Room for a View
Stealth Attack
by Gary Alexander
Picture this: You wake
up one morning and notice a steel structure rising over the treeline a quarter
mile away. Within a month or so, it’s an operating tower sited by Cellular
One of Albany. A few weeks later you begin to notice a consistent pressure
in your head and start to suffer headaches of an intensity you’ve never
known before. Your eyes are gritty in the morning. Your spouse starts having
the same complaints and, on some mornings, there’s a tingling flush as
your skin turns red and sensitive. Medical exams reveal nothing, but new symptoms
start to manifest; insomnia, erratic hikes in blood pressure, heart palpitations.
You discover that neighbors are also suffering strange symptoms.
Almost two years pass and things have worsened. There’s a plague of high-pitched
screeching in your ears and waves of nausea and dizziness. Constant fatigue
has settled in, along with joint pain and hearing loss. Neighbors are selling
their homes at a loss and the stress is eating you alive.
This is how Larry and Susan Stankavich of Duanesburg, New York joined those
critical voices opposed to the ubiquitous siting of cellular communications
towers and antennae. And they are ubiquitous, even if you don’t see them.
They’re being hidden in church steeples and in the flagpoles that hoist
Ol’ Glory over our heads. They’re being concealed in silos, chimneys,
traffic signs and on water towers, light poles and building sides. It’s
a strategy, say the manufacturers, designed to win faster siting approvals
from local municipalities. It’s a strategy, counter the critics, designed
to misdirect and deceive.
In April, 1998, SUNY New Paltz hosted the Scenic Hudson Valley Cell Tower
Summit. One brochure distributed at the event by Stealth Network Technologies,
Inc. was titled “Stealth’s Hidden Agenda.” It offered numerous
full-color photos of their “innovations in antenna concealment”—camouflage
designs like their “Three-Sectored Susan” flagpole and, more ominously
for those who fear the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, a decorative
and innocent-looking lightpole sign reading “Truman Elementary School.”
Another company, Laminated Wood Towers, Inc., provides a product meant to
appear more “organic” than the unsightly metal monstrosities being
erected around the world. The sales folder lists advantages of wood towers,
including “quick delivery,” “cost-effective” and “aren’t
weakened by bullet holes.”
The central idea, according to the critics, is to focus attention on the visual
impact of the towers as a problem to be dealt with, rather than the invisible
rays with which they flood their surroundings. When you consider the electromagnetic
spectrum as an unseen part of the environment instead of stopping at the scene-spoiling
structures themselves, then it follows that you must consider the radio frequency
waves that they broadcast as a form of environmental pollution. That’s
where you start to run into serious trouble.
Our bodies interact with and are affected by an invisible electromagnetic
environment as well as a chemical environment. All day and night we are bathed
in electromagnetic fields, known as EMFs, of varying intensities. Our light
fixtures, computers, televisions, hairdryers, even the wiring in the walls
of our houses emit EMFs. Cellular telephone towers beam radio frequency and
microwave radiation across wide swaths of the countryside; the cell phones
with which they communicate emit similar energy mere inches from our brains.
Power lines crisscross our neighborhoods with extraordinarily powerful radiant
energy.
No one knows exactly how this radiation affects humans over the long term.
What we do know is that there has been an unexplained, epidemic rise in soft-tissue
cancers since 1973. This includes a soaring increase in lymphoma, breast and
prostate cancer and skin melanoma. National Cancer Institute charts for this
surge effect during the ’80s and ’90s look like the left side of
a pyramid.
This could be coincidental. It might be attributed to a variety or combination
of other factors. But there is an abundance of scientific data linking EMF
radiation to various carcinomas, as well as chronic fatigue syndrome, psychological
and behavioral disorders. All have dramatically increased since the introduction
of cellular towers. Studies have shown immune system disturbances, genetic
damage, childhood leukemia, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases,
attention deficit and learning disabilities, sudden infant death syndrome
and many other maladies to be associated with EMFs.
