Editor:
Thank you very much to the RMO for following up on the story about the unfortunate placement of a Telus cellphone tower near Lawrence Grassi Middle School.
The Telus spokesperson, Mr. Johannson, claims in this article that: “there are municipalities in Canada who have pushed for a 100 metre distance between (cellphone) towers and schools.” Sadly he is unable or unwilling to mention examples of such municipalities. I doubt that they really exist. This would be dangerously close and not really a push at all.
Here are some facts that can be checked and proven. The Vancouver School Board requires a distance of 305 metres (1,000 feet), the City of Toronto has lowered the public exposure limits for radio frequency signals to a factor 100 times lower than Safety Code 6 set by Health Canada, the Safety Council for the European Union requests a distance of 350 metres between cellphone towers and schools and the government of Taiwan has ordered the industry to move 1,500 towers away from schools, kindergartens and hospitals.
Do these regulators know something that we don’t know?
Mr. Johannson also mentions that the signal strength at the school is 479 units lower than the threshold allowed by Health Canada, which is one of the highest in the world anyways. This is a calculated value by Telus. Actual, independent measurements show a quite different result and so far neither Telus nor Industry Canada has made the effort to come to our school and prove the calculations they made to be correct.
Fact is that the front of LGMS is a hot spot for radio frequency radiation in our community. Nowhere else did I find such a high exposure to the type of signals that are classified by the WHO (World Health Organization) as possibly causing cancer in humans.
The search for cellphone tower sites may become challenging at best for our network providers if the trends from other parts in the world are catching up in Canada.
A couple of examples:
1) European insurance companies put exclusions in the landlords liability policies regarding health damage to tenants caused by radio frequency (RF) signals from cellphone antennas which are installed on the building owned by the landlord and occupied by the tenant. They are treating RF signals just as if there would be asbestos or lead in the building material.
2) Just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court of Italy ruled in a landmark decision, that a manager’s brain tumour was caused by his heavy and prolonged cellphone use and that the Italian workers compensation board has to pay full benefits to the man. This decision was found because the court looked exclusively at independent studies and did not allow industry-funded studies as evidence.
There is something we all can do against the mushrooming of cellphone towers. Let’s go back to cellphone use as we had it in the late 1990s. Short essential calls, basic texting and no more cellphone towers will be built. Because there is no demand. The dumbest thing to do on a cellphone is sending pictures and streaming video. This takes up huge capacities on the network and the more users who do it, the more demand they create for towers and base stations. If you don’t want a cell tower in your backyard, stop this smart phone madness. Go back to a basic phone with a basic plan, it is cheaper and safer.
And most importantly, let’s work together as a community to have this tower moved away from LGMS.
Andre Gigon,
Canmore
