Residents protest cell tower plan near Bethlehem schools

 

Reported by: Katherine Underwood
Email: katherineunderwood@fox23news.com

Videographer: P. Bus
Residents in the Bethlehem School District are hoping demonstrations like one they held Sunday will force the town board to abandon plans to build a cell tower near Eagle Elementary School and the High School.

“We feel that there is strong opposition to the tower but the town is ignoring our concerns and questions,” explained Kim Strosahl, who has an 8-year-old in the Bethlehem schools.

A group called “Parents Against Cell Towers” says the plan would put a mono pine cell tower on private land less than 1,500 feet from both schools.

“The main concern is that there is no concern for the elementary school students here who would be bombarded by electromagnetic fields on a daily basis,” Strosahl said.

Other residents, like Alex Yatsevitch, disagree. “There are federal limits on all of these things and as long as the guidelines are followed, I don’t think anyone has much to say about it,” Yatsevitch said.

This is the second round of controversy surrounding cell towers in the area. Back in 2009 the school district abandoned plans to build towers on school property after facing major opposition.

The group is using similar arguments this time around, citing studies that claim daily exposure to the tower’s radiation can pose a serious health hazard.

And now, even the kids are wary.

“We don’t exactly know what this radiation will do to us children since our bodies haven’t finished being exposed to this radiation,” explained seventh grader Maya Martinez, “It’s unnatural.”

The group is giving out red “warning” balloons to raise awareness about the plan, hoping the town board will consider these concerns at its meeting on Tuesday.

“They’ve looked into all these other arrangements but they’ve never looked into moving it farther away for our families,” explained Delmar resident David Decancio.

The town board is expected to vote on the construction of the tower on Tuesday night

Are Cellphone Towers Hazardous to Your Health?

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Living near a cellphone tower might eventually melt your brain, give you cancer or worse, neuter your reproductive organs — at least that’s the warning issued last week by a group of trade activists.

“People who live near cell towers and antennas are in jeopardy,” Dr. Robin Bernhoft, president of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, told FoxNews.com.

In an attempt to encourage citizens to write Congress and ask the FCC to update “obsolete” regulations of radio frequency radiation emitted by cellphones, Bernhoft’s colleague Whitney Seymour of activist website Citizens for Health added, “FCC standards for cell transmission antennas were based on earlier studies created almost 20 years ago using even older data.”

“The substantive evidence of harm from wireless radiation is overwhelming,” he added.

Not exactly, said Jack Rowley of GSMA, the largest association of cellphone providers in the world.

“This is a minority and alarmist view based on a selective reading of the scientific evidence,” Rowley told FoxNews.com. “In the last 10 years, more than 30 expert health groups have reviewed the research and consistently concluded that there are no established health risks from using phones or living near antennas.”

The scientific evidence seems to side with the cellphone providers.

For example, a recent study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives concluded that, “Although there remains some uncertainty, the trend in the accumulating evidence is increasingly against the hypothesis that mobile phone use can cause brain tumors in adults.”

What about the respected World Health Organization’s research on cancer, which recently classified radio frequency radiation as a “possible carcinogen”?

Rowley says it was based on limited data for specific types of brain tumors — and even the WHO admitted that further research is needed.

“The evidence was even weaker for a possible risk from towers,” Rowley added, “with typical exposure levels thousands of times below safety standards and comparable to TV and radio. More importantly, the latest WHO fact sheet recognizes the standardization work, which is the origin of the FCC regulations.”

The U.S. Wireless Association (simply called the CTIA) also refutes minority alarmists with more reputable science.

A statement on the trade group’s consumer awareness website summarizes the current science: “Leading global health authorities, such as the World Health Organization, the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have reviewed this research or have conducted their own, and have found that the available scientific evidence does not show that the use of wireless phones is associated with any health problems, including cancer.”

The Interphone project, coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, is the largest study of cellphone use and brain tumors ever undertaken and included substantial numbers of subjects using cellphones for 10 years or longer.

Even that massive, long-term study wasn’t conclusive, however; researchers noted ultimately that “an increased risk of brain cancer is not established from the data from Interphone.” The group noted, however, that some areas for further observations among those with the highest usage rate — but they hardly said to put the phone down.

When asked by FoxNews.com for additional details on potential health risks of cellphones, the CTIA deferred to the above research.

Of course, both the GSMA and CTIA exist to protect the interests of for-profit cellphone companies. And research to track the long-term health effects of cellphones is in no way final. In fact, it’s ongoing.

