Subject: Noe Valley Families, San Francisco (fwd)
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 053750 -0600 (CST)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@mail.llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------
Hi everybody:
This message forwards a most interesting letter. Please take note
of the writer's reference to Dr. Henry Lai and his views on this subject.
Dr. Lai made an important presentation at the San Diego Meeting. He has
been doing some of the most important work recently on the EMF hazard.
(It is still my intention to get back to a discussion of the San Diego
meeting, but I have been reluctant to disturb the trend of thought that
is ongoing on the "frequency" issue.... When we get into the San Diego
meeting we will talking more about the (TWA) time-weighted-average issue.)
Our Australian correspondent, Stewart Fist, is also featured here....
Cheerio.......
Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org..............http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html
................................It is better to light a single candle ...
than to curse the darkness...............................................
KNOW ANYBODY WE SHOULD ADD TO THIS LIST?????????
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 22:33:21 +0000
From: Christopher Beaver
To: "Roy L. Beavers"
Subject: Noe Valley Families, San Francisco
>From one Beaver to another...
I want to send along one brief item with a much larger story behind it.
After four months of activisim and a weekly picket line that continued
for nine weeks, our group, Noe Valley Families Against the Antennas
(from the name of our neighborhood in San Francisco), has caused PacBell
and Cellular One to drop plans to install six cellular phone antennas in
the steeple of our neighborhood Presbyterian church. We were active on
every front we could muster including the gathering of nine hundred
signatures opposing installation of the antennas.
(It turns out that both PacBell and Cellular One are owned by the same
conglomerate, SBC, formerly Southwestern Bell, a caring,
community-oriented company — not my sarcasm, the words of PacBell — that
purchased PacBell and immediately closed out more than a thousand jobs
here in San Francisco.)
In terms of developing the scientific basis for our opposition we drew
heavily on the work of Neil Cherry in New Zealand (and are deeply
indebted to Stewart Fist for connecting us with Dr. Cherry), Dr. Henry
Lai at the University of Washington, and Dr. Sianette Kwee in Denmark
(Dr. Kwee’s brief is a crucial support for Mohamed Al Fayed’s court
case).
We are in the midst of shifting our focus to demanding a city-wide
telecommunication plan (we now have an interim plan that permits
violation of our basic zoning laws and installation of cellular phone
antennas particularly on churches, schools, and hospitals, believe that
or not) as well as laying the research groundwork to oppose the
up-coming increase in exposures due to the increased transmission needs
by digital television. The city-wide plan would delve into the banned
issues of health and safety and until such a plan is instituted would
presumably lead to controls prohibiting further cellular phone antennas
until hearings and environmental impact statements have been completed.
Our argument to our board of supervisors is that we don’t care what the
federal government says about preventing our control regarding the
antennas. We want the board to represent us and foster a lawsuit if
necessary to overturn the federal government’s ban on our ability to
regulate the chaotic and dangerous installation of these antennas.
One issue that caught my eye in your forum recently has been whether or
not one should make a distinction between electromagnetic fields (power
lines, etc.) and electromagnetic radiation (cell phone towers, etc.) I
have been told by Dr. Henry Lai that he is beginning to believe that
there is no distinction. This is an argument used by the electrical and
telecommunication industries to separate bodies of research. Dr. Lai is
beginning to believe that there may be a difference in quantity of
effects along the spectrum but not of quality.
I’m a lay-person, a film producer/director by trade, but my sense of the
available research supports Dr. Lai’s evolving belief. He explained the
matter to me in terms of visible light. Red light and green light are
different in color but they are both visible light.
I’m reminded of research for a film I co-produced and co-directed
entitled Dark Circle. We discovered that what the nuclear power industry
called “radioactive waste” was also what the nuclear weapons industry
called the raw material for nuclear weapons since it contained
plutonium. Prior to our film, among other sources, the nuclear power
industry and weapons industry wanted to distinguish nuclear reactors
that produced electricity and radioactive waste from nuclear reactors
that produced “weapons-grade plutonium.”
