This is a reprint of a letter written by William Goldstein, General Counsel of Maharishi University of Management. This letter recently appeared in the Fairfield Ledger as a PAID advertisement. I am publishing it here for free.
June 15, 2009
Dear Mr. Rooney:
Big Tobacco and Big Cell Towers
A very significant thing happened last week. In addition to your letter to our community printed in the Thursday Fairfield Ledger, the House voted 301-97 to pass federal legislation stringently regulating the tobacco industry, following the Senate’s 79-17 vote. That marked a great achievement after a decades long battle.
But even more noteworthy is that, contrary to its competitors, Phillip Morris – the nation’s largest tobacco company – came out in support of the bill saying it was behind tough but fair regulation. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., sponsor of the bill and committee chairman at the memorable 1994 hearing where tobacco industry executives denied nicotine was addictive, relished the long-sought victory:
"I think we are today at the last gasp of the tobacco industry’s efforts to protect their profits at the expense of the health and lives of the American people and to get children to take up this habit."
That 1994 hearing seems to have taken place so long ago. We have learned so much so quickly on the science of cancer and smoking. But it was only 15 years ago that what we now know to be a dishonest corporate statement was glibly justified on the basis of their being a lack of any credible scientific evidence that smoking was addictive. The profit motive overrode any sense of corporate responsibility, of honesty, or of prudence.
The smoke is clearing now, but only after millions of dollars of lawsuits, cigarette taxes, thousands of lung cancer deaths, and surgeon general notices. The federal government is only now stamping out the last vestiges of that smoky 1994 thinking.
Any Lessons Learned?
It would be comforting to think that we, consumers and corporate executives, have learned something from that costly exercise. Consumers cannot wait until the government creates laws to take responsibility for their health. Corporations cannot wait for government to create laws to take responsibility for their customer’s health. The consequences are potentially fatal for both.
The painful reality is that if we do not self-regulate but wait for government regulation to recognize and fix such a problem, the human and social costs will be so mammoth that we will never make them up, let alone recapture the lives of those who have been compromised by our shortsightedness. And we will have Big Brother mandating solutions to the problem that we could have better and more quickly fixed ourselves.
No Credible Evidence of Health Risks?
Your statement, Mr. Rooney, that "to date, there is no credible scientific evidence that cell phone towers pose a risk to people’s health" is a public statement you may feel compelled to make. You may feel confident that it is true. You may feel that, if it were not true, your corporation’s interests would be at serious risk. You may not wish to entertain any risky discussion on the possibilities that it is not true now, or may be revealed as untrue in the future. You may fear you will be viewed as a traitor to your industry if you should truly and openly engage on this real debate.
However, whatever is the case, a large and growing number of developed countries and thousands of scientists and doctors have, with the support of voluminous and expanding scientific research, come to a contrary conclusion. The evidence is not merely credible. It is mounting and of very serious concern. We can not put our heads in the sand, however inconvenient this truth may be.
The Credible Evidence
To illustrate this point: The national laws, among others, of New Zealand, Italy, China, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland, Austria, and New South Wales, Australia are considerably more stringent than the current laws in the US and would likely not permit the Depot Street tower installation, which is sited within 1500 feet of three schools (St. Mary’s, Lincoln Elementary, and Maharishi School) and within 50 feet of residences and offices.
The European Parliament, representing all the member nations of the European Union, "concerned about the continuing uncertainties about possible health risks concerning electromagnetic radiation," adopted a report on April 2 of this year, by a vote of 559 to 22 providing that antennas, mobile phone masts and other electromagnetic emitting devices should be set within a specific distance from schools and health institutions. The Parliament called for stricter regulation and protection for residents and consumers. "Industry actors are being encouraged to use their power to give better protection to people living nearby and to prevent a proliferation of poorly positioned masts and transmitters. The placement of antennas, mobile phone masts, and high-voltage power lines should be negotiated between industry actors, public authorities, and residents’ associations in order to minimize health risks and legal action cases. This will also ensure that EMF-transmitting devices are kept clear of schools, créches, retirement homes, and health care institutions."
The adverse health effects documented at levels below the FCC guidelines you claim your tower is in compliance with include altered white blood cells in school children; childhood leukemia; impaired motor function, reaction time, and memory; headaches; dizziness; fatigue; weakness; and insomnia.
