- Dear Sir, Madam, Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
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- For your information.
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- Best regards,
Klaus Rudolph
Citizens' Initiative Omega
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- The following article from the US environmental magazine
Latitudes bears a remarkable similarity to the situation faced by farmers
in Ouruhia New Zealand who live near transmitter towers. See the Ouruhia
web site at: http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/ouruhia/
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- The Dark Side Of Wireless Technology
- By Sheila Rogers
Editor of Latitudes
2-16-3
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- This account, obtained by interviewing the mother of
this family, has all the makings of a documentary. The name of the cell
phone company and the source is withheld while the family looks for a lawyer
willing to take the case (see note).
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- Meredith and her husband were dairy farmers on over 150
acres of rolling green land that had been passed down for generations.
They had grown to love the simple lifestyle that came with hard work, fresh
air, and farming in the Midwest. They and their four children enjoyed good
health and happy days.
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- When the cell phone tower was erected twelve years ago
they weren't too concerned, though they were certainly not pleased that
it was just over the property line on the adjoining land and only 800 feet
from their house. It was an eyesore, but they were assured it was perfectly
safe. "It's like a 100-watt light bulb," the company often told
people.
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- "We were naïve," says Meredith. "Over
the next few months, we watched as our herd that grazed near the tower
became emaciated and agitated-a change from their normally fat and contented
state. The whole herd developed rough coats. The vet was puzzled, but blood
work produced no answers."
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- MEANWHILE, WITHIN SIX MONTHS the parents noticed changes
in their children. There were skin rashes-unusual, raised "hot spots."
They had recurrent kidney infections. The youngest two kids became dramatically
hyperactive, and the older ones complained of foggy thinking and concentration
problems. Then sleep disturbances crept in. Meredith, in her early thirties,
began to develop joint problems. "Everyone's symptoms were worse,"
she explained, "on foggy or rainy days. I since learned this was because
the moisture increases the electrical conductivity. There were times when
my preschool child would literally spin in circles." One day she discovered
that their tower had become the "hub" for the entire state. "We
buried cows that winter," she recalls. Searching for solutions and
options, they tracked down a researcher at the Environmental Protection
Agency, who gave her the first useful advice they'd had. He told her that
as a government official he should reassure her that they were safe. But
with his "citizen cap" on, he had to say that they should move
immediately.
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- WITH HOPES OF RETURNING ONE day, they sold the herd but
had someone keep the heifers for them. Within two to three months of moving
to an electrically clean area in upper Michigan, health problems began
to subside. After a year, they all were feeling strong once more. The only
problem was that their farm was unattended, they were out of money, and
they desperately needed to farm again.
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- About this time, they spoke with new owners of the cell
phone company. The staff expressed disdain for flagrant safety lapses of
the previous tower owners. The family was assured that if they returned,
everything would now be fine. Excited at the news, they went back to their
farm.
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- It was not long before symptoms returned. The children
lost weight and the girls began to lose hair. Meredith was pregnant but
not gaining weight. That son was unfortunately born with anomalies-birth
defects that fit no particular syndrome. Neighbors also had complaints;
the suicide rate increased in town, and unusual seizures were reported.
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- Now, some calves were born with front legs shorter than
the back and with deformed hooves; some had large tumors-one tumor was
three feet in diameter and the calf could not be delivered alive, even
with a C-section. And the tumors were not typical to the species.
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- THEY HAD BEEN BACK FOR THREE years when a pediatrician
saw the son's birth defects, heard the story, and told them to leave town.
Why had they stayed so long? "We had to make a living. And somehow,
when it's gradually happening, you're in denial-you don't see it for what
it is," Meredith said.
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- They managed to buy a farm in a safe area and start anew.
"My husband insisted we take the cows with us, and within three days
they were chewing their cuds-something they hadn't done for years."
The young boy, though, remains electrically sensitive and hyperactive.
Meredith says that if he is within two and a half miles of a tower he develops
flushed skin. Computer terminals and fluorescent lights in stores increase
symptoms. He has food sensitivities, and damp weather continues to affect
him.
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- And the land-what happened to the farm? Meredith sighs.
"It just sits there. Empty. Selling the farm has not been considered.
Should we let this happen to someone else?" End
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- Message from Don Maisch (excerpt)
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- and from the same informant:
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- Electrical Sensitivity
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- By Arthur Firstenberg and Susan Molloy
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- The 750,000-watt Doppler weather radar at Fort Dix, New
Jersey, overlooks the Township of Brick. Why is that of interest to anyone
but meteorologists? It's not, except that eight out of every 1000 children
born in Brick since the radar station was built in 1994 are autistic.
