Atawhai

It is completely irresponsible for these transmission towers to be built in an urban area because of the danger to human health.

Please put the health and wellbeing of our children as the number one priority not so called advances in technology.

Its just a plain and simple no! When we have evidence and research on the subject, there are still human beings who work for these phone companies. They have children themselves and are prepared to go to sleep each night with this on their conscience.
We have all done without this tower so far and we are still communicating! Listen to us not our mobile phones!

Dear all.
I support your campaign all-out.
I know on my own hide what it can do to grown ups, and elderly people like myself, let alone what harm it can do to all the children.
So, please lets get get rid now, we can easily live without it as we did before, because this is a man-made environmental disaster in the making and they are killing off mankinds future
(their potential customers, stupid bu.....) the worlds children.

PSo, Please be smart, don´t sacrifice your children to a "Technology" that kills them off.

Read this link: http://groups.google.com/gr...

Give OUR world and its populstion a chance.

Best regards.
Agnes Ingvarsdottir.
http://www.mast-victims.org

There is no protection against the microwaves these masts emit therefore they should be erected as far from any humans as possible. There is already plenty cell phone coverage in nelson we don't need more.

The arguement of big business is that research shows these towers do not affect the health of people living nearby. Other research does show a link to health issues. The reality is...no-one knows. Surely the responsible and correct stance should then be, especially given this is children we are talking about, that while there is even the slightest doubt we must err on the side of safety...Please make a stand against corporate stupidity. Stop the tower.

"There is no protection against the microwaves these masts emit".
Yes there is. http://www.icnirp.de/

"The arguement of big business is that research shows these towers do not affect the health of people living nearby. Other research does show a link to health issues. The reality is...no-one knows"
Nonsense. Read the scientific research. Then read the the alleged 'experts' that deal in heresay and unsubstantiated opinions.

"Surely the responsible and correct stance should then be, especially given this is children we are talking about, that while there is even the slightest doubt we must err on the side of safety"
The ICNIRP certification does this.

"Please make a stand against corporate stupidity"
Why not make a stand against ignorance instead?

"Please put the health and wellbeing of our children as the number one priority not so called advances in technology."
BURN THE LOOMS!!

"When we have evidence and research on the subject.. "
We do. Look in the right places.

By the way Frank, there are NO microwave transmissions from these masts, they only emit RF, just like radio stations and tv transmitters but at far lower power.

I bet none of my comments make it onto the site, because luddites like you lot can never accept an alternate opinion, especially when it is correct!
Why doesn't anyone post the web address of a peer reviewed scientific study proving RF has any health impacts? Because there is none!
Max :-)

If you actually read the 'Epidemiology of Health Effects of Radiofrequency Exposure' from the http://www.icnirp.de site referenced above by Frank, the first thing it says in the summary is...

'Results of these studies to date give no consistent or convincing evidence of a causal relation between RF exposure and any adverse health effect.'

Helloooo.... should we stop progress and deny the rest of the population access to the 21st century just because there 'might be' harm from RF?
I'll be the first person to throw away my mobile and tear down the masts if anything is ever proven, but until then we have bigger issues to deal with.
I have personally had a mobile since 1988, the year after they launched in NZ. I use 500+ minutes per month and have never felt any ill effects from using my phone.
Meanwhile 4000+ NZ's die each year from tobacco, 500+ of those from passive smoking. Do any of you smoke?
Max

Hi Jose,
Fair enough filtering for spam. In my opinion spammers should be placed in public stocks with large baskets of manure and rotten fruit handy.

I asked others for links, because I have never found any peer reviewed studies that prove a causal link.

I can understand you wanting to protect your children, but why don't you focus on the known risks (and there is plenty of them!) rather than the unknown. I have a 19 year old myself and have plenty to worry about!

I can understand people opposing a 22m tower for aesthetic reasons, but the reason its 22m is to maximise the coverage.

Most people use mobile phones, and I would bet you are one of them. They are a convenience and by denying access for new masts based on 'I think it maybe harmful' is just inconveniencing the rest of us.

The biggest source of RF is the Sun. It puts out vastly more RF than all of humanities puny efforts combined. Thats why when we have sun spots we have fuzz on the TV and communications dropouts. Sun spots are directly linked to major increases in dropped calls in cellular networks because they drown out the base stations 30w output let alone the 500-700mw of the handsets.

If we thought about it, we should be encouraging schools to locate base stations so they can benefit from the extra revenue the site rentals bring in!
Max :-)

Dear Max

I do hope you're enjoying your work at Telecom. Or is it Vodafone?

It is a truism that if you make up a big enough lie and repeat it often enough it becomes the truth. Regrettably, in this case, there are myriad peer reviewed articles which show that cell phone towers are dangerous. One is the 22 September 2002 paper from Dr Neil Cherry "Independent academic review of biological and epidemiological effects of cellphone radiation".

Then, of course, there is the Salzburg Resolution of June 2000, which involved numerous government and academic experts from around the world. After hearing the evidence, they resolved that the appropriate limit was 1mW/m2 (which equals 0.1uW/cm2) which is about 1/4500th of the proposed NZ standard.

And then there is Telecom's own "independent" expert, Dr David Black, who told us on May 20 that the NZ standard is based on the "known acute effects" of radiation, to which an amelioration factor of 50 is applied to pretend that it is safe. Where did the factor of 50 come from? The international consensus for adopting this kind of process in epidemiology is to use a minimum factor of 1000.