A study by Doctors Henry Lai and Narendra Singh at the University of Washington
showed that low-level microwave radiation causes serious damage to single-and
double-strand DNA molecules in a manner associated with cancer, Alzheimer’s
disease and other serious illness. Computer monitors also transmit EMF radiations
in ELF, VLF and RF ranges associated with the propagation of disease. A Boston
University study on breast cancer rates, for instance, found a 43 percent
increase in breast cancer rates in those with an occupational exposure to
magnetic fields.
In a paper on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Maisch, Rapley, Rowland and Podd note
that “Existing evidence indicates that exposure to environmental level
50-60 Hz EMFs may be an immune system stressor with the potential to cause
hormone disruption and changes at a cellular level.” The U.S. National
Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) found that EMFs “affect
cell growth regulation in animal and tissue models in a manner consistent
with tumor formation.... increase tumor incidence and decrease tumor latencies
in animals.... alter gene transcriptional processes, the natural defense response
of T-lymphocytes and other cellular processes related to the development and
control of cancers.... affect neuroendocrine and psychosexual responses”
and inhibit the production of melatonin in the pineal gland. Melatonin is
linked to the body’s defenses against cancer.
There is more research along these lines, although little of it has been reported
in the mainstream press.
Perhaps that’s because radio and television broadcasters also rely on
electromagnetic frequency-radiating technologies. Or perhaps it’s because
acknowledging the potential health dangers of such technologies directly challenges
the 1996 Federal Telecommunications Act, which essentially declares broadcast
and microwave technologies safe.
It was another work of stealth that the huge, momentous and ponderous piece
of legislation known as the Federal Telecommunications Act passed through
the House and Senate with scarcely a ripple in the major media. Could that
eerie silence have been related to a portion of the Act that lifted restrictions
on how many broadcast stations a single company could own? Was the Telecommunications
Act given a pass by corporate media because under the Act, broadcast licenses
are no longer subject to public renewal hearings? Or did the telecommunications
industry simply buy the Act with tens of millions spent annually on public
relations?
When I asked him about the Telecommunications Act recently, Representative
Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), who was one of only 16 in Congress to oppose the bill,
confirmed it as “an atrocity.” He added, “The more we look
at it, the worse it gets.”
Representative Edward Markey (D-MA) complained that whole portions of the
bill were written by representatives of the communications industry. Other
congressmen say that they were deliberately left out of key meetings and given
parts of the text only on the day of the vote.
The telecommunications industry is composed of international corporate entities
representing themselves as competitors even though their interests, boards
of directors, shareholders, and even individual projects often interlock.
The Act provides that they must work closely together in sharing facilities.
Meanwhile, a cottage industry of “independent” telecommunications
consultants has grown like overnight mushrooms in the wake of the TCA. Critics
say these consultants, almost invariably composed of “ex” industry
executives and personnel, all seem to share the same goals and methods across
the nation, hiring themselves out to local governments to negotiate with the
corporations “in their own language.” They paint themselves as renegades
who took too much from the public and are now, out of conscience of course,
endeavoring to give something back (at a fair price).
In 1995, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton wrote a book that is key to understanding
what is going on in this boondoggle. In Toxic Sludge is Good For You: Lies,
Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, they expose the infiltration,
corruption and co-option of the environmental movement by corporate interests.
They write: “As citizens remove themselves in disgust from the political
process, the PR industry is moving in to take their place, turning the definition
of ‘grassroots politics’ upside-down by using rapidly-evolving high-tech
data and communications systems to custom-design ‘grassroots citizen
movements’ that serve the interests of their elite clients...Synthetic
grassroots movements...can now be manufactured for a fee by companies like
Hill & Knowlton, Direct Impact, Optima Direct, National Grassroots &
Communications, Beckel Cowan, Burson-Marsteller, Davies Communications or
Bonner & Associates.” The term “astroturf,” coined by Lloyd
Bentsen, is defined by Campaigns and Elections magazine as a “grassroots
program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point
of view in which uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception
are used to recruit them.”
Some suspect that the independent consultant firms who are supposedly protecting
citizens and municipalities from manipulation by telecommunications corporations
are actually being subsidized by those same corporations. Their role, according
to this interpretation, is to steer local governments into choosing between
limited options while leaving the important questions about cellular communications
towers unasked.