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- The Brick Township Autism Investigation (1), conducted
in 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, uncovered 60
cases of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among children aged three through
ten in this town of 77,000 residents. As in much of the rest of the world,
autism is increasing here. But the prevalence of both ASD and classic autism
in Brick Township were found to be dramatically higher than normal in the
3-to-5-year-old age group, i.e., those born since 1994.
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- Forward-thinking educators and parents have done a good
job in recent years of tackling the difficult issues involved in protecting
sensitive children from chemical contaminants, dyes, preservatives, and
allergens in their food, medications, classrooms, and homes. However, an
additional burden has been overlooked and even ridiculed as untenable as
a factor in many children's profound neurological and behavioral problems.
Some readers may react with disbelief to our suggestion that the Fort Dix
Doppler might qualify for a place on the "radar screen" of those
scientists who are puzzled by the local epidemic of autism. (2)
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- The authors of this article are adults who are made extremely
sick, sometimes incapacitated, from exposure to "normal" amounts
of electromagnetic energy. We've seen some children respond as we do, as
their well-meaning parents and teachers equip them with newer, faster,
more powerful "safety" and communication devices, oblivious to
the potential consequences for their children's health and development.
We're not oblivious to these consequences because we ourselves respond
directly and immediately, with debilitating pain, confusion, and neurological
symptoms, to cell phones, cordless phones, computers, televisions, and
other normal elements of today's home, work and school environments. And
we are in increasingly good company.
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- Gro Harlem Brundtland is director-general of the World
Health Organization. A medical doctor with a master's degree in public
health, as well as former prime minister of Norway, she has recently been
speaking in public about her own sensitivity to computers, cordless phones
and cell phones. Not only has she warned parents against allowing their
children to use cell phones or microwave ovens, but she said that she herself
has become so sensitive to the radiation that she does not allow anyone
to enter her office with a cell phone turned on. "If you enter my
office, you are invited by me. No one who is invited would like to give
me headaches," she said at a news conference in Oslo on July 1, 2002,
where she was attending an international conference on cancer.
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- Awakening to the potential of electricity to affect children's
health and development can be initially disheartening, because electromagnetic
pollution is so inescapable, and its sources so often are "conveniences"
for which we've eagerly expended considerable resources. It can also be
empowering, because it gives parents and practitioners an additional tool
and offers a new range of potential factors that may be influencing seemingly
intractable health or behavior problems.
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- Both of us went to school and were graduated from college
before personal computers, cell phones, the Internet, and everything that
goes along with them even existed. As environmentally sensitive people,
we feel lucky to have grown up before today's conditions became the norm.
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- What Can We Do? Computers in the classroom are practically
unquestioned now, and that is fine for the durable. However, our society
should provide computer-free classrooms for those vulnerable children for
whom this is a necessary and effective accommodation. In schools where
wireless computers-or regular computers with wireless keyboards/mice-are
installed, even a computer-free classroom will not be an effective intervention
for a child whose Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder is triggered or exacerbated by electromagnetic radiation.
This is because the microwave frequencies used by these technologies, identical
to the frequencies used in a microwave oven, pass through walls and do
not respect the boundaries of classrooms.
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- What we suggest runs counter to the prevailing educational
trend, which is to throw more and more computer-enabled devices at physically
and developmentally disabled children in an effort to improve their functioning,
without any consideration of the potential effects of the extra radiation
on their developing nervous systems.
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- When adult populations were sampled within the last year
for the prevalence of electrical sensitivity, estimates by researchers
varied from 1.5% (Stockholm, Sweden) to 3.3% (state of California) to 7%
(Marin County, California) of the population. One patient group in Germany
puts the number as high as 15% of the German population. Nobody knows exactly,
because this is an isolating, disabling, and ridiculed problem that is
still in the public health "closet," along with most of its victims.
Children are the most vulnerable segment of the population. They are also
the most unaware of the potential effects of this invisible and largely
unacknowledged pollutant coming from equipment that is so fervently sought
by their peers and esteemed by their parents and teachers.
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- Medical facilities, also, are sites of electronics' proliferation.
The growing field of medical telemetry uses wireless technology to monitor
the vital signs of hospital patients. But also, in hospitals, nursing homes,
day care and elder care facilities, mental health institutions and group
homes, remote monitoring of patients is in increasing use, not only for
medical purposes, but simply to cut back on personnel costs.
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- New automobiles have much larger electromagnetic fields
than they had ten or twenty years ago. This is due to multiple computer-controlled
operating systems, GPS satellite-tracking devices, digital dashboard displays,
and, commonly, a cell phone constantly charging in the car.