This is based on numerous epidemiological studies of people living near cell phone antennas in places including Spain, the Netherlands, Israel, Germany, and Austria. In all of the studies, exposures are orders of magnitude below the FCC guideline. [I will transmit to you separately the reference and citations to these studies]. In 2007, Dr. Henry Lai, at the University of Washington, had already documented over 40 scientific studies showing adverse biological effects of radio frequency radiation at low intensities below the FCC standards [citations separately transmitted].
Compliance with the current FCC standard is not an assurance of benign health effects, nor would it protect US Cellular from liability for injuries resulting from the tower’s emissions, any more than smoking before (or after) the Surgeon General’s warning protected Phillip Morris from liability. In this case, the FCC regulation is only based on the short-term thermal or heating effects on the body over a six-minute period, not on long-term effects, i.e., it is not valid for school children exposed eight hours a day, five days a week in a classroom several hundred yards from the antenna. Nor does the FCC standard claim to account for dangerous non-thermal biological effects. The studies have demonstrated that both long-term thermal and non-thermal effects pose serious health risks.
As Norbert Hankin, Chief EMF Scientist of the US Environmental Protection Agency stated:
"The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, (FCC’s) exposure guidelines are considered protective of effects arising from a thermal mechanism, but not from all possible mechanisms. Therefore, the generalization by many that the guidelines protect human beings from harm by any or all mechanisms is not justified."
In light of even the above small sampling of the global record, no one can fairly claim that there is no "credible evidence" that cell phone towers, at certain radiation levels, do not pose a health risk. The European Union, numerous individual nations, and a proliferation of provinces and cities throughout the world have not based their independent protective actions on mere rumor. And the thousands of scientists and doctors who have studied the issue and expressed their serious concern cannot all be charlatans.
Better Safe Than Sorry
The real question is not whether the RF emissions of cell phone towers are safe, but what the safe radiation levels are. The answer to that question is currently a moving target. In this uncertain environment, what is a responsible corporation to do? Deny any credible evidence exists of a health risk? With all due respect, it does sound like the tobacco hearings of 1994 all over again. Whether that is entirely justified remains to be seen. But pardon my skepticism for those of us who have had to deal with the impact of corporate deception on the health of their loved ones. We cannot wait to see how the science finally sorts out — we cannot as a society again take that risk. We already know enough to know better.
You must, in all decency, go the extra mile with us and dialogue with us to diligently seek every possible accommodation with the communities and customers you serve who have legitimate and scientifically-based concerns about their children’s safety and the services they buy from you.
The dawning of corporate responsibility seen in Phillip Morris’s bold move sets a precedent we can all admire, however little and late it may have come. I do hope that US Cellular will see a similar opportunity here, at a more propitious time in the curve where much of the possible damage to human life from their industry has not yet materialized.
Let Us Meet
I have asked to have a community meeting with US Cellular to seek an accommodation which may include, among other things, the selection of an independent mutually selected board to review the safety of the tower, review the contamination studies of the alternate sites, weigh the advantages of those sites, identify the costs of sanitization (which costs would not be borne by US Cellular), and/or devise modifications in the microwave pathways to mitigate the impact of emissions on the schools and those near to the tower. I have not received a substantive reply to date, except to receive a copy of a report from a company hired by US Cellular to determine if the tower complies with the FCC’s problematic standards.
The University has received commitments from competitors of US Cellular that they will not use towers closer than 1,200 feet to schools or residences. Whether market forces, public awareness, government intervention, enlightened corporate responsibility, or a combination of them all will bring the needed evolution about is unclear. But I have little doubt the evolution will occur.
We would prefer to remain with our current vendor and say that we have grown through this process together with you. However, if you close the door to continued discussions on how we can accommodate our concerns, we will terminate the University’s contract with US Cellular, and so will many other residents of Fairfield.
Let us meet and work this out.
Very truly,
William Goldstein
General Counsel
Maharishi University of Management
National WorkerRF Safety Crisis Video Our nations’ workers and the welfare of their families
are at risk! Watch the video to see how.
Cell Towers: Another Inconvenient Truth
Source:
Date: 06/20/2009
