Subject: The "way" of politicians.....
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 1998 051107 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@llion.org>
To: emfguru@hotmail.com
--------------------------------------------------
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 1998 22:20:10 -0600
From: "Bill P. Curry"
To: "Roy L. Beavers"
Subject: Re: (Coghill) Re: (Curry) Re: "A Change in the Wind," EMFL-9-96 .html (fwd)
Roy,
I am not quite as unimpressed with our politicians' ability to understand
complex issues as Bert was. My wife and I were among those opposing
erection of a cellular antenna at an access road to a public golf course (very
close to a private school K - 8) near our neighborhood. About 100 residents
who were adamantly opposed to this antenna location packed the hearing room.
The fellow who was supposed to be the "engineer" from the cell phone company
brought out his color coded charts that were generated by the computer and
supposedly showed that the proposed location was the only one that would work
- according to the computer. When our county's Zoning Appeals Board (whose
hearing this was) asked him what assumptions had been put into the model and
how could they be assured that the computer model wasn't just giving them what
the company had already decided it wanted, he had no reasonable response. He
just said that he didn't think they would want to hear technical details.
Also, when our local state senator asked him why he didn't locate his antenna
at another place where there were already a number of utilities, he didn't
have a good answer - preferring to blame the electric company for not allowing
his company to put their antenna there (promply rebutted by a retired electric
company employee). Our senator - a lady who lives in the affected area - said
"If you boys don't get your act together, I'm going to do it for you! She
also said that the state legislature had no intention of letting such an
affront to the citizens occur as a consequence of the legal loophole that the
cell phone company was trying to use - when the legislature allowed
residential zoning to include a public park. Several weeks later, the cell
phone company dropped their application amid all this opposition, so the
neighborhood won that battle - but there will probably be others.
You have to feel some empathy for these local politicians. In the suburban
Chicago area where I live, they are beseiged by 6 competing cell phone
providers. Each one of them goes before the local zoning boards saying that
their customers are complaining about the quality of service, so that they
(the company) will have to put up additional antennas. (We polled the cell
phone users in our group and found none had substantial complaints about the
quality of service - so this argumemt was a "red herring!") The unstated fact
is that the probable motive driving all these companies is the change from
analog to digital PCS systems. This mandates their using smaller cells, so
antennas are placed closer together. The politicians are desperately
searching for impartial third parties with the expertise to advise them about
the technical matters with which the companies try to "snow" them. (I am not
such an expert, but I appreciate their problem.) Safety arguments are largely
moot because the companies always fall back on the FCC ruling which is based
on the ANSI and IEEE standards. I pointed out that those standards are to be
revisited in 2002.
Another interesting fact that I found out is this: the politicians want to
know whether the companies are responsive to citizen complaints and inquiries.
I gave testimony about the recently reported evidence that cell phone
radiation can enhance the probability of cancer formation in gentically
predisposed individuals and can also DNA breaking in the presence of chemical
carcinogens. I then asked the cell phone company to use their computer
programs to plot contours of the radiation intensity on top of a real estate
map of the affected area. They said they would give me the information to do
so, but never did. The secretary of the Zoning Appeals Board asked me to
report to the board whether I was satisfied with the information the cell
phone company gave me, assuming that they were going to give it to me.
All this tells me that the politicians are more capable and fair-minded than
we sometimes give them credit for being.
--
----
Bill P. Curry, Ph.D. |Physics is fun.
EMSciTek Consulting Co. |Trying to make a living!
22W101 McCarron Road, |Phone: (630) 858-9377
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137 |Fax: same, but require prior notice
Home page: http://www.EMSciTek.com
____________________________________________________
| Analysis, experiment design & software development |
| for engineering and the physical sciences |
----------------------------------------------------
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