Mobile phone masts linked to mysterious spikes in births

The reason this means you are not allowed to object to a cell tower is that you have to have a good reason to tell people they can’t do what they want to do. It isn’t enough to say, something bad might happen, if Einstein and Bohr turn out to be wrong. Everybody gets to proliferate unchecked if they want to and it doesn’t harm anyone, that is rule 0 of San Francisco values. (Rule 1 is that we index from 0, and rule 2 is no MacDonalds in Dolores Park.)

I’m suspicious. I think you’re harboring a bit of the tin foil hat mentality but backing off when confronted by actual math.

The thing is, requiring people to notify others that they are doing something legal is really a sneaky way of making it difficult to do that legal thing. It’s much easier to get a notification law passed (in the name of transparency) than a ban, but often the people behind it really want said activity banned. It’s like the signs on every parking garage and restaurant that grills their food that something on the premise is known to the state of california to cause cancer…except radio transmitters aren’t known to have adverse affects (other than visual clutter.) What if you were required to notify your neighbors that you were operating a wireless router? There’d certainly be neighbors who’d object somewhere.

My understanding of the Avalos legislation is that it requires wireless companies to provide notification and information. This seems like a good thing. I know I should just “trust” that the wireless companies will “do the right thang”. I guess we should also trust the oil companies to do the right thing in the gulf and in Niger Delta. And trust our leaders to do the right thing in the middle east. The point is, we are hating on the Avalos legislation because it forces notification requirements. I do believe I should be notified if someone pulls a permit on my address. Transparency is usually a good thing. When a corporation relies on secrecy to get things done, it worries me. The current approach is to pull a permit without telling anyone, wait 15 days which is how long residents have to protest, then begin installation. Once a resident learns about it, because there are truck outside your house, it is too late to protest. Seriously, how can you pull a permit on my address without telling me.

T-Mobile is licensed for the AWS A and F blocks in this area, along with PCS E, F. Both only allow for public exposure of 1 milliwatt/cm^2 by federal regulation. The antenna would need to transmit at ~1800 W EIRP to reach that standard. I’m guessing in an urban area its more like 20 W (0.01 mW/cm^2), but I dont have any idea offhand.

Cell phones? When using them it could be up to 190-400 mW/cm^2 up against the head. I’d figure the users would be worse off than those living near towers.

Also recommended reading:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/cellphones
http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Documents/bulletins/oet56/oet56e4.pdf

Given that the next big thing in this whole technolgy racket is something called mobile, maybe we should have some of it around here, so we can all keep working, and afford to pay to buy our babies cribs from Ikea, and cocktails at Berreta.

So now we have science and economics. But as Glenn Beck and his ilk will atest too, you just can’t beat making scary s**t up.

I took a bunch of screenshots and glued them together as an animated GIF.

Anybody who spends time with audio or photography understands the inverse square law. But this isn’t about understanding, it’s about being a reactionary. Bernalwood argued this point exquisitely.

There is a great deal of fear of supposed unknowns, even though much is known very well, and there is a failure to comprehend risk and probability. Whenever supposed dangers are put forth, be them terrorist ass bombers, child molesters, or the bunny man, most people cannot get a perspective and the usual counter argument is to say you are more likely to be in a car crash. Yet no one flips out about car crashes, they accept this danger.

In fact cars are an interesting thing. My neighbor flipped out when I left an empty propane tank in the garage. The garage is storage for roughly 90 gallons of gasoline. Gasoline, extremely volatile and packing a great amount of energy is more dangerous then UPS battery banks.

And just so folks know, there is protection, it’s called a Faraday cage. I suspect you could line your room with a few layers of chicken wire and block most of anything coming in from the scary outside. BTW, this topic was hashed out at length on slashdot a while back. Dude, like the commenter above, was real close to a microwave antenna. He could look out his window next to his bed and see it right there, like within 10 feet.

The major issue here is the the phone company does not have to notify residents or provide any information on what they are installing. Last week AT&T, through NextG, put a wireless antennae on top of a light post right outside my fucking window. I happen to own my place, so I can’t say “what the fuck” and move. Not to mention my wife and I are trying to have a baby and our baby’s crib was supposed to be approximately 20 feet from that fucking antennae. Is it an issue, probably not, it is probably perfectly safe, but the wireless companies are not necessarily being forthright with what they are installing. How about give the person who has to stare at your fucking wireless antennae all day a little information. Can I put my baby right next to it for 10 years with no harmful effects. Maybe, but let me know how much RF radiation it emits. As opposed to taking the approach that we are not going to notify residents and we are going to put this up in one day (they worked til 10Pm on night) and hope nobody fucking notices. I am kinda pissed. How can NextG pull a permit to do work on MY FUCKING ADDRESS and not fucking tell me about it?

Otherwise, love you blog.

Cheers and carry on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law