Whether or not this is true, municipalities never consider the possible health
impact of electromagnetic radiation when siting cell towers, for the simple
reason that the Telecommunications Act does not allow it. The Act gives the
Federal Communications Commission the power to override local zoning ordinances,
which raises some interesting 10th Amendment questions; it also specifically
bars towns and cities from considering the possible health dangers of cell
towers. It is also against the law for siting committees to favor one communications
company over another or to work to prevent the siting of cellular facilities
(although base stations are receivers and transmitters of microwaves, industry
literature refers to them as “facilities” and, indeed, it does sound
better to say that they facilitate—which means to make things easier—rather
than that they transmit, which implies that you might catch something from
them). And whether your community wants towers or not, the Telecommunications
Act requires that the country be blanketed with them—and soon.
In densely populated, profitable areas such as the Northeast, towers have
already dotted the landscape like giant metal accretions. Kingston and New
Paltz recently sprouted new towers, as did numerous other communities along
the Thruway. Even the tiny hamlet of Woodstock has been romanced by consultants
promising to fight, white-knight style, for low subscriber rates and hefty
franchise fees on the town’s behalf. All over the Hudson Valley, towns,
cities and counties are coping as best they can with the problem—though
no coordinated siting strategy has yet emerged.
Among the handouts at the SUNY affair were a number of “model ordinances”
prepared by various town and county planning boards. The models contain all
the elements recommended by the consultant firms and stress that a municipality
must “acknowledge its responsibilities under the TCA.” Likewise,
a booklet published by the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development,
Inc. (which co-sponsored the symposium with Scenic Hudson) addresses the subject
of moratoria, which the Act’s designers tried but failed to outlaw: “The
establishment of moratoria has become a ‘stopping measure’ designed
to temporarily halt the development of new towers while municipalities examine
the issue of siting wireless telecommunication facilities in more detail...A
community cannot enact a moratorium on the basis of health concerns, and it
should be of a relatively short and fixed duration.” In other words,
if you’re a town supervisor, the FCC has assumed responsibility for the
health of your constituency. You can’t keep the towers out anyway, so
don’t bother yourself with details; just relax, leave the complexities
of this issue to your consultants and rake in the juicy franchise fees you’ll
receive from “competitive access providers.”
There are other voices, however, that are only beginning to be heard in this
debate: an awakening voice of neighborhood groups rediscovering true grassroots
organizing out of urgent necessity; a voice of research scientists whose findings
are being overlooked, distorted or suppressed in the telecommunications gold
rush. Websites like Brindlewood, Electromagnetics Forum, EMFacts Consultancy,
Vermont: Mugged & Unplugged, Mindnet Journal and many more are carrying
a surging message of alarm and dissent around the world. Some of the leading
research has come from Australia, Switzerland and Scandinavia. People are
downloading the studies themselves from the websites of medical and scientific
journals and e-mailing them around.
Some of the most important studies, critics declare, were financed by the
telecommunications industry itself and, like certain studies commissioned
by the tobacco industry, are being kept under wraps. There are many parallels
between the tobacco and the EMF scenarios. Tobacco was never proven to cause
cancer but, like EMFs, many studies suggest it does. Perhaps the biggest difference
is that smokers make a conscious choice to light up, while very few people
are apprised of the nature of their immediate electromagnetic environment;
and in this, according to the Telecommunications Act, there is no choice.
But there is dissent. When the towers go up, new voices are raised, and new
lawsuits filed. There were 75,000 towers in place at this time last year.
With PCS (personal communications services) growing, there soon will be 100,000
new towers in California alone. Court battles against the addition of digital
TV antennae to existing structures are in motion in San Francisco and elsewhere.
Perhaps the most important challenge to the TCA to date is a federal suit
filed by a Seattle group with the unwieldy name “Ad Hoc Association of
Parties Concerned about the Federal Communications Commission’s Radio
Frequency Health & Safety Rules.” Their argument, which charges the
FCC with violations of the 1st, 5th and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution,
can be found on the Internet at http://www.flipag.net/nopoles/al.html.
