Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution News
15 January 2011
Attached is a Cell Tower Manual on how to "fight" a cell tower in your neighbourhood, based on the current challenge ongoing in Port Coquitlam. This has been put together by David Werthman, retired Director of Regulatory Affairs for Manitoba Telephone. Hope it provides helpful information and ideas on how to meet this challenge in other areas. It is also on our website under Cell Towers section.
Una St Clair-Moniz
Executive Director
Citizens for Safe Technology Society
www.citizensforsafetechnology.org
January 6, 2011
Dear Minister Aglukkaq,
I am writing in response to your letter dated December 23, 2010. How you can have the gall to send such a letter to a concerned parent is beyond comprehension. I have to wonder: did you read my letter at all?
You tell me that Health Canada uses Safety Code 6 as their safety standard. Was it not clear from my letter that I already knew that? Safety Code 6 is obsolete and irrelevant as it does not take into account known non-thermal biological effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation (EMR).
You tell me that "Parents should consult their health practitioner to discuss any health concerns." Did you perhaps fail to notice, as stated in my letter, that I am a health practitioner? The diagnosis of microwave sickness was not made lightly. Both repeated visits to our pediatrician and consults at Children's Hospital have determined no cause for our daughter's extreme headaches, dizziness, heart palpitations, anxiety and muscle pain in the school building. In addition, all the children sensitive to Wi-Fi across the country are experiencing identical symptoms. This cannot be coincidence.
As for telling me that "there is a lack of scientific evidence linking these symptoms to the presence of Wi-Fi", you know as well as I do that no studies have been done to date specifically examining health concerns to children from EMR, nor have any studies been done examining low-level, long-term microwave radiation exposure. Children are not mini adults. They are physically more susceptible to microwave radiation than adults due to a thinner skull, a greater quantity of fluid surrounding the brain and special considerations such as rapid cell division as their bodies develop and grow. Safety standards based on adults cannot be extrapolated onto children. Additionally, there is a large body of scientific, peer-reviewed, published research confirming DNA breakage, blood-brain barrier permeability and build up of ornithine decarboxylase (a tumour-promoting compound) in cells caused by non-ionizing, non-thermal EMR at levels well below the current allowable level as well as research showing that children's Specific Absorption Rate of EMR is higher than that for adults.
Your own government's Standing Committee on Health has recommended that more research be done on long term effects of EMR, that an official reporting agency for microwave sickness symptoms be established, that Electrohypersensitivity be investigated and that an independent academic society reexamine all research on EMR as Health Canada's objectivity appears to be compromised.
Beth Pieterson of Health Canada has stated that specific research cannot be done on children because of agreed upon international laws banning experimentation on children. However, the 1999 Royal Society report to Health Canada confirmed that the long-term effects of non-thermal, non-ionizing radiation were unknown and suggested that the exposed population be observed over a number of years to document health effects. This is the definition of human biological experimentation. There are indeed both Canadian and International laws concerning human experimentation, especially with regard to informed consent on behalf of children. While children are being irradiated daily at school without informed consent by their parents, Canada is contravening the Nuremberg Code, the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of a Child.
We do not consent to have our children be unwilling participants in the largest human experiment ever to be undertaken. Unfortunately, this also excludes the possibility of our children attending public school and creates many challenges for our family as we have no choice but to home school them until such time as the school environment can once more be deemed safe.
You know as well as I do that European countries are reducing their children's exposure to EMR in large part due to Swisscom's patent application in which there is admission of damage to DNA from Wi-Fi beacon signal radiation. You know as well as I do that the insurance industry will no longer insure the telecommunications industry because independent, non-industry funded researchers advised the insurers that the liability costs due to the epidemic of brain tumours expected between 2020 and 2030 would be so large that the insurance industry could face bankruptcy like it did with asbestos lawsuits. You know as well as I do that Health Canada is lobbied by the telecommunications industry. This is appalling. How can you allow the safety of this nation's children to fall into the hands of industry?
The situation as it stands resembles closely the plight of people against the tobacco industry:
-Both EMR and tobacco smoke are air pollutants.
-The tobacco industry backed up their claims of safety with "gold standard scientific research".
