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    sharingwisdom's Avatar
    sharingwisdom
     

    Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of speech

    https://thecoastnews.com/view/full_story/8775609/article-Local-woman-fights-wireless-industry-to-reduce-health-risks-?instance=home_Most_viewed

    Excerpt

    Rancho Santa Fe resident Susan Foster, MSW, is a medical social worker, writer and firefighter advocate. In 2004, she was honored as "Firefighter for Life" by the San Diego Fire Department for her efforts to advocate for the health and safety of firefighters in the wake of an increasing number of cell towers being placed on fire stations by local government. Today, Foster challenges Congress to repeal the 1996 Telecommunications Act Sec. 704, which she says violates freedom of speech by forbidding the public to complain about health effects relating to cell tower radiation.

    …in 1972, Susan Foster quietly accepted a position as a legislative aide in the office of Congressman William J. Keating, R-Ohio. She was 21. “I was told that I would be the first female legislative aide to a Republican member of the House of Representatives

    A highlight was the weekly legislative meeting in the offices of House Speaker Gerald R. Ford. That is, until Foster learned that despite passage of the Civil Rights Bill eight years earlier, Ford barred women from attending the meeting. “I walked out and swore to myself that I would never again be kept from any place or any mission that I was entitled to be a part of,” she said.

    It is that memory that today fuels Foster’s resolve to stand up to the wireless industry. She credits her strength to her late grandfather, Joe Foster Sr., a labor negotiations attorney for Walgreens in Chicago who once stood up to Jimmy Hoffa. “‘You speak for those who have no voice,’” he told me. “That’s the highest calling in life and that’s what he expected of me.”


    “These are tough economic times,” she said. “Landlords are compensated for allowing cell towers on their buildings but they don’t have to live or work there themselves.”

    She adds, “If this were benign, why has a wireless executive living in Rancho Santa Fe sheathed his entire house in copper? Copper and lead are the only two metals through which RF radiation does not penetrate.”

    Foster recalls a three-way friendship that developed several years ago between herself and two purported victims of cell phone radiation, Mark Hart and Gibb Brower.

    “Mark was the head of an international company that manufactured cell phones,” she said. “He was given a prototype with a huge antenna. He had nocturnal seizures within six months and a glicoma within nine months. He died a week before Gibb.”

    Foster says Brower lived at the base of Mt. Soledad and used a cell phone continuously for 10 years in his work as a landscaper.

    “The last time I talked with Gibb was six days before his death in March 2003,” she recalls. “He said, ‘Hey, kid. You know what you have to do. You have to carry on the fight. I’ll be watching over you.”
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    Re: Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of spee

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by sharingwisdom: View Post
    https://thecoastnews.com/view/full_story/8775609/article-Local-woman-fights-wireless-industry-to-reduce-health-risks-?instance=home_Most_viewed


    She adds, “If this were benign, why has a wireless executive living in Rancho Santa Fe sheathed his entire house in copper? Copper and lead are the only two metals through which RF radiation does not penetrate.”

    Well, at the very least, she is completely wrong here. Any electrically conductive or absorptive material will shield RF radiation; we use Aluminum (most common); Silver Plating (best performance for shielding); steel (try to get a signal in a high rise full of rebar), carbon (absorptive, similar to what is on a stealth fighter) and so many more. For cost effective tin-foil hat preparation, I'd recommend Costc brand.

    But, just like a lot of people with money, maybe those executives liked the pretty design of patina copper as a roof. It's been used since the 17th century for a roofing and sheathing material (long before Marconi).
    So here we have another case of worry about trivial things (like RF radiation from cell towers that can be demonstrated to be below even the limits that proponents of the precautionary principle advocate), and so few worries about real dangers and difficulties, such as the suffocation of the earth under the weight of overpopulation and over consumption of fossil fuels.
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    Re: Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of spee

    Again we meet… as you pick out one thing that you can include that says that EMF & RF exposure are nothing to be concerned about because people can use any material to screen it. So I’m wondering if that means that people aren't affected by the radiation just because the material can be anything...that’s like apples and elephants to me.

