The following article from the US environmental magazine
Latitudes bears a remarkable similarity to the situation faced by farmers
in Ouruhia New Zealand who live near transmitter towers. See the Ouruhia
web site at:
http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/ouruhia/
The
Dark Side of Wireless Technology
Sheila Rogers, editor of Latitudes
(Reprinted
with permission from Latitudes Volume 5 Number 4. See www.Latitudes.org
for additional articles on electrical sensitivity, and for information
on alternative treatments for Tourette syndrome, autism, learning disabilities,
and ADHD)
This account, obtained by interviewing the mother of
this family, has all the makings of a documentary. The name of the cell
phone company and the source is withheld while the family looks for a
lawyer willing to take the case (see note).
MEREDITH AND HER HUSBAND were dairy farmers on over
150 acres of rolling green land that had been passed down for generations.
They had grown to love the simple lifestyle that came with hard work,
fresh air, and farming in the Midwest. They and their four children enjoyed
good health and happy days.
When the cell phone tower was erected twelve years
ago they weren't too concerned, though they were certainly not pleased
that it was just over the property line on the adjoining land and only
800 feet from their house. It was an eyesore, but they were assured it
was perfectly safe. "It's like a 100-watt light bulb," the company
often told people.
"We were naïve," says Meredith. "Over
the next few months, we watched as our herd that grazed near the tower
became emaciated and agitated-a change from their normally fat and contented
state. The whole herd developed rough coats. The vet was puzzled, but
blood work produced no answers."
MEANWHILE, WITHIN SIX MONTHS the parents noticed changes
in their children. There were skin rashes-unusual, raised "hot spots."
They had recurrent kidney infections. The youngest two kids became dramatically
hyperactive, and the older ones complained of foggy thinking and concentration
problems. Then sleep disturbances crept in. Meredith, in her early thirties,
began to develop joint problems. "Everyone's symptoms were worse,"
she explained, "on foggy or rainy days. I since learned this was
because the moisture increases the electrical conductivity. There were
times when my preschool child would literally spin in circles." One
day she discovered that their tower had become the "hub" for
the entire state. "We buried cows that winter," she recalls.
Searching for solutions and options, they tracked down
a researcher at the Environmental Protection Agency, who gave her the
first useful advice they'd had. He told her that as a government official
he should reassure her that they were safe. But with his "citizen
cap" on, he had to say that they should move immediately.
WITH HOPES OF RETURNING ONE day, they sold the herd
but had someone keep the heifers for them. Within two to three months
of moving to an electrically clean area in upper Michigan, health problems
began to subside. After a year, they all were feeling strong once more.
The only problem was that their farm was unattended, they were out of
money, and they desperately needed to farm again.
About this time, they spoke with new owners of the
cell phone company. The staff expressed disdain for flagrant safety lapses
of the previous tower owners. The family was assured that if they returned,
everything would now be fine. Excited at the news, they went back to their
farm.
It was not long before symptoms returned. The children
lost weight and the girls began to lose hair. Meredith was pregnant but
not gaining weight. That son was unfortunately born with anomalies-birth
defects that fit no particular syndrome. Neighbors also had complaints;
the suicide rate increased in town, and unusual seizures were reported.
Now, some calves were born with front legs shorter
than the back and with deformed hooves; some had large tumors-one tumor
was three feet in diameter and the calf could not be delivered alive,
even with a C-section. And the tumors were not typical to the species.
THEY HAD BEEN BACK FOR THREE years when a pediatrician
saw the son's birth defects, heard the story, and told them to leave town.
Why had they stayed so long? "We had to make a living. And somehow,
when it's gradually happening, you're in denial-you don't see it for what
it is," Meredith said.
They managed to buy a farm in a safe area and start
anew. "My husband insisted we take the cows with us, and within three
days they were chewing their cuds-something they hadn't done for years."
The young boy, though, remains electrically sensitive and hyperactive.
Meredith says that if he is within two and a half miles of a tower he
develops flushed skin. Computer terminals and fluorescent lights in stores
increase symptoms. He has food sensitivities, and damp weather continues
to affect him.
And the land-what happened to the farm? Meredith sighs.
"It just sits there. Empty. Selling the farm has not been considered.
Should we let this happen to someone else?" End
Message from Don Maisch (excerpt)
and from the same informant:
Electrical
Sensitivity
Arthur Firstenberg and Susan Molloy
(Reprinted
with permission from Latitudes Volume 5 Number 4. See www.Latitudes.org
for additional articles on electrical sensitivity, and for information
on alternative treatments for Tourette syndrome, autism, learning disabilities,
and ADHD)
The 750,000-watt Doppler weather radar at Fort Dix,
New Jersey, overlooks the Township of Brick. Why is that of interest to
anyone but meteorologists? It's not, except that eight out of every 1000
children born in Brick since the radar station was built in 1994 are autistic.
The Brick Township Autism Investigation (1), conducted
in 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, uncovered 60
cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among children aged three through
ten in this town of 77,000 residents. As in much of the rest of the world,
autism is increasing here. But the prevalence of both ASD and classic
autism in Brick Township were found to be dramatically higher than normal
in the 3-to-5-year-old age group, i.e., those born since 1994.
Forward-thinking educators and parents have done a
good job in recent years of tackling the difficult issues involved in
protecting sensitive children from chemical contaminants, dyes, preservatives,
and allergens in their food, medications, classrooms, and homes. However,
an additional burden has been overlooked and even ridiculed as untenable
as a factor in many children's profound neurological and behavioral problems.
Some readers may react with disbelief to our suggestion that the Fort
Dix Doppler might qualify for a place on the "radar screen"
of those scientists who are puzzled by the local epidemic of autism. (2)
The authors of this article are adults who are made
extremely sick, sometimes incapacitated, from exposure to "normal"
amounts of electromagnetic energy. We've seen some children respond as
we do, as their well-meaning parents and teachers equip them with newer,
faster, more powerful "safety" and communication devices, oblivious
to the potential consequences for their children's health and development.
We're not oblivious to these consequences because we ourselves respond
directly and immediately, with debilitating pain, confusion, and neurological
symptoms, to cell phones, cordless phones, computers, televisions, and
other normal elements of today's home, work and school environments. And
we are in increasingly good company.
Gro Harlem Brundtland is director-general of the World
Health Organization. A medical doctor with a master's degree in public
health, as well as former prime minister of Norway, she has recently been
speaking in public about her own sensitivity to computers, cordless phones
and cell phones. Not only has she warned parents against allowing their
children to use cell phones or microwave ovens, but she said that she
herself has become so sensitive to the radiation that she does not allow
anyone to enter her office with a cell phone turned on. "If you enter
my office, you are invited by me. No one who is invited would like to
give me headaches," she said at a news conference in Oslo on July
1, 2002, where she was attending an international conference on cancer.
Awakening to the potential of electricity to affect
children's health and development can be initially disheartening, because
electromagnetic pollution is so inescapable, and its sources so often
are "conveniences" for which we've eagerly expended considerable
resources. It can also be empowering, because it gives parents and practitioners
an additional tool and offers a new range of potential factors that may
be influencing seemingly intractable health or behavior problems.
Both of us went to school and were graduated from college
before personal computers, cell phones, the Internet, and everything that
goes along with them even existed. As environmentally sensitive people,
we feel lucky to have grown up before today's conditions became the norm.
What
Can We Do?
Computers in the classroom are practically unquestioned now, and that
is fine for the durable. However, our society should provide computer-free
classrooms for those vulnerable children for whom this is a necessary
and effective accommodation. In schools where wireless computers-or regular
computers with wireless keyboards/mice-are installed, even a computer-free
classroom will not be an effective intervention for a child whose Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is triggered
or exacerbated by electromagnetic radiation. This is because the microwave
frequencies used by these technologies, identical to the frequencies used
in a microwave oven, pass through walls and do not respect the boundaries
of classrooms.
What we suggest runs counter to the prevailing educational
trend, which is to throw more and more computer-enabled devices at physically
and developmentally disabled children in an effort to improve their functioning,
without any consideration of the potential effects of the extra radiation
on their developing nervous systems.
When adult populations were sampled within the last
year for the prevalence of electrical sensitivity, estimates by researchers
varied from 1.5% (Stockholm, Sweden) to 3.3% (state of California) to
7% (Marin County, California) of the population. One patient group in
Germany puts the number as high as 15% of the German population. Nobody
knows exactly, because this is an isolating, disabling, and ridiculed
problem that is still in the public health "closet," along with
most of its victims. Children are the most vulnerable segment of the population.