I’m not arguing that what is true in the case of a false distinction
made regarding plutonium proves that a false distinction is being made
among the frequencies of the non-ionizing radiation spectrum. But it
would be very handy for the electrical industry and telecommunication
industry if research into the effects of
all electromagnetic exposures could be separated frequency by
frequency...and symmetrically un-handy if the research picture were more
unified.
A few days ago in one of your forwarded e-mails, Stewart Fist argued
that the distinction among frequencies is not meaningful. He has a
superb record in my book of understanding the issues involved and being
able to articulate his beliefs. I would tend to accept the argument of
Fist and Lai.
I’m constantly amazed that scientists can become terrifically excited by
the observation of new phenomena in the heavens (one major sub-genre on
public television) but completely in denial when effects of
electromagnetic exposures appear despite the lack of “accepted”
biological theory. Or perhaps in the latter case, it’s only industry
apologists who are discombobulated by the shock of the new.
In any case, it’s quite clear that any and all research done with
integrity in the area of electromagnetic exposures is “cutting edge,”
and has the power to reveal deeper understandings of how our bodies
function — and equally obvious how little we know.
By way of demonstration of how little we know and I’m sure all
participants in your forum have similar stories or have heard similar
stories: San Francisco currently has one of the highest rates of breast
cancer in the world (best scientific guess: a near miraculous rate of
earlier detection — a form of dismissal by flattery since it reveals San
Franciscans as being so well-educated and hip to self-health); and an
unexplained cluster of childhood leukemia in our neighborhood that came
and went over the span of several years (best scientific guess: a
statistical fluke). If that monolith “medical science” couldn’t protect
us in either instance, one wonders how meaningful any of our efforts at
making distinctions might be.
It’s an amazing experience to have been dragged under threat of six
cellular antennas to be installed one hundred and fifty feet from my
third floor apartment into neighborhood activism. After years of reading
about people such as Rachel Carson and years of making films on issues
and places such as the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant and Diablo
Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, suddenly I was catapulted into a personal
test case involving lessons in American civics, in science, in the
philosophy of science, the sociology of science and, in our case, the
relationship between a neighborhood and a church. I can’t quite say it
has been a privilege to become involved but it has certainly been
intriguing.
I remember a friend of mine, a photographer and environmental activist
who died of AIDS. I once asked him what he understood to be the lesson
he had learned from life — rightly or wrongly, one often imposes such
questions on those facing terminal illnesses. He said that the answer he
found was to find something outside oneself that was in fact oneself and
devote yourself to that. He worked to preserve open space in the hills
east of San Francisco Bay.
And I think, that’s what I’m trying to say about my involvement with
trying to stop the installation of the antennas. There is so much in
this issue that is meaningful for me. In the midst of the anxiety and
stress over the antennas, and the time taken away from other parts of my
work, that this quality of meaning and understanding has been my
compensation. P.S. the best part of getting active has been the
opportunity to meet my neighbors...one must take the compensation for
all the hours demanded wherever it becomes available. But the meeting of
the neighbors, I don’t begrudge that for an instant.
I went from someone who refused to help my deeply concerned partner,
Judy Irving, replace our electrical light wall dimmers that discharge
vast amounts of electromagnetic energy as they do their moody work to
someone who views cellular phone ads the same way I view cigarette ads
— the appeal is the same, so oral, so hand-preoccupied, the second-hand
effects so charming: think of Scully and Muldar on the X-Files, instead
of sharing a cigarette, they share a call.) That’s quite a journey in
the space of four months.
I apologize for rambling but I am still in the euphoria and
disorientation of having won a victory...not a complete victory over the
telecommunication onslaught, but a victory nonetheless..and your forum
is a place where people listen to such tales.
I have taken solace from your postings over the past few weeks and would
like to thank you for that as well. How our technology tears us apart
and brings us together. I close in solidarity with all those who oppose
construction and operation of cellular phone towers in their
neighborhoods.
Sincerely. Christopher Beaver
.-
Archive provided courtesy of WaveGuide, http://www.wave-guide.org
Reprinted with permission of Roy Beavers, http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html