    People don't know they need to be screened since they are unaware that it's dangerous…which has been my point the whole time. And there is more to screening then you said as I checked online from an electrical engineer...There are two major variables, one is the thickness of the metal shield which is inversely proportional to the frequency. Higher frequency can be attenuated by a thinner piece of metal. Attenuation is the energy absorption of radio frequencies. Second factor is perforation. 58 KHz will sneak around anything, so you need to enclose whatever you are building on all sides, with the corners connected. At that frequency, the wavelength is very long (5100 meters), so you don’t have to worry about seams.

    So, all this says is how to do screening to protect from radiation, but has nothing to do with the fact that those firemen where affected because they weren't screened, Dr. Heuser’s study of the neurological exam including the SPECT scans of their brains showing the changes, the two men who died from the effects of radiation in the article or the many who are affected with brain tumors, cancer and leukemia, besides the many scientists worldwide who disagree with you.

    If you want to be concerned about world over-population, I'm sure that continued EMF and RF exposure will certainly help the issue so there will be less to use the fossil fuels.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by spam1: View Post
    Well, at the very least, she is completely wrong here. Any electrically conductive or absorptive material will shield RF radiation; we use Aluminum (most common); Silver Plating (best performance for shielding); steel (try to get a signal in a high rise full of rebar), carbon (absorptive, similar to what is on a stealth fighter) and so many more. For cost effective tin-foil hat preparation, I'd recommend Costc brand.

    But, just like a lot of people with money, maybe those executives liked the pretty design of patina copper as a roof. It's been used since the 17th century for a roofing and sheathing material (long before Marconi).
    So here we have another case of worry about trivial things (like RF radiation from cell towers that can be demonstrated to be below even the limits that proponents of the precautionary principle advocate), and so few worries about real dangers and difficulties, such as the suffocation of the earth under the weight of overpopulation and over consumption of fossil fuels.
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  7. TopTop #4
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    Re: Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of spee

    Quote Again we meet… as you pick out one thing that you can include that says that EMF & RF exposure are nothing to be concerned about because people can use any material to screen it.

    No, I don't say that. My comment had 3 points:
    1) The quote I cited said only lead and copper can shield RF. That was wrong! If the person citing is wrong about such a simple thing, we should be concerned about their understanding of more complicated effects.
    2) The RF energy from cell towers falls to a very small level at a distance of between 10 and 30 meters. There was a previous post that cited a few studies, the most ambitious of which set a limit based on the precautionary principle, and the levels of cell phone fields at 10 to 30 meters (depending on cell tower power radiation patterns, which are typically set to keep energy horizontal to improve performance, not vertical) fall below even these limits.
    3) There are limited resources, spending even the smallest amount fighting against this (likely imagined) problem removes those resources from fighting against large problems.

    To the points you raise: I cannot imagine many areas of work where workers are exposed to more carcinogens than firefighting. If (as recently published) just 1 cigarette can increase you cancer risk, then what real cancer risks to firefighters face. Anecdotal citing of two firefighters having brain cancer, while tragic, is not hard evidence, especially in light of the facts that the fields near cell towers drop dramatically as distance, to levels much smaller than other RF that they are exposed to such as fire department radios, which are typically stronger than cell phones. Eliminating the rent from the cell phone tower may cause more effects if the fire station cannot afford effective equipment.

    Yes, power line voltage, at 60 Hz, has a very long wavelength (its actually more like 5000 KILOMETERS, but what's an error of 1000 times among those concerned) that's completely unrelated to the fact that even a little shielding will eliminate very large amounts or RF cell phone energy (about 10 million times shorter wavelength, at about .3 meters)

    Many scientists don't think global warming is happening, or that it is man made, so playing the "many scientists" card is really just a bit of sophistry.

    I'm not saying that understanding RF fields is easy, but it is understandable, and yields to analysis. For example, high-tension wires often have lower RF fields than lighting circuits in houses. They are designed to be self shielding: not because the power company cares about your health, but because radiated power costs them money. However, inside your house you pay for the power whether it radiates or is used for something more useful, like a playstation.