Please do not attempt to belittle us with your baseless pronouncements of a lack of a causal relationship between EM radiation and health. We are highly educated, highly articulate and highly pissed off with Telecom. We believe we can stop their 3G rollout in its tracks - not only at the Atawhai Playcentre, but for the entirety of NZ. And if we can't, it will not be for want of trying.
Ian

How very narrow minded of you Ian to assume that just because Max wants to be allowed to use the latest technologies of his choice that he must work for either Telecom or Vodafone. Surely he has the right to these technologies without having his freedoms encroached on by you and a campaign of misinformation (not to mention arrogance - Anyone that feels the need to use the words "highly educated and highly articulate" to describe themselves rather than letting what they have to say speak for itself is highly arrogant).

There are already multiple cell phone towers in Nelson, one more is not going to increase the risk of your kids getting cancer (that's if there even is a link). If you are that worried about your kids move to rural NZ where any farmer will happily point you to a spot without cell phone coverage (not to mention broadband etc) and you can live happily ever after in a lead and copper mesh lined house. But don't go spoiling it for the rest of us with your complaints. NZ is already far behind the rest of the world when it comes to technology and we don’t need to be slowed down more, we need to be taking action to move ahead.

Fair cop Joe, you are right that Max may not work for the telecommunications industry. It's just that his words are pretty much what comes out of the corporate mouths.

I am in no way opposed to appropriate technology, in fact I embrace it. Bring on fibre optic broadband, for instance. But putting a tower emitting radiation which is known to be harmful to health right next to a children's play centre is not exactly the behaviour I would expect from a good corporate citizen.. If you really must have the ability to download movies on to your cellphone, what is wrong with having the cell towers 500 m away from schools, houses and hospitals? Your personal use of a cellphone (or cordless phone at home) is entirely your risk and good luck to you (but don't say you weren't warned if you develop tumours) but having a celltower beaming high energy radiation at you 24/7 does tend to diminish your choices. And your life expectancy.

I really would encourage you to read the recent information from BioInitiatives in the US, the Salzburg Declaration and many other websites like http://www.dailyindia.com/s... to make the connection that chronic exposure to low level EM radiation can be carcingenic. Even dear old ICNIRP has retreated from its earlier gung-ho position and accepts that there is a "puzzling" link between low level EM radiation and leukaemia.

We have an international responsibility to be precautionary and the over-whelming evidence is that we are not. Our standards are 4500 TIMES slacker than some countries and even India and China are vastly more precautionary than NZ.

EM radiation is showing all the forewarning signs that we failed to pick up with asbestos, dioxin, tobacco and other things that were declaed safe by their respective industries. I really don't want to go down that same road again.

Ian

Can we please dispense with all this nonsense about “No microwaves”, “just like radio waves”, “No scientific evidence of harm”, “Luddites” and so on?
(1) Microwaves are defined by wavelengths of 1mm to 1m. This gives frequencies of 300MHz to 300GHz. Every mobile comms application that I have ever heard of falls in that range.
(2) Mobile comms transmission protocols cause periodic amplitude modulation – ‘pulsing’ - at low frequencies. Examples are Tetra: 17.6 Hz, GSM: 217 Hz. These low frequencies are termed ‘biologically active’ because they’re capable of interfering with inter- and intra-cellular signalling in living organisms – e.g. us. This is NOT the case with radio & TV transmissions.
(3) There are THOUSANDS of studies indicating potential health risks from mobile comms. Check out http://www.bioinitiative.org where a group of world-class experts on the subject give a detailed analysis of OVER 2000 scientific papers – note that those experts include THREE former presidents of the Bioelectromagnetics Society, the world’s most well-informed and highly-respected research body in this field. Check out the REFLEX Project – 4 years of investigation by 12 teams in 7 countries found multiple replications of double-strand DNA breaks, the sort that lead to cancer (All of this at levels within ICNIRP ‘safety’ guidelines). Summary at http://www.starweave.com/re... , with link to download full REFLEX Report.
(4) http://www.starweave.com/masts gives 6 mast studies (the only ones known of at that time), ALL of which show significant adverse effects of mast emissions.
(5) http://www.starweave.com/su... gives references to papers in high-profile peer-reviewed journals that identify two very specific effects of this type of radiation, at levels below ICNIRP. As shown, these effects correspond directly with experiences reported by people living around masts – in many cases before they knew there was a mast nearby and/or before they were even aware that mast emissions could possibly be harmful.
(6) As a footnote, there have been numerous peer-reviewed studies showing clearly measurable adverse effects of this type of radiation (within ICNIRP ‘safety’ limits) on: cattle; birds; nematode worms; human babies in utero; even tomato plants. Perhaps we could hear why THOSE groups of ‘luddites’ have shown such strong reactions – psychosomatic??

Perhaps also Joe could explain why “One more [cell phone tower] isn’t going to increase the risk” – this is a version of statistics that I’m not familiar with. Or better still, perhaps those who want to shoot their mouths off about there being no evidence of adverse effects from mobile telecoms emissions could check their facts first.

Dr Grahame Blackwell
BTech(Hons) PhD MBCS CITP CEng EurIng