To the Editor,
Re: Residents need new cell tower, Editorial, March 6.
I live in the ‘dead zone’ that would eliminated by a new tower. I’m a scientist who developed software for AT&T’s cellular system. There are a few very relevant facts that many people may not appreciate.
First, cellular technology works because it uses low-powered antennas. Additional users are served by building more towers while reducing the power from each one so that they don’t interfere with each other. Second, the energy from a cell phone tower does not point straight down. It spreads out so that a relatively wide area gets the signal. Health Canada doesn’t see a problem. The National Institute of Health in the United States doesn’t see a problem. The only problem I see is that we don’t have a tower on Hammond Bay Road. The people who oppose the tower are either ignorant of the facts or feel they are special because they know something the rest of us don’t.
Frank LoPintovia e-mail
To the Editor,
Re: Residents need new cell tower, Editorial, March 6.
Our council is woefully ill-informed about the perceived hazards of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Our great-grandparents lived in a world with virtually no RFR. Today’s population, on the other hand, has been exposed to RFR from birth through radio, TV, kitchen appliances, modems and routers, cell towers and cellphones and power lines.
So if RFR is a hazard, then surely there must have been catastrophic health consequences from being bathed from birth in this insidious radiation, right? Well, surprise, we are living 20 years longer than our great-grandparents.
No controlled study anywhere has ever found that RFR is hazardous to our health, except in instances of extreme exposure, far beyond anything we experience in our daily lives. So to reject an application for a badly needed cell tower because of perceived health risks is ridiculous.
Art CharbonneauNanaimo