    Finally, it is not beyond reason to think that adding smart meters will reduce energy consumption, and thus reduce the amount of carcinogens that are put into the air. Since there is some benefit surely, then a cost/benefit analysis would be needed to determine if the benefit of less carcinogens would be worth the cost of RF fields, even if they do have some carcinogenic effect (which scientists at the FDA, WHO and FCC have not determined to be the case). Surely, if smart meters reduced overall cancer, then you would be for them, eh?
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  8. TopTop #5
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    Re: Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of spee

    I'll comment under each of your responses.
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by spam1: View Post
    No, I don't say that. My comment had 3 points:
    1) The quote I cited said only lead and copper can shield RF. That was wrong! If the person citing is wrong about such a simple thing, we should be concerned about their understanding of more complicated effects. The woman quoted what a person had done to their home. That was not incorrect. On several of your articles you had posted previously, which I sent the counter-articles (The PD Errs in Concluding that the FCC has set health standards for RF emissions, According to the FCC, There is No RF Federal Health Standard), yours were not correct. So should I assume that everything else you say is incorrect? That is the logic you are using.

    2) The RF energy from cell towers falls to a very small level at a distance of between 10 and 30 meters. There was a previous post that cited a few studies, the most ambitious of which set a limit based on the precautionary principle, and the levels of cell phone fields at 10 to 30 meters (depending on cell tower power radiation patterns, which are typically set to keep energy horizontal to improve performance, not vertical) fall below even these limits. What does this have to do with the cell towers not affecting the firemen?

    3) There are limited resources, spending even the smallest amount fighting against this (likely imagined) problem removes those resources from fighting against large problems. We will just agree to disagree in what issues are important since your values and priorities are different than mine. And because this is true, that does not mean that what you feel is important to you diminishes what is important for me and others.

    To the points you raise: I cannot imagine many areas of work where workers are exposed to more carcinogens than firefighting. If (as recently published) just 1 cigarette can increase you cancer risk, then what real cancer risks to firefighters face. Anecdotal citing of two firefighters having brain cancer, while tragic, is not hard evidence, especially in light of the facts that the fields near cell towers drop dramatically as distance, to levels much smaller than other RF that they are exposed to such as fire department radios, which are typically stronger than cell phones. Eliminating the rent from the cell phone tower may cause more effects if the fire station cannot afford effective equipment. I would say there are many fields that are exposed to high levels of toxins....health care workers, nuclear physicists, painters, airline pilots, car mechanics etc. and just living in our environment with the spraying of herbicides, pesticides, chemtrails, PCB's, parabens in our shampoos and cosmetics, drugs in our drinking water, aluminum on our cookware, Mercury in our mouths etc. is a toxic cocktail in itself. Why would I want to add EMF and RF to the overload?

    Yes, power line voltage, at 60 Hz, has a very long wavelength (its actually more like 5000 KILOMETERS, but what's an error of 1000 times among those concerned) that's completely unrelated to the fact that even a little shielding will eliminate very large amounts or RF cell phone energy (about 10 million times shorter wavelength, at about .3 meters) That's not a fact about a little shielding will eliminate large amounts of RF. Are you an electrician or electrical engineer?

    Many scientists don't think global warming is happening, or that it is man made, so playing the "many scientists" card is really just a bit of sophistry. True...you pick your scientists that back your perspective, and I'll pick those who I feel resonate with the truth of the situation in how the certain political factors control it.

    I'm not saying that understanding RF fields is easy, but it is understandable, and yields to analysis. For example, high-tension wires often have lower RF fields than lighting circuits in houses. They are designed to be self shielding: not because the power company cares about your health, but because radiated power costs them money. However, inside your house you pay for the power whether it radiates or is used for something more useful, like a playstation. I feel there is more than this that has not been revealed.

    Finally, it is not beyond reason to think that adding smart meters will reduce energy consumption, and thus reduce the amount of carcinogens that are put into the air. Since there is some benefit surely, then a cost/benefit analysis would be needed to determine if the benefit of less carcinogens would be worth the cost of RF fields, even if they do have some carcinogenic effect (which scientists at the FDA, WHO and FCC have not determined to be the case). Surely, if smart meters reduced overall cancer, then you would be for them, eh? First of all, smartmeters are not cost efficient at all. They cause fires, interfere with other electronic equipment (baby monitors, heart pacemakers etc), affects privacy, effects jobs, affects health and guess how pays for something we don't want and again pay for it if something goes wrong. PG&E are looking out for their stockholders not us. I didn't see them have a bad year in this economic recession.

