare tactic conspiracy theorist nonsense... you need hundreds of watts to do that, and even a 700 watt magnetron will do little damage to your flesh unless you literally sit on top of it or aim it at short distances. I know this from experience with some folks who used a magnetron as a transmitter into some waveguides for an experiment, and used a bucket of water as a dummy load. The water was only weakly heated over 30 cm... this with a 1kw output.

You cannot compare an iBurst or cellular mast with a poxy little cellphone pushing out 2 watts under extreme conditions, or a bluetooth dongle pushing out a few milliwatts. I would expect mobile equipment to be much less of a risk than a 20 watt basestation. And indeed some people are affected by cellphones and bluetooth dongles. We cannot at this stage explain it, but, in much the same way as cigarette smoke makes me violently ill, and some benign foods make my hands swell up with gout, we just don't know.
 
The right way to test this would be to tell them the tower is off, but leave it on or vice-versa. You'll quickly get an indication to what extent these symptoms, assuming they really exist, are caused by hysteria. The fact that symptoms disappear when people move away from the tower or when they know it is off tells us nothing.

one has to wonder about the old saying, where there's smoke there is usually fire.
Or a smoke machine.
 
...later that day Dorny said that there was a problem with her laptop and mail server and that she could not immediately answer any of the questions
Probably because she couldn't connect to her mail server after the tower was turned off!!
 
You cannot compare an iBurst or cellular mast with a poxy little cellphone pushing out 2 watts under extreme conditions, or a bluetooth dongle pushing out a few milliwatts. I would expect mobile equipment to be much less of a risk than a 20 watt basestation. And indeed some people are affected by cellphones and bluetooth dongles. We cannot at this stage explain it, but, in much the same way as cigarette smoke makes me violently ill, and some benign foods make my hands swell up with gout, we just don't know.
It's all about the distance. So yes, we can compare.

Maybe we do know why certain foods cause those symptoms.
 
@Kei. Add some metal to the water and then note the difference in the water experiment.

Water is not a good test. They should have used human skin with anti-perspiration deodorant (aluminium chlorohydrate) and cheap make-up (no idea what's in a modern base) smeared on it for a comparative test.

What gets me is: This is a democracy. Put it to a vote, if that area does not want the tower, and they vote as such, then that area must pay to remove the tower.

EDIT: And, they must pay because they missed the initial opportunity to object to it being built.
EDIT AGAIN: It could be that the community was never given the initial opportunity to object to the tower being built.
 
Last edited:
I remember an instance in the past like this. My God parents lived in Kempton Park, and one of the mobile operators went around looking for somewhere to put a tower. Many people where approached, and the issue was discussed with them. Rental from the company to use a piece of garden was VERY high, and of course EVERYONE wanted the tower in their yard.

But alas, they secured the roof of a nearby three story block of flats, and the money went to the body corporate and not into someones pocket. This angered residents in the area and they started oppossing the tower saying it was causing health risks... I wonder who else wanted the iburst tower in their back yard to get the free money every month?
 
We're all a bunch of rats in a global scientific experiment!! I for one am concerned. Subjecting humans to cordless phones, cell phones, wireless routers, microwave ovens, wireless surveillance cameras, network towers, fm transmitters and probably 20 more sources of "non-ionizing" radiation, are part of the global experiment...
 
they're fabricating the whole thing, trying to establish a fake correlation between the tower and random symptoms all in order to sue iburst and make a quick buck. These people are so transparent. If they co-operated abit more I might then slightly believe it...
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter