Please forward the attached (Omega: Base-station update December 2002)
to your correspondent in Berkeley, California - it might be of some help in his fight!

Best regards,
Gerard J Hyland

Dear Klaus,

Please be so kind as to forward this to your new member in Berkely, CA.

Hello,

I am fighting a cellular installation in Los Angeles, CA and I will save you a lot of time by telling you that your plan to argue the health issues is a waste of time, those arguments will not be heard by your city council. The 1996 Tele-Comm Act prohibits local municipalities from making decisions on these installations based on health concerns, so those arguments are dismissed immediately and usually the board or council will not even hear tem on the record, lest the cellular company sue them for being swayed by those factors in its decision if they do ultimately deny the request.

Your best bet -- argue aesthetics, argue that the cellular company has not done due diligence in co-location possibilities, argue they don't need any more cellular facilities in the area (in my case Cingular is trying to put a new base station in when they have a base station 1/10 of a mile from the proposed site and another one 3/10 of a mile away from the proposed site.

Our strongest argument is that if they can not properly service the area with the two base stations they already have within walking distance, then they should find and utilize better technology, not clutter blocks after block with more and more equipments stations.)

Get ahold of the staff report and any other reports base don the approval and start hacking away at them, find any little thing that is wrong, not justified, or unreasonable, inaccurate, etc., and dig in. Do your research, find evidence and articles and studies to support your claims, but don't waste your time on the health issues or in having people write emails to decision-makers saying "base-station antennas are invisible, silent, and odorless adversaries to health", because even though you're right, they won't legally be able to hear the argument, and the efforts among those who write in for you will be useless, when they could have written a letter to support a position that the council or board will listen to and possibly agree with.

Best of luck to you. You can win, you just have to fight the way they need you to!

Jessica

Hi Klaus:

More on Dr. Jean Monro. For the many of us out there who have had our accounts of our ES/EHS symptoms dismissed by doctors as no more than delusions and sent on our way voluntarily or involuntarily to psychiatrists, it will be uplifting to read that one of the world's leading authorities on environmental illnesses and allergies, Dr. Jean Monro, came close to experiencing a similar mishap some thirty years ago.

An article on Food Allergies, in THE TIMES, 25 February, 2002 begins with "When she suggested her son had a wheat allergy, Dr. Jean Monro was taken to see a psychiatrist. More than thirty years on, much of her career has been spent being stigmatised as eccentric. Now she is one of the country's leading experts on food allergies with her own specialist clinic but says the subject is still taboo in medical science." (To access the entire article, enter "Dr. Jean Monro, Food Allergies" in Goggle search engine and roll to entry 17.)

Of course, any ES sufferer within the EU should be able to avail of established EU Specialist Medical Treatment Abroad legislation which means the patient's cost of treatment in a host country could be underwritten by the Health Board of her/his own country.

Best, Imelda, Cork