Towers dialing up a Quagmire
“The market sure knows health risks. Real estate agents will tell you property values near towers plummet: 10 to 40 per cent. People are afraid of living near them. Rightly so.”
Calgary will now allow public lands for cellphone towers.
This means your community playgrounds, soccer fields, hockey arenas and street light poles. But maybe not fire halls.
Everything is up for a nice healthy dose of electric magnetic frequencies, or EMFs. There’s money in them thar’ towers.
Sure, the city considered an academic study showing 8 out 10 people within 500 metres of a cellphone tower got cancer.
There was also a study showing honeybees couldn’t function near towers either, yet they are crucial to our food supply. The Safe School Committee also filed concerns.
The city tells you that cellphone towers are federally regulated under Industry Canada.
But there’s so much money to be made from leases, why not get in on the action? And so, the proposal to use city lands.
Ald. Ray Jones suggested using community association lands. The Federation of Calgary Communities then sent a letter asking for lease money to be split with the city and community association.
It’s pragmatic; since there’s no holding these towers back, let’s grab some money for our aging facilities and community programs.
Dissension will ensue. Because there’s nothing like a cellphone tower to promote community building.
The city notes that: “While the demand for faster data downloads and smart technologies continues, paradoxically, the public is also concerned about the health, environmental and aesthetic impacts cell towers may pose in their neighbourhoods.”
That’s right because Health Canada won’t finance a study of the issue. Yet, concerns emerge: cancer, headaches, facial numbness, dizziness, electrosmog.
The market sure knows health risks. Real estate agents will tell you property values near towers plummet: 10 to 40 per cent. People are afraid of living near them. Rightly so.
I admire the position of the International Association of Firefighters who are rejecting cellphone towers on fire hall roofs.
“The only reasonable and responsible course is to conduct a study of the highest scientific merit and integrity on the RF/MW radiation health effects to our membership and, in the interim, oppose the use of fire stations as base stations for towers and/or antennas for the conduction of cellphone transmissions until it is proven that such sitings are not hazardous to the health of our members.”
If city council were on side of its citizens, they would adopt similar stance. Can our firefighters save us?
http://www.metronews.ca/calgary/comment/article/1041664--towers-dialing-up-a-quagmire
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