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- The situation is not hopeless. At home, every parent
can easily do the following experiment: tonight, before your family goes
to bed, unplug all of these items you may have in your home: the TV, the
computer, the base unit of the cordless phone, the entertainment center,
and the baby monitor. Notice the quality of everyone's sleep, how you feel
in the morning on awakening, and note whether you and your child seem calmer.
Appliances should be completely unplugged, not just turned off at a surge
protector (which itself may be a source of electromagnetic fields).
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- If your child has a motorized wheelchair, don't plug
it in overnight next to his or her bed. Often these children are especially
vulnerable as they may already have epilepsy, cerebral palsy, or other
mobility-impairing conditions. Electric floor or ceiling heaters, fluorescent
lights, dimmer switches, and electronic security systems can all produce
problematic electromagnetic fields. Finding all the sources and eliminating
or avoiding them requires patience and may be time-consuming but is not
necessarily difficult or expensive. Your basic measuring tools are a $40
magnetic field meter, or "gaussmeter," and a cheap (poorer quality
is better for this purpose) battery-operated AM radio. When the gaussmeter
reads 0.2 milligauss or less, and the radio, when tuned between stations,
remains silent (does not buzz or give loud static), you have a relatively
calm environment-especially important in the sleeping area. These two measuring
devices will not detect the very high frequency radiation produced by cordless
phones, wireless computers, baby monitors, remote controls for appliances,
radio-controlled toys, and other wireless equipment. We recommend eliminating
wireless technology from the environment altogether.
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- Many homes will have ambient magnetic fields that cannot
be reduced to 0.2 milligauss because of factors outside your control, most
commonly nearby power lines and transformers. Neighbors' activities may
also be a factor. But reducing exposures to the extent possible within
the home may still have a significant effect, especially on neurological
or behavioral problems in developing children. Exposures outside our own
control, such as from the street, a radar station or cell tower, at school,
or in hospitals and medical facilities, can be dealt with effectively only
on a societal level. We have a long way to go before these problems are
given the serious attention they deserve.
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- Ironically, some of our societal problems, such as school
violence and kidnappings of children-even before 9/11 added to our worries-are
being used as reasons to attach more cell phones to our kids for their
safety and our peace of mind. But these very devices, and the millions
of towers and antennas that make their use possible, expose all of us to
a level of radiation that we know (from studies and painful firsthand experience)
can contribute to the anxiety, depression, irritability, impulsivity, confusion,
and general unrest that feed the very concerns which led to the need for
all those cell phones in the first place. This can begin to change as more
of us turn them off and experience the difference.
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- FOOTNOTES: 1. Bertrand, J. et al., Prevalence of Autism
in a United States Population: The Brick Township, New Jersey Investigation,
Pediatrics 108:1155-1161 (2001). 2. The Doppler appears to be the latest
addition to a number of radar facilities in the area. McGuire Air Force
Base, Fort Dix Military Reservation, and Lakehurst Naval Air Warfare Center
are all located west of Brick. Military jets from those bases, equipped
with powerful radars of their own, also fly over Brick on their way out
to sea.
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- SUGGESTED READING: George Carlo, Cell Phones: Invisible
Hazards in the Wireless Age, Carroll & Graf, New York, 2001. Jane M.
Healy, Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect Our Children's Minds-and
What We Can Do About It, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998. B. Blake
Levit, ed., Cell Towers: Wireless Convenience? Or Environmental Hazard?,
New Century Publishing, Sheffield, MA, 2000. Lucinda Grant, The Electrical
Sensitivity Handbook, Weldon Publishing, Prescott, AZ, 1995. Robert O.
Becker and Gary Selden, The Body Electric: Electro-magnetism and the Foundation
of Life, William Morrow, New York, 1985. ** Electromagnetic field (EMF)
meters may be obtained from Alpha Lab, 1280 South 300 West, Salt Lake City,
UT 84101, (800)-769-3754 Less EMF, Inc., 26 Valley View Lane, Ghent, NY
12075, (888) LESS-EMF.
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- About the authors: Arthur Firstenberg is founder and
director of the Cellular Phone Taskforce, a nonprofit organization that
disseminates information about electromagnetic radiation and advocates
for electrically sensitive people. He is editor of the Taskforce's publication,
No Place to Hide, and the author of Microwaving Our Planet: The Environmental
Impact of the Wireless Revolution. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from
Cornell University in 1971 with a B.A. in mathematics, he went to medical
school from 1978 to 1982. Injury by x-ray overdose cut short his career.