But unlike the dissenting critics cited above, proponents of safe cellphone use are heavily backed by popular science — at least for now. So why not phone your mom?

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/01/despite-lack-evidence-alarmist-continue-to-question-cell-phone-safety/#ixzz1UOy1yi2G

Portlanders React to New Stance on Cell Phone Use

City residents opposed to having cell phone poles installed in residential areas hope the new position by the World Health Organization will help their cause

By:

Amanda Waldroupe

July 27, 2011–Portland residents opposing the installation of cell towers in their neighborhoods think the World Health Organization’s recent announcement that cell phone use and cell towers can cause brain cancer will help their advocacy efforts.

“We’re of course encouraged,” said Anne Trudeau, one of the founders of RespectPDX, a grassroots coalition of Portland residents opposed to cell pole construction. “It corroborates what many people in the community have been saying.”

The World Health Organization (WHO), the branch of the United Nations dealing with public health, announced in May that increased cell phone use and the radiation emitted by cell phones may be possibly carcinogenic and increase the risk of brain cancer. By 2012, WHO will conduct a formal risk assessment of all studied health effects from such exposure.

Previously its position was that there was no conclusive evidence showing wireless devices cause adverse health effects. Many other organizations, including the National Cancer Institute, found that people using cell phones were at no higher risk of having brain, head or neck tumors.

Numerous Portlanders and neighborhood associations oppose the construction of poles with “wireless facilities,” the equipment and antennas needed to transmit cell phone signals, in their neighborhoods for health and livability reasons.

Wireless signals are sent by radiofrequencies, which emit non-ionizing radiation, a low form of radiation. Trudeau and others think the radiation can cause headaches, anxiety, insomnia and, potentially, cancer.

Residents have forcefully opposed pole construction for the last two years. The Irvington neighborhood used its status as a historic district to stop a pole from being installed on NE 22^nd and NE Stanton. The Beaumont-Wilshire, Woodstock, and Eastmoreland neighborhoods have also strenuously opposed the poles.

But aside from advocacy, they’ve been unable to do much. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 prevents local and state governments from citing health and environmental factors in the placement of cell phone towers, transmitters and other wireless devices.

In 2009, Portland passed a resolution pushed by City Commissioner Amanda Fritz asking the federal government to refresh its studies on the health effects of wireless facilities. Such studies haven’t been updated since the mid-1990s.

“Congress has done nothing about it,” Fritz said.

Fritz said the city of Portland could sue the federal government or individual wireless companies, but she thinks that’s futile. “I’m not going to waste the city’s money on something we know we’re going to lose.”

Senate Bill 679, introduced in the Legislature by Sen. Chip Shields (D-Portland), would have required a warning label, including information about possible health and biological effects, be put on cell phones. The bill, which came under attack from the telecommunications lobby and the Portland Business Alliance, died.

Trudeau says RespectPDX is now focusing its efforts on strengthening Portland’s ordinance and ensuring that cell poles aren’t built in residential areas. But until the Telecommunications Act is changed to allow health concerns to inform construction decisions, Trudeau thinks “it doesn’t have that much effect.”

“Eventually, federal, state and local laws and ordinances will be pressured to ‘come around’ and let the health impact issues drive, at least in part, our policies about placement,” believes Susan Prows, an Irvington resident. “The WHO stance will help us eventually reach a tipping point on this, I hope.”

Power Lines, Cell Towers Tied to Asthma Risk

By Todd Neale, Senior Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: August 01, 2011
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and
Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner

Higher in utero exposure to magnetic fields such as those emitted by power lines and cell phone towers may place children at an increased risk of asthma, researchers found.

After accounting for potential confounders, every 1-milligauss (mG) increase in a pregnant woman’s magnetic field exposure was associated with a 15% greater risk of her child developing asthma (HR 1.15, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.27), according to De-Kun Li, MD, PhD, of Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, Calif., and colleagues.

The association was even stronger among firstborn children and those born to mothers who had a history of asthma (P<0.05 for both), the researchers reported online in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Action Points

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• Note that this prospective study found a significant relationship between increasing maternal daily magnetic field exposure level in pregnancy and an increased risk of asthma in children.

• Point out that, as with any epidemiologic study, the results are subject to unknown or residual confounding, cannot prove causality, and need to be replicated.

“Because electromagnetic field exposure is ubiquitous and exposure to it is involuntary, these new findings have important public health implications,” Li and colleagues wrote. “Nevertheless, they need to be replicated by other studies.”