    Second, FDA, WHO and FCC have been lying to us for years so I have little respect for these agencies. They change their information depending on who's funding them. That's what I was saying about tracking the politics and who stands in the way of what is really happening.

    May 17, 2010 - According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (funded in part by WHO, the World Health Organization) using a cell phone for as little as 30 minutes may increase your risk of getting a brain tumor (glioma). The study is reported to have included 13,000 participants over 10 years. But we have not seen the details of this study

    Suppressing the Science on Cell Phone Risks <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ycyWd8GMs>
    Leading Austrian medical researcher Prof. Franz Adlkofer coordinated the REFLEX study of EMR bioeffects funded by the European Commission. The study's conclusion: High frequency electro-magnetic fields damage genes and gene function. He tells how telecom interests attempted (unsuccessfully) to discredit the study and destroy the careers of its authors and publishers.

    And Third, perhaps you haven't heard of Dr. Derva Davis, author of Disconnect--the truth about cell phone radiation and health, what the industry has done to hide it, and what you can do to protect your family, who was writing about the problems of cigarettes years ago. The epidemiologist and toxicologist is an expert in environmental health, and she's made a career out of the idea that cancer often has more to do with what's happening to us than what's going on inside our genes. Her 2007 book The Secret History of the War on Cancer showed that some of the best medical minds in the U.S. played down the environmental factors behind cancer—from cigarette smoke to chemical exposure—far too long, in part because of deception and delay from industry. She didn't believe that cell phones were a problem until she really started to do the research...Much of the research into the biological effects of cell phone radiation has been underwritten by the... "the cell phone industry, and you don't have to be a raging paranoiac to wonder whether that money might have an impact on the conclusions of those thousands of studies. After all, in this case—just as it was with tobacco and lung cancer—doubt is the friend of industry. To hold off the possibility of legislation or regulation—not to mention lawsuits—wireless companies and their advocates don't have to prove that cell phones are safe beyond any doubt. They just have to play defense."
    https://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/20...n-cell-phones/

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  10. TopTop #6
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    Re: Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of spee

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by sharingwisdom: View Post
    I'll comment under each of your responses. So should I assume that everything else you say is incorrect? That is the logic you are using.
    No, of course you should assume everything I say is correct! The few times it isn't will be so infrequent that it would be a better use of your time contemplating my reasoning rather than looking for errors.
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by sharingwisdom: View Post
    What does this have to do with the cell towers not affecting the firemen?
    If the RF energy from cell phones diminishes with distance, and the firefighters are exposed to much higher levels of RF energies from their own equipment, then why would you blame cell phone towers. And if the level diminishes to values below even the lowest levels that have any reported effects from your citations (at the bottom of your quote) occur, then I would say that their effect is de minimus. Note, hand held cell phones are probably 1000 times more powerful field than cell phone towers.
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by sharingwisdom: View Post
    does not mean that what you feel is important to you diminishes what is important for me.
    No, but how you feel about something doesn't affect the facts of it. Back in the day, a lot of people felt there was a relationship between black cats and witches...so no, I don't expects facts and reason to change your feeling. I agree that you may continue to be unreasonable, in the sense that reasoned argument won't persuade you since you have strong feelings. .
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by sharingwisdom: View Post
    Are you an... electrical engineer?
    Well, yes, I am. So numbers and quantitative analysis are familiar to me. Thus, if a cell phone tower produces 0.015W/m^2 field and a hand held produces 1.85 W/m^2, I would say the cell phone tower could reasonably be ignored.

    And this is the key point:
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by sharingwisdom: View Post
    Surely, if smart meters reduced overall cancer, then you would be for them, eh? First of all, smartmeters are not cost efficient at all. They cause fires, interfere with other electronic equipment (baby monitors, heart pacemakers etc), affects privacy, effects jobs, affects health and guess how pays for something we don't want and again pay for it if something goes wrong. PG&E are looking out for their stockholders not us. I didn't see them have a bad year in this economic recession.
    You don't answer the question. If they have a net benefit, surely you would support them?

