Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution News
14 January 2011
iBurst takes down controversial Fourways tower
Dec 21st, 2010 News from South Africa
http://www.techcentral.co.za/iburst-takes-down-controversial-tower/20012/
Mystery surrounds a decision by iBurst to take down a controversial base station in Craigavon in Fourways, north of Sandton.
The company has been under intense pressure from some residents, who have wanted the tower removed as they claimed — among other things — that radiation from the mast was harming their health.
Craigavon resident Tracey-Lee Dorny, who has led the community's fight against iBurst, says she is relieved the tower has been removed.
However, she says she can't comment on the reasons it was taken down because she has signed a nondisclosure agreement with iBurst. She says only that there was an out-of-court settlement.
iBurst also isn't talking. The company's chief technical officer, Sasan Parvin, says he is not prepared to comment on the decision to dismantle the tower.
"This should be behind us now," Parvin tells TechCentral. "To raise it again is to the benefit of no one. This is not good for us, the industry, or anyone."
Dorny says neither she nor the Craigavon community made any payment to iBurst to have the base station removed. She won't say whether iBurst admitted any liability in terms of the out-of-court settlement.
Dorny moved out of her Craigavon home last year claiming the tower was damaging her family's health. "We are happy to be home, just in time for Christmas." — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
See also:
Migratory Songbirds Dying Needlessly at Communications Towers
Blake Levitt
EPSB Hears Concerns Over Wi-Fi
It was all in an effort to get the wireless Internet technology removed from public schools in the city.
But the board has said the transmitters are safe, and that the radio-frequency signals emitted from Wi-Fi technology is low enough to cause no harm to students.
However, parents say the risk is too great.
"The reality is we don't know what the effects are, nobody knows. If you want your little five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-old surrounded by this Wi-Fi technology for upwards of eight hours a day, that little child has no say in this decision." said Bill Fraser, a father of three who is against keeping Wi-Fi in his childrens' classrooms.
The question of Wi-Fi safety in classrooms in Edmonton was first presented to the board superintendent on Dec. 14 and since then parents' concerns have spread.
Board trustees will make a decision about whether Wi-Fi should be removed from Edmonton schools in two weeks.
About 120 schools in Edmonton are using Wi-Fi.
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Council approves controversial WiMAX tower atop church
Mountain View Voice
The tower for Clear Wire LLC would use new "WiMAX" technology to transmit data to WiFi-enabled computers and phones. The City Council disagreed, ...
http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=3820
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BBC Response to 'Debate Caption' Complaint
Dear Mrs O'Connor
Ref no: CAS-526467
Thanks for your e-mail.
I have forwarded your concerns to the Deputy Editor for BBC Parliament, Daniel Brittain-Catlin. He has accordingly asked me to relay the following response to you:
"Many thanks for your note. I have taken the opportunity to look at the information captions we used for the adjournment debate on mobile phones. We had a number of captions which relayed the findings of official bodies and research institutions and these are straightforwardly factual and I am happy with their use by the BBC. Such captions are supplementary to the debates and it is standard practice to provide this supporting information to viewers.
As you are well aware, concerns about the use of mobile phones by the under 16s formed a constant theme throughout the debate. Indeed your own constituency MP Bill Esterton's intervention was on this very point, and he made reference to you. Tom Watson raised concerns about his own children using mobile phones. Any viewer to BBC Parliament would not have failed to appreciate that concerns about the under 16s formed a very substantial part of the debate. Nevertheless, I think it was regrettable that we did not have a caption on the official guidance from the Department of Health on the use of mobile phones by under 16 year olds for inessential calls. This would certainly have been relevant to the debate and it would have been good to have included this line. I have drawn this to the attention of the researcher concerned. Although this was an omission, I am though satisfied that any viewer would have grasped the relevance of this subject.
I hope you will feel that I have answered your comments."
I hope this allays your concerns, thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Regards,
Liam Boyle
Complaints Advisor for News and Current Affairs
BBC Audience Services
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Nasa warns solar flares from 'huge space storm' will cause devastation
Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation "space storm", Nasa has warned.
Stock up on older light bulbs
Re: New ban on lightbulbs another freedom lost, Letters, Jan. 8.
As an electrically hypersensitive and mercury-poisoned person, I have been stocking up on incandescent and halogen screw-in lightbulbs for several years.
Fluorescent lights – tubes and CFLs – contain mercury, the most poisonous naturally-occurring neurotoxin after plutonium.
Breaking one CFL releases enough mercury to contaminate a lake and causes a HazMat situation in your home.
Health Canada-recommended CFL mercury cleanup includes cutting out the section of carpet it landed on because mercury will continue to vaporize from within carpet fibers for years.
The people who make and recycle fluorescent lights develop kidney failure, dementia, lung and brain cancer – the list goes on.
If that's not enough reason to avoid fluorescents, consider that they also cause 'dirty electricity', meaning that they actually raise your electricity bill by interfering with AC sine waves (see www.magdahavas.com for more information), and produce significant electromagnetic radiation from the ballast, regardless of whether it's turned off or on.
If you're as sensitive as I am, EMR becomes a major problem on top of the neurotoxicity of mercury itself.
My advice: stock up on all the incandescents or screw-in halogen bulbs if you want heat, light-emitting diode bulbs if you don't, and work to ban fluorescent bulbs.
Christel Martin
Nanaimo
