W.E.E.P. News
Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution News
18 August 2010
Woman feels the waves
Claims exposure to wireless radiation affects her health
http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnists/michele_mandel/2010/08/17/15054141.html
She looks a little sheepish as she asks if you can please shut off your BlackBerry.
Veronica Ciandre lives in a shrinking world where she is now so painfully sensitive that any exposure to wireless radiation turns her body into a pulsating tuning fork. And she lays the blame on her landlord, who rented out his roof for the installation of 10 cell phone towers just above her top floor apartment at 2 Regal Rd.
"It was like living in a slow cooking microwave oven for two months," says Ciandre, 49, who has been couch surfing with her 14-year-old daughter ever since they had to flee their apartment in February. "It just felt like your cells were being fried. It was quite frightening."
The single mom will be at a landlord and tenant hearing Wednesday to argue that by exposing her to so much radiation without her consent, she shouldn't have to pay her $1,500 monthly rent from the time the towers were installed last December until she formally moved out in June.
Her case comes at a time when parents in Barrie argue that Wi-Fi in schools is making their children sick and scientists remain are divided as to whether electromagnetic radiation can harm your health.
"I loved my apartment for 12 years," says the elegant, articulate woman. "It had the most incredible view of Toronto. There is not one reason in the world I wanted to move." But, Ciandre says, she had no choice.
Shortly after the towers went up — so close she could touch them with a broom from her balcony — she began having ringing in her ears. Then she developed a headache that lasted for two weeks, while her daughter broke out in strange rashes.
Nausea and dizziness followed, and electric shocks every time her body touched her walls, her bed, even the cats. The worst, though was lying sleepless every night because her entire body was tingling. "It felt like I was being plugged into an outlet," she explains.
A former hairstylist for TV and movies, she now develops empowering workshops for schools and groups. While away on a three-day session up north in late January, she noticed all her symptoms disappeared.
Ciandre came home and began researching the effects of cell phone towers. When she told an environmental group about all the antennas six feet above her head, she was given chilling advice: "Get out of there," they said. "If you care about you and your daughter's health, you have to get out of there now." Within two days, they were gone. She has withheld her rent ever since.
"They said I had to give them two months notice. But they didn't give me two months notice when they put these things on my roof. They thought I was just paranoid and trying to get out of my rent, which is crazy talk."
Her case, though, is anything but crazy.
Testifying on her behalf is Magda Havas, a Trent University professor who focuses on the hazards of electromagnetic exposure. Ciandre emailed her after coming across her research online. Within two weeks, the professor was in her apartment. "Her metre went off the scale," she recalls.
Yet when Industry Canada measured the electromagnetic radiation, they told her it fell within "safe" levels."I know my body said differently," she insists. "I'm not a hypochondriac. I've never been ill before."
Ciandre believes her massive exposure has now left her electrosensitive so she can no longer be near cordless or mobile telephones or Wi-Fi networks. Her only sanctuary has been a friend's basement where everything is unplugged at night and there are no wireless routers.
Before this happened to her, Ciandre admits she would have been skeptical as well. But she's since come to believe just because wireless technology is invisible, doesn't mean it's safe. "It's made to go through walls. Of course, it's going through people. Why wouldn't it be affecting us biologically?"
Read Mandel Wednesday through Saturday. michele.mandel@sunmedia.ca or 416-947-2231.
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Ottawa looks into safety of school Wi-Fi networks
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Canada/20100817/wifi-safety-100817/
The Canadian Press
Date: Tuesday Aug. 17, 2010 1:23 PM ET
TORONTO — Ontario Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky says the question of whether wireless Internet technology is safe in Ontario schools is in Ottawa's hands.
Dombrowsky says she is expecting an answer "within weeks" from the federal health minister, after sending a letter with parents complaints.
Some parents in central Ontario are urging their school board to remove Wi-Fi from schools, as they believe it may be making their children sick.
Speaking after an address to the annual meeting of the Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, Dombrowsky said her ministry has received complaints from the Simcoe area and the Peterborough area.
A resolution asking for teachers to lobby their district school boards to develop policies that prohibit the use of Wi-Fi within schools is expected to be voted on later today or early tomorrow.
Dombrowsky said understanding and ensuring that Wi-Fi technology is safe is Health Canada's responsibility.
She indicated to the Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq, that this is an important issue she hopes will be addressed as soon as possible, Dombrowsky said.
She said she contacted the federal minister of health because the information presented from families conflicts with information from Health Canada and the World Health organization.