    It is very reasonable to think they will reduce overall energy usage and thus reduce build-out of power stations. Thus, they have a benefit to society as a whole, and one can estimate if the reduction in cancer due to this reduction in use (less coal burned means less uranium in the air, which has a well established link to cancer) is larger than an estimate of the increase in cancer due to their use (which must, by the numbers, be so very small as to be almost incalculable compared with other sources of RF, even if RF does have an effect); In such a case you must be for their use, otherwise you are saying "I don't care if not using them causes more cancer, I have my own feelings about this."

    I don't say RF smart meters are undeniably proven to be safe (very hard to prove a negative), I am saying that compared to anything else in the modern world, their direct effect on health must be so very very small, compared to their benefit to health (in the form of lower requirements for power stations) that they should be used.

    And no, I don't work for PGE, ATT, Verizon or any other wireless company.
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    Re: Firefighter advocate challenges Telecommunications act- cell towers & freedom of spee

    Your "numbers" of distance and frequency could be shown to have another effect on humans by electrical engineers (and have including top ranking independent scientists) that would ultimately be made wrong by you to uphold your "reasonable outcome," which is your opinion....which runs throughout your responses. Radiation is cumulative....add it up. I just see alot of deductions and opinions that are not necessarily facts. It's your "facts" with your "reason" that don't change my mind. So to answer your question... you haven't shown me anything notable as a net worth to think that these kinds of radiations are safe for humans (besides how it affects trees and animals). I have seen in too many people, including myself, being affected by these forms of radiation, some can't even live in their own homes...there are safe houses being set up for them. As they say, "The proof is in the pudding." More and more stories are coming in daily.

    It's obviously ok with you to wait for some politically-funded group to come out with their study in 10-15 years, just like the cigarettes and asbestos companies did, so the rest of us can be the canary in the coal mines and be experimented on. Been there, done that, conversation complete. Truely, be well!

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by spam1: View Post
    No, of course you should assume everything I say is correct! The few times it isn't will be so infrequent that it would be a better use of your time contemplating my reasoning rather than looking for errors.
    If the RF energy from cell phones diminishes with distance, and the firefighters are exposed to much higher levels of RF energies from their own equipment, then why would you blame cell phone towers. And if the level diminishes to values below even the lowest levels that have any reported effects from your citations (at the bottom of your quote) occur, then I would say that their effect is de minimus. Note, hand held cell phones are probably 1000 times more powerful field than cell phone towers.
    No, but how you feel about something doesn't affect the facts of it. Back in the day, a lot of people felt there was a relationship between black cats and witches...so no, I don't expects facts and reason to change your feeling. I agree that you may continue to be unreasonable, in the sense that reasoned argument won't persuade you since you have strong feelings. .
    Well, yes, I am. So numbers and quantitative analysis are familiar to me. Thus, if a cell phone tower produces 0.015W/m^2 field and a hand held produces 1.85 W/m^2, I would say the cell phone tower could reasonably be ignored.

    And this is the key point: You don't answer the question. If they have a net benefit, surely you would support them?

    It is very reasonable to think they will reduce overall energy usage and thus reduce build-out of power stations. Thus, they have a benefit to society as a whole, and one can estimate if the reduction in cancer due to this reduction in use (less coal burned means less uranium in the air, which has a well established link to cancer) is larger than an estimate of the increase in cancer due to their use (which must, by the numbers, be so very small as to be almost incalculable compared with other sources of RF, even if RF does have an effect); In such a case you must be for their use, otherwise you are saying "I don't care if not using them causes more cancer, I have my own feelings about this."

    I don't say RF smart meters are undeniably proven to be safe (very hard to prove a negative), I am saying that compared to anything else in the modern world, their direct effect on health must be so very very small, compared to their benefit to health (in the form of lower requirements for power stations) that they should be used.

    And no, I don't work for PGE, ATT, Verizon or any other wireless company.
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