They are also the most unaware of the potential effects of this invisible
and largely unacknowledged pollutant coming from equipment that is so
fervently sought by their peers and esteemed by their parents and teachers.
Medical facilities, also, are sites of electronics'
proliferation. The growing field of medical telemetry uses wireless technology
to monitor the vital signs of hospital patients. But also, in hospitals,
nursing homes, day care and elder care facilities, mental health institutions
and group homes, remote monitoring of patients is in increasing use, not
only for medical purposes, but simply to cut back on personnel costs.
New automobiles have much larger electromagnetic fields
than they had ten or twenty years ago. This is due to multiple computer-controlled
operating systems, GPS satellite-tracking devices, digital dashboard displays,
and, commonly, a cell phone constantly charging in the car. The situation
is not hopeless. At home, every parent can easily do the following experiment:
tonight, before your family goes to bed, unplug all of these items you
may have in your home: the TV, the computer, the base unit of the cordless
phone, the entertainment center, and the baby monitor. Notice the quality
of everyone's sleep, how you feel in the morning on awakening, and note
whether you and your child seem calmer. Appliances should be completely
unplugged, not just turned off at a surge protector (which itself may
be a source of electromagnetic fields).
If your child has a motorized wheelchair, don't plug
it in overnight next to his or her bed. Often these children are especially
vulnerable as they may already have epilepsy, cerebral palsy, or other
mobility-impairing conditions. Electric floor or ceiling heaters, fluorescent
lights, dimmer switches, and electronic security systems can all produce
problematic electromagnetic fields. Finding all the sources and eliminating
or avoiding them requires patience and may be time-consuming but is not
necessarily difficult or expensive. Your basic measuring tools are a $40
magnetic field meter, or "gaussmeter," and a cheap (poorer quality
is better for this purpose) battery-operated AM radio. When the gaussmeter
reads 0.2 milligauss or less, and the radio, when tuned between stations,
remains silent (does not buzz or give loud static), you have a relatively
calm environment-especially important in the sleeping area. These two
measuring devices will not detect the very high frequency radiation produced
by cordless phones, wireless computers, baby monitors, remote controls
for appliances, radio-controlled toys, and other wireless equipment. We
recommend eliminating wireless technology from the environment altogether.
Many homes will have ambient magnetic fields that cannot
be reduced to 0.2 milligauss because of factors outside your control,
most commonly nearby power lines and transformers. Neighbors' activities
may also be a factor. But reducing exposures to the extent possible within
the home may still have a significant effect, especially on neurological
or behavioral problems in developing children. Exposures outside our own
control, such as from the street, a radar station or cell tower, at school,
or in hospitals and medical facilities, can be dealt with effectively
only on a societal level. We have a long way to go before these problems
are given the serious attention they deserve.
Ironically, some of our societal problems, such as
school violence and kidnappings of children-even before 9/11 added to
our worries-are being used as reasons to attach more cell phones to our
kids for their safety and our peace of mind. But these very devices, and
the millions of towers and antennas that make their use possible, expose
all of us to a level of radiation that we know (from studies and painful
firsthand experience) can contribute to the anxiety, depression, irritability,
impulsivity, confusion, and general unrest that feed the very concerns
which led to the need for all those cell phones in the first place. This
can begin to change as more of us turn them off and experience the difference.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Bertrand, J. et al., Prevalence of Autism in a United States Population:
The Brick Township, New Jersey Investigation, Pediatrics 108:1155-1161
(2001).
2. The Doppler appears to be the latest addition to a number of radar
facilities in the area. McGuire Air Force Base, Fort Dix Military Reservation,
and Lakehurst Naval Air Warfare Center are all located west of Brick.
Military jets from those bases, equipped with powerful radars of their
own, also fly over Brick on their way out to sea.
SUGGESTED
READING:
George Carlo, Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age, Carroll
& Graf, New York, 2001.
Jane M. Healy, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's
Minds-and What We Can Do About It, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998.
B. Blake Levit, ed., Cell Towers: Wireless Convenience? Or Environmental
Hazard?, New Century Publishing, Sheffield, MA, 2000.
Lucinda Grant, The Electrical Sensitivity Handbook, Weldon Publishing,
Prescott, AZ, 1995.