The rate of asthma has increased in recent decades. Chemical exposures in the environment have been studied as a possible explanation, but physical exposures — such as to man-made electromagnetic fields — have not been well studied.

Just as asthma rates have been climbing, so has population exposure to electromagnetic fields from expanding infrastructure for wireless networks and growing use of cell phones and other wireless devices.

To explore a possible connection between the two trends, Li and colleagues examined data from a prospective cohort study performed at Kaiser Permanente Northern California initially designed to evaluate the possible link between magnetic fields and the risk of miscarriage.

The current analysis included 626 mother-child pairs. The mothers all carried a meter that measured magnetic fields — but not electric fields — for a single 24-hour period during the first or second trimester of pregnancy.

Through a follow-up lasting as long as 13 years, 20.8% of the children developed asthma.

After adjustment for age, race, education, smoking during pregnancy, and maternal history of asthma, increasing exposure to magnetic fields during pregnancy was associated in a linear, dose-response fashion with greater asthma risk (P<0.001).

Children whose mothers had high exposure to magnetic fields (>2.0 mG) were significantly more likely than those whose mothers had low exposure (≤0.3 mG) to develop asthma (HR 3.52, 95% CI 1.68 to 7.35).

Medium exposure (>0.3 to 2.0 mG) was associated a nonsignificant increased risk (HR 1.74, 95% CI 0.93 to 3.25).

Although the study could not prove a causal relationship between exposure to magnetic fields and risk of asthma, there is a plausible biological connection, according to the researchers.

“The underlying pathogenesis of asthma is likely structural and due to functional defects in epithelium and an impaired innate immune system,” they wrote. “Prenatal exposure to high magnetic field levels could interfere with the development of both epithelial cells and normal immune systems.”

Li and colleagues noted that the accuracy of using magnetic field measurements during a 24-hour period of pregnancy only could be questioned, but pointed out that a separate analysis showed that measurements taken on a typical day — according to the mothers — were more strongly associated with asthma risk.

That suggests, the researchers wrote, that the observed associations would have been stronger if magnetic field exposure were measured throughout pregnancy

Cell Tower Health Risks

Cell Towers are the base stations which control cell phone communication. The generic term “cell site” can also be used – to include all cell phone towers, antenna masts and other base station forms. Each cell site services one or more “cells”.

Cell tower numbers have grown exponentially in recent years, as service providers raced to improve their coverage.

Increased cell phone traffic also contributes to cell tower density. When a cell becomes too busy, a frequent solution is to divide it into smaller cells, which then require more cell sites.

In 2009 there were over 200,000 cell sites in the USA alone, and 50,000 in U.K.

Cell tower radiation from chimneys?

Cell sites may take the form of a mast or tower, but may also be disguised, in some cases so they cannot be visually discerned at all.

You might notice the camouflaged “trees”, but perhaps not the cell sites on top of buildings, looking like elongated loudspeaker boxes.

You’d almost certainly miss the cell sites installed inside chimneys and church steeples, even flagpoles.

Where a base station is installed on top of a building where people live or work, those occupants may be quite unaware that they are in very close proximity to equipment which produces substantial electromagnetic radiation.

Cell tower health dangers

Cellular phone industry spokespersons continue to assert that cell phone towers pose no health risk. Almost all scientists in this field would disagree, at the very least claiming that no such assurance can be given.

There is strong evidence that electromagnetic radiation from cell phone towers is damaging to human (and animal) health.

A study into the effects of a cell tower on a herd of dairy cattle was conducted by the Bavarian state government in Germany and published in 1998. The erection of the tower caused adverse health effects resulting in a measurable drop in milk yield. Relocating the cattle restored the milk yield. Moving them back to the original pasture recreated the problem.

A human study (Kempten West) in 2007 measured blood levels of seratonin and melatonin (important hormones involved in brain messaging, mood, sleep regulation and immune system function) both before, and five months after, the activation of a new cell site.

Twenty-five participants lived within 300 metres of the site. Substantial unfavourable changes occurred with respect to both hormones, in almost all participants.

Over 100 scientists and physicians at Boston and Harvard Universities Schools of Public Health have called cell phone towers a radiation hazard.

Cell phone towers cancer risk

A study performed by doctors from the German city of Naila monitored 1000 residents who had lived in an area around two cell phone towers for 10 years. During the last 5 years of the study they found that those living within 400 meters of either tower had a newly-diagnosed cancer rate three times higher than those who lived further away. Breast cancer topped the list, but cancers of the prostate, pancreas, bowel, skin melanoma, lung and blood cancer were all increased.