Kevin Byrne:
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These additional comments submitted by Blake Levitt regarding the previously published article below.
August 16, 2010. Pick of the Week #6: Clinical & Hygienic Aspects of Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields.
The early research was taken very seriously in the US and in Russia. And then it was put in a room and the door was closed during the Cold War years. This entire area was considered a threat to national security, with shades of mind control lurking in some circles, including the microwaving of the US embassy in Moscow. There were several commissions set up to investigate, including The Tri-Service Commission with reps from the Us Air Force, Army & Navy. We see the reverberations still today.
The entire thermal v. non-thermal is, and always was, a ruse and everyone knew it. The construct for that originated with the Germans during WW2, using the microwave bands to cook food in submarines that needed to stay submerged for long periods of time. Some of those scientists were brought to America after the war under Project Paper Clip -- and are still alive like Hermann Schwann who wrote the first thermal exposure standards for humans. (I wrote about it very briefly in my first book...)
Had cell phone technology never come along, the entire issue would have remained on backburners, of interest to people near broadcast towers and others made ill from emerging technologies like computers back in their day. When I got my first cell tower call in the late 1980's, early 1990's, and figured out that someone was beginning to buildout a civilian-based wireless phone system, it was obvious to anyone who knew the history of this that it meant trouble.
When the Telecom Act preempted local zoning rights in 1996, I said in lectures & writing that "The companies are nuts -- every town in the country is going to know the difference between a thermal and non-thermal effect, that the entire curtain will eventually be pulled back." (And now look at how very many more people know about this today -- including this list.) At the time the TCA was being debated on the floor of the US Senate, there were still plenty of politicians who knew that the safety issues had never been settled re: these exposures.
A bipartisan amendment that was introduced to remove Section 704's preemptive language for environmental effects and it lost by only 4 votes. People knew. They always have. It just never got enough traction because:
1. Most information was too technical.
2. The benefits of using microwaves in military, medical, and civilian applications were seen as outweighing risks.
There was money to be made and information to be had... Today there is a new spin -- that medical advances can undo any damage as a way of having our cake & eating it too.
There were some problems between the American and Russian approaches to research that's kept the combined body of work from ever completely coming together. The reverberations of that are also still felt today...
Keep in mind the Louis Slesin first published Microwave News in 1983 (!), and there was plenty to write about by then.
And for a good history of this, see The Microwave Debate by Nicholas Steneck (MIT Press,.1984) and Paul Brodeur's The Zapping of America (Norton, 1977) if they can still be found. It was known -- it just never got strong enough legs until 4 billion people had cell phones.
Blake Levitt
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Thought you might be interested in this article "Does Wi-Fi make you sick?" from HealthZone.ca
Please visit link:
http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/848739--does-wi-fi-make-you-sick
Mike
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Parents fear school Wi-Fi makes kids sick
CTV.ca News
A group of parents in southern Ontario is blaming school wireless Internet networks for a slew of symptoms reportedly plaguing young children
See the CTV video at -
Robert R
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Radiated by mobile phone mast
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqZz-wSqOtY
Robert R
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Adam McDowell,
National Post ·
Dear Mr. McDowell
In your story about Wi Fi in schools:
Monday, Aug. 16, 2010, you have quoted Dr Krewski -
Dr. Krewski said "literally thousands" of academic papers have indicated wireless technology is safe, although further study into some biological effects is warranted.
Although I have seen a great deal of information that shows significant harm caused by microwave radiation and I am aware of research that has failed to find effects (mostly industry sponsored research), I am not aware of any research that states that microwave radiation is safe.
Would you ask Dr. Krewski to produce the most relevant information which proves without doubt that microwave radiation is safe and does not cause significant biological effects to humans, animals, birds and the environment?
If Dr. Krewski fails to provide the actual proof that microwave radiation is completely safe, would you please advise your readers that their health and safety is at risk from wireless devices?
These two links -
http://www.feb.se/EMFguru/EMF/genotoxic/Genotoxic-EMR-paper.htm
and
and the information provided within those web sites, should be able to persuade you that Dr. Krewski is ignoring the harm caused by microwave radiation and is probably providing you and your readers with false information. An investigation of his background, his funding and his ties to the wireless industry should reveal a story that your readers will be interested in.
The two attached documents indicate harm that can be caused by microwave radiation.
Yours sincerely
Martin Weatherall
Co Director WEEP
Web site www.weepinitiative.org e-mail contactweep@weepinitiative.org
To sign up for WEEP News: newssignup@weepinitiative.org (provide name and e-mail address)
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