Robert O. Becker and Gary Selden, The Body Electric: Electro-magnetism
and the Foundation of Life, William Morrow, New York, 1985.
** Electromagnetic field (EMF) meters may be obtained from Alpha Lab,
1280 South 300 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84101, (800)-769-3754 Less EMF,
Inc., 26 Valley View Lane, Ghent, NY 12075, (888) LESS-EMF.
About
the authors:
Arthur Firstenberg is founder and director of the Cellular Phone Taskforce,
a nonprofit organization that disseminates information about electromagnetic
radiation and advocates for electrically sensitive people. He is editor
of the Taskforce's publication, No Place to Hide, and the author of Microwaving
Our Planet: The Environmental Impact of the Wireless Revolution. After
graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Cornell University in 1971 with a B.A.
in mathematics, he went to medical school from 1978 to 1982. Injury by
x-ray overdose cut short his career. Firstenberg explains that after receiving
about 50 diagnostic x-rays during extensive dental work, he became sensitive
to high-powered equipment in the hospitals where he worked. "I could
literally feel the radiation from the equipment; it made me weak and dizzy,
but I kept working. After several months I collapsed. I was 31 and no
one knew the cause of my illness. I was bedridden for about three months
and at first I was not sure if I would survive."
Firstenberg's symptoms included a slow heartbeat, chest
pain, extreme shortness of breath on exertion, and weight loss. By reading
Eastern European literature on the subject, he eventually discovered that
he had the symptoms of radio wave sickness. He later learned that any
type of electromagnetic field may provoke similar illness in sensitive
people, which commonly manifests with nausea, dizziness, headache, irritability,
insomnia, and difficulty with memory and concentration. He also gradually
became chemically hypersensitive. His therapeutic approach is strict avoidance.
At home, he has no computer, no television, no wireless equipment, no
microwave, and uses only incandescent lighting. He moved cross-country
to Mendocino, California which has minimal electrical pollution, and he
is symptom-free as long as he avoids exposure.
As is often the case in advocacy organizations, Firstenberg's
personal experience led him to study the condition that plagued him. He
is now an international spokesperson and advisor on the subject of electrical
sensitivity (ES). He can be contacted by phone at (707) 937-3990 or mail:
P.O. Box 1337, Mendocino, CA 95460.
Susan Molloy has an MA in disability policy and provides
referrals and troubleshooting for people with symptoms provoked by environmental
exposures. She is cofounder of the Environmental Health Network (EHN)
of California and edited EHN's newsletter for 11 years. She served as
chair of the Independent Living Council in Arizona and works at New Horizons
Independent Living Center in Prescott Valley. She works from home due
to her inability to withstand electromagnetic exposure, and uses a custom-shielded
computer provided by Arizona Rehabilitation Services Administration. Molloy
has a history of allergies since childhood and was hospitalized with chemical
sensitivities at age 31. ES symptoms emerged shortly after this. "When
I go under power lines or fluorescent lights it feels like a blow to the
top of my head," she explains. Asked if she could run errands, Molloy
explains, "I can go into stores and other buildings. It's getting
back out that's the problem. I tend to lose coordination and would often
be stumbling if I didn't use a wheelchair. I get disoriented and my speech
is also affected." Professional-grade ear protectors help soften
the impact of auditory hypersensitivity to motor noises. She feels that
living in the desert, where she keeps appliances to a minimum, has given
her more stamina.
"I'd like to think that Arthur and I are just
special cases, that people can stand back and distance themselves from
our difficulties. I'd like to think that others won't suffer similar problems.
But we know better. The numbers are growing, and no one is listening."
She can be reached at (928) 536-4625 or susanm@cybertrails.com.
Influenza
virus opportunistic??
The frequency that effects the immune system must be
the one they have recently switched to.
Please review these maps - are there any for your area?
Links:
http://www.mapcruzin.com/rfr_maps/index.html
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/flu/weekly.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,77863,00.html
http://www.cincypost.com/2003/02/01/ohflu020103.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4333995,00.html
Message from Alfonso Balmori (excerpt)
Microwave
weapons planned for Irak war?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/14/MN148513.DTL
Informant: Don Maisch
EMF
Presentation in Schools:
http://cbc.ca/national/news/finalact/
Informant: Gotemf
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