-Second-hand EMR, like second-hand smoke is presently unavoidable (until restrictions are put in place).
-Although people under 19 were eventually not allowed to purchase or use tobacco products, tobacco companies continued to advertise to children for many years. You have to be an adult to be able to choose to use carcinogenic tobacco, but children are not only allowed to expose themselves to potentially carcinogenic EMR, they are bombarded with it every day at school even if they don't want to use it.
-Smoking also used to be viewed as "cool", just as wireless devices and cell phones are now seen by so many in our society.
-Both the tobacco industry and the telecommunications industry have large enough resources to make standing up against them an extremely difficult task.
Will we learn from the lesson we were already taught by our trials with big tobacco, or will we simply repeat it, and irreversibly damage young children in the process?
The response to the written concerns of parents such as myself by Health Canada, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Health, the Prime Minister and any other political figure we try to get a straight answer from seems to be to play "hot potato" with our letters. For instance, if we send a letter to the Minister of Education, she advises us that we should be writing to the Minister of Health and vice versa. This tactic is appalling and intolerable.
Your vague assurances of safety are inadequate and unacceptable. I found your letter both dismissive of the issue and insulting to my intelligence. With all due respect, you are failing utterly in your responsibility to protect the health of Canadians, especially young children. Please be so kind as not to send me a meaningless form letter as your next correspondence.
Sincerely,
Una St Clair-Moniz
P.S. I have taken the liberty of sending a copy of this letter to the Prime Minister, Margaret MacDiarmid Minister of Education and Perry Kendall BC Chief Medical Officer as well.
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Dear Prime Minister Harper,
I am writing in response to the letter I received from your Executive Correspondence Officer, L.A. Lavell.
While I realize that the democratic process must follow the correct channels, I am writing to you directly because so far concerned parents such as myself are not having our concerns taken seriously by the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education, Health Canada or Industry Canada. I would appreciate if this letter not be passed on unless it is into your, the Prime Minister's, hand.
Your appointed officials are utterly failing to protect Canadians from dangerous, untested technology. Beaurocratic red tape and stall tactics are inappropriate when the health and possibly lives of the most vulnerable members of our society are at stake. It is shameful.
Will your legacy as Prime Minister be that during your leadership you allowed irreversible damage to the health of the children under your care to occur?
It is imperative that the Canadian Government adopt the Precautionary Principle with regards to non-thermal, non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation from cell phone base stations, Wi-Fi and other wireless radiation emitting devices immediately. I humbly request that you issue a precautionary statement to schools to return to hard-wired systems until wireless technology can be proven 100% safe to children.
I have included a copy of the letter I am sending to Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health, for your perusal. I would very much appreciate your attention in this matter. Our children are the future of this country. If there is even the slightest risk of harm to their health from this largely untested technology, there can be no reason important enough to delay their assured protection.
I love my children more that anything in the world as I'm sure you love yours. Please do what is needed to protect them all. I wait in hopeful anticipation of your response.
Sincerely,
Una St Clair-Moniz
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Moratorium hearing draws out cell tower opponents
NorthShoreOfLongIsland.com
"No one wants to have a clear view of a cell phone tower..." Karejwa said. "Let's keep the character of the neighborhoods residential … and keep the cell ...
Health Effects Associated with Radio Frequency Radiation. Introduction .... ( radio frequency and microwave) electromagnetic radiation. ...
NASA Discovers Antimatter-Producing Thunderstorm
Researchers noted that the phenomenon of a storm producing antimatter has never been spotted before.
Thunderstorms have been known to produce sparks of light called terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGF), usually associated with lightning. Gamma rays are high-energy electromagnetic radiation or light.
"These signals are the first direct evidence that thunderstorms make antimatter particle beams," stated Michael Briggs, a member of Fermi's Gamma-ray Burst Monitor team at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, in a press release. Briggs presented his findings on Monday at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.
Antimatter comprises particles known as positrons with the same mass as electrons (matter) but with opposite charges and magnetic properties. When matter meets antimatter, the particles annihilate each other, releasing gamma ray flashes.
