Below is a very short, if alarming, extract from the second of two lengthy and very interesting articles by Dr George Carlo published in the American Trial Lawyer, the first in 2008, the second (the first in a two-part series) in 2010.

According to www.antennasearch.com, there are 76 wireless transmission base station towers located within one mile of The White House: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. Of these active towers within that radius, only five are registered. Seventy-one of those towers are un-registered and therefore unregulated and possibly illegal.

Seven hundred fifty-six wireless transmission antennas are located on the 76 towers within one mile of The White House. The nearest antenna is just .09 miles from the center of the house where the leader of the free world and his family reside. Each antenna is authorized to emit up to 100 Watts of power per signal. A tower with ten antennas would therefore emit up to 1000 Watts of power. Wattage determines the strength of the electromagnetic field plume emitted and thus the degree of penetration into bodies of those men, women and children who come between the antenna and its cell phone partner.

The array of towers and antennas located around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue represents one of the most dense and severe ambient exposures to dangerous Information Carrying Radio Waves anywhere in the world.

It is noteworthy – and astonishing to most consumers – that in the United States and most western countries, the delivery of wireless technology is not regulated for safety. While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) claims jurisdiction with respect to issuing emission guidelines, that agency has no statutory health and safety function – and no regulatory enforcement abilities should public health problems be found. The agency with safety responsibility, the Food and Drug Administration, has “been missing in action” since 1999, when it became clear that its only regulatory recourse for wireless technology dangers was banning the technology – deemed by the FDA to be a politically impossible approach.

The dense infrastructure that includes towers and antennas has been argued by the wireless industry as a “necessity” for the delivery of wireless technology as it is currently engineered. This assertion is false. There are alternatives that could be incorporated into the nation’s infrastructure and education system re-building efforts espoused by President Obama’s administration, such as maximizing fiber optic infrastructure in place of wireless. However, wireless technology as it currentlyexists, carries with it significant risk of collateral damage – much of it literally in the President’s own backyard.

To read the articles in full:

Illusion and Escape - the cellphone disease quagmire. 2008

Collateral Damage – a dangerous and insidious legacy of the wireless techonology explosion. 2010

More articles on mobile phones and masts

First Published in 2008 updated 2010

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