Another study by researchers at Tel Aviv university compared 622 residents who lived within 350 meters of a cell phone tower with 1222 control patients who lived further away. They found 8 cancer cases in the group affected by the cell tower, compared with only 2 cases amongst the controls.

Very few studies have specifically concentrated on cancer risk from cell phone towers. This lack of studies is in itself a cause for concern, especially since anecdotal evidence is plentiful.

For example, in a case known as “Towers of Doom”, two cell masts were installed (in 1994)  on a five story apartment building in London. Residents complained of many health problems in the following years. Seven of them were diagnosed with cancer. The cancer rate of the top floor residents (closest to the tower) was 10 times the national average.

We agree that more research is needed, but it may be slow in coming. Those who might fund major studies are the very same organisations who would be disadvantaged if a definite link between cell towers and cancer were established.

In the meantime, it is reasonable to apply the precautionary principle.

If cell towers are causing cancer, we would expect that several years of exposure (with only minor effects on people’s health) might be required, followed by an unexpectedly high occurrence of the disease amongst the exposed population.

The damage from radiation exposure accumulates over many years, but the breakdown in health happens only after all body defences and repair mechanisms have been exhausted.

At an international health conference, 33 delegates from seven countries declared cell phone towers a public health emergency.

Cellular Phone Towers

Cellular (cell) phones first became widely available in the United States in the 1990s, but their use has increased dramatically since then. The widespread use of cell phones has led to the placement of cell phone towers in many communities. These towers, also called base stations, consist of electronic equipment and antennas that receive and transmit radiofrequency (RF) signals.

How do cellular phone towers work?

Cell phone base stations may be free standing towers or mounted on existing structures, such as trees, water tanks, or tall buildings. The antennas need to be located high enough so they can adequately cover the area. Base stations usually range in height from 50-200 feet.

Cell phones communicate with nearby cell towers mainly through radiofrequency (RF) waves, a form of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum between FM radio waves and microwaves. Like FM radio waves, microwaves, visible light, and heat, they are forms of non-ionizing radiation. This means they cannot cause cancer by directly damaging DNA. RF waves are different from stronger types of radiation such as x-rays, gamma rays, and ultraviolet (UV) light, which can break the chemical bonds in DNA.

At very high levels, RF waves can heat up body tissues. (This is the basis for how microwave ovens work.) But the levels of energy used by cell phones and towers are much lower.

When a person makes a cell phone call, a signal is sent from the phone’s antenna to the nearest base station antenna. The base station responds to this signal by assigning it an available radiofrequency channel. RF waves transfer the voice information to the base station. The voice signals are then sent to a switching center, which transfers the call to its destination. Voice signals are then relayed back and forth during the call.

How are people exposed to the energy from cellular phone towers?

As people use cell phones to make calls, signals are transmitted back and forth to the base station. The RF waves produced at the base station are given off into the environment, where people can be exposed to them.

The energy from a cellular phone tower antenna, like that of other telecommunication antennas, is directed toward the horizon (parallel to the ground), with some downward scatter. Base station antennas use higher power levels than other types of land-mobile antennas, but much lower levels than those from radio and television broadcast stations. The amount of energy decreases rapidly with increasing distance from the antenna. As a result, the level of exposure to radio waves at ground level is very low compared to the level close to the antenna.

Public exposure to radio waves from cell phone tower antennas is slight for several reasons. The power levels are relatively low, the antennas are mounted at high above ground level, and the signals are transmitted intermittently, rather than constantly.

At ground level near typical cellular base stations, the amount of RF energy is thousands of times less than the limits for safe exposure set by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) and other regulatory authorities. It is very unlikely that a person could be exposed to RF levels in excess of these limits just by being near a cell phone tower.

When cellular antennas are mounted on rooftops, it is possible that a person on the roof could be exposed to RF levels greater than those typically encountered on the ground. But even then, exposure levels approaching or exceeding the FCC safety guidelines are only likely to be found very close to and directly in front of the antennas. If this is the case, access to these areas should be limited.

The level of RF energy inside buildings where a base station is mounted is typically much lower than the level outside depending on the construction materials of the building. Wood or cement block reduces the exposure level of RF radiation by a factor of about 10. The energy level behind an antenna is hundreds to thousands of times lower than in front. Therefore, if an antenna is mounted on the side of a building, the exposure level in the room directly behind the wall is typically well below the recommended exposure limits