The Fermi telescope, which orbits in space, monitors gamma rays. Fermi was above Egypt when it detected gamma ray flashes that originated from a thunderstorm almost 3,000 miles way in Zambia.
"Even though Fermi couldn't see the storm, the spacecraft nevertheless was magnetically connected to it," said Joseph Dwyer at the Florida Institute of Technology, according to the release. "The TGF produced high-speed electrons and positrons, which then rode up Earth's magnetic field to strike the spacecraft."
Since 2008, the Fermi telescope has spotted 130 TGFs. The press release noted that up to 500 of these incidents may take place daily around the world, but they mostly go undetected and scientists do not yet understand the role of lightning in the process.
Wi-Fi issue aside, Internet access is bad for education
By RAY SAITZ
I 've been following the debate about installing Wi-Fi in our schools, and I have to admit that I had already decided a long time ago that it was a bad idea.
However, my decision was not based on concerns about the health effects of Wi-Fi exposure. I have the Wi-Fi transmitter for my home network sitting on a desk about 15 feet from my bed and I'm clinging to the hope that there will be no deleterious effects because of my daily exposure. My negative attitude to allowing students wireless Internet access in a school is based more on my concern about how technology is a double-edged sword. The Internet has proven to be a great research tool that has the potential to enhance everyone's understanding of nearly everything, but its swath can also lay waste to the essential concepts of education.Before you write me off as a Luddite or other anti-progress nut, I should give you some background. Until two years ago, when I took early retirement, I had been the teacher-librarian and "computer guy" in a small high school in this area. I tried to promote literacy and do librarian tasks but I also worked with a technician to maintain a school network of about 125 computers and was responsible for testing educational software and such. I maintained the school website and supervised a large computer lab in the school, which was in the library. I still remember consigning about 2,000 books to landfill and recycling to make room for those computers where shelving had once stood.
My function was to keep things working and to assist teachers in providing research assignments for their students. I once was enthusiastic about the promise of the Internet as the greatest educational tool since the blackboard. In reality, the Internet emerged as one of the most destructive influences ever devised. It proved to have the debilitating effect of lowering the performance of poor students and seriously distracting the attention of the best students. Research came to mean "Googling" and cutting and pasting. I spent too much of my time keeping students focused on the assignment instead of visiting Facebook, Auto Trader and eBay. I watched kids spend an entire 70-minute period trying to download music, watch Youtube videos or do anything except the assignment.
In time I installed software to monitor and control Internet use and tried to block access to anything except the media resources for which the school board had paid. At times I blocked Google and earned a reputation for being an Internet censor. Teachers and I spent our time in computer "research" periods rushing about helping some students and disciplining many others for wasting time.
Now there is the prospect of students bringing to class their own laptops, iPods and smart phones loaded with their own software. If you think this is a great idea, then you'll be surprised at the growing movement by many educational institutions to go against the trend and ban all Internet-enabled devices from classrooms, lecture halls, and libraries. An article by Timothy Snider, a history professor at Yale, that appeared in October ( http://tinyurl.com/2bznecf
) gives a first-hand account of the ravages wrought on traditional teaching by technology in the classroom. Faced with the growing realization that he could not compete against a roomful of tech devices offering endless distractions to students, he banned laptops and cell phones from his classes. Professor Snider believes that technology, instead of being a brave new educational tool, is actually turning out graduates and workers who are unable to concentrate.
Across the U.S. high-level universities have begun to ban laptops and electronic devices from classrooms ( http://tinyurl.com/yzgakoa),
teachers have asked for classrooms where Wi-Fi access is blocked, and research is indicating that laptop use may actually decrease grades. Before we rush into bringing Wi-Fi to the classroom, perhaps we should be thinking about how we are going to use it, and how to control it.
Ray Saitz, a Peterborough resident and teacher, writes a weekly column on the Internet. He can be reached at rayser3@cogeco.ca.
Cell tower still a topic of debate
By pregnancy solution
"People who chatted via cell for just 30 minutes a day for 10 years saw their risk of glioma (the type of brain tumor that killed Ted Kennedy) rise 40 percent ". I feel like we are all currently in an inadvertent giant human guinea pig ...