Firstenberg explains that after receiving about 50 diagnostic x-rays during
extensive dental work, he became sensitive to high-powered equipment in
the hospitals where he worked. "I could literally feel the radiation
from the equipment; it made me weak and dizzy, but I kept working. After
several months I collapsed. I was 31 and no one knew the cause of my illness.
I was bedridden for about three months and at first I was not sure if I
would survive."
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- Firstenberg's symptoms included a slow heartbeat, chest
pain, extreme shortness of breath on exertion, and weight loss. By reading
Eastern European literature on the subject, he eventually discovered that
he had the symptoms of radio wave sickness. He later learned that any type
of electromagnetic field may provoke similar illness in sensitive people,
which commonly manifests with nausea, dizziness, headache, irritability,
insomnia, and difficulty with memory and concentration. He also gradually
became chemically hypersensitive. His therapeutic approach is strict avoidance.
At home, he has no computer, no television, no wireless equipment, no microwave,
and uses only incandescent lighting. He moved cross-country to Mendocino,
California which has minimal electrical pollution, and he is symptom-free
as long as he avoids exposure.
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- As is often the case in advocacy organizations, Firstenberg's
personal experience led him to study the condition that plagued him. He
is now an international spokesperson and advisor on the subject of electrical
sensitivity (ES). He can be contacted by phone at (707) 937-3990 or mail:
P.O. Box 1337, Mendocino, CA 95460.
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- Susan Molloy has an MA in disability policy and provides
referrals and troubleshooting for people with symptoms provoked by environmental
exposures. She is cofounder of the Environmental Health Network (EHN) of
California and edited EHN's newsletter for 11 years. She served as chair
of the Independent Living Council in Arizona and works at New Horizons
Independent Living Center in Prescott Valley. She works from home due to
her inability to withstand electromagnetic exposure, and uses a custom-shielded
computer provided by Arizona Rehabilitation Services Administration. Molloy
has a history of allergies since childhood and was hospitalized with chemical
sensitivities at age 31. ES symptoms emerged shortly after this. "When
I go under power lines or fluorescent lights it feels like a blow to the
top of my head," she explains. Asked if she could run errands, Molloy
explains, "I can go into stores and other buildings. It's getting
back out that's the problem. I tend to lose coordination and would often
be stumbling if I didn't use a wheelchair. I get disoriented and my speech
is also affected." Professional-grade ear protectors help soften the
impact of auditory hypersensitivity to motor noises. She feels that living
in the desert, where she keeps appliances to a minimum, has given her more
stamina.
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- "I'd like to think that Arthur and I are just special
cases, that people can stand back and distance themselves from our difficulties.
I'd like to think that others won't suffer similar problems. But we know
better. The numbers are growing, and no one is listening." She can
be reached at (928) 536-4625 or susanm@cybertrails.com.
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- --------
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- Comment
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- From Robert Champion
kiateora@yahoo.com
2-17-3
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- Dear Jeff,
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- Those who were interested in "The Dark Side of Cellphone
Technology" should be interested in this. It is a method of locating
the sources of radiation which cause the effects described in the article.
It is extremely inexpensive to make and simple to use. It is basically
a dipole antenna which appears to magnify the effect of radio frequency
radiation on nerve and muscle function in such a way that the source can
be detected by the unpleasant side effects.
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- I have used this to identify offending sources both inside
the house, as well as distant sources. It does seem that one must be sensitive
to this radiation in the first place. In other words, a person suffering
from the electrical sensitivity syndrome can use this to identify sources.
Someone who is not suffering from it will not find anything.
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- To make this antenna: get a piece of cardboard about
12 to 18 inches square. Make a hole in the center anywhere from 1/8 to
1/2 inch in diameter. Over this place a layer of aluminum foil on both
sides. The hole should be left open.
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- It is used by sighting through the hole at objects in
the house. When an offending source comes into view it will cause a disagreable
sensation in the eye, causing it to blink involuntarily. A warning is that
if there is also a source coming from about 180 degrees, the reflection
will confuse things. This can be reduced by holding the square obliquely
or canted so that the reflection does not come directly back.
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- In my case most of the sources I have identified, by
a strange coincidence, line up exactly with cellular towers. By using the
smaller aperture of about 1/8 inch a source can be pinpointed to within
a few degrees of compass bearing. There is a database of antenna towers
maintained by the Federal Communications Commission, at wireless.fcc.gov/antenna.
It allows search by latitude and longitude, so it is easy to locate all
the towers within a specified radius. Using this, with a compass and a
local map I have confirmed that at least a dozen sources I detect within
my house are actually antenna towers in my area. To the degree that I have
driven around verifying them, they seem all to have cellular antenna arrays
mounted on them.
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- Regards, Robert Champion
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