01/11/2001 - Pensioner 'poisoned' by phone mast on her roof

Pensioner 'poisoned' by phone mast on her roof.

A report by Amy Cartmell in the Newcastle Chronicle & Journal. For full story see:
http://www.evening-chronicle.co.uk/cfm/body_story_1.cfm?StoryId=275046&Row=1&Prev=1&Next=3

Just weeks ago Ena Bambrough told neighbours she was dying after being slowly poisoned by mobile phone masts on the roof of her Tyneside tower block. Now, after the 87-year-old has died, neighbours were demanding an urgent inquiry into the safety of the microwave antennas.

Ena lived on the top floor of a block of flats in Newcastle and complained of repeated piercing headaches and bouts of sickness, which she blamed on the masts. Close friend Paul Easton said: "She went into decline the day they put the masts on the roof. Until then she was active and went out every day."

Ena was one of several elderly residents who complained of blinding headaches and severe sickness when phone giant Orange updated its equipment and installed microwave dishes, radio antennns and equipment cabin. She had lived on the top floor of the Todd's Nook flats, Westgate Road, Newcastle, since they opened in 1964, but died in the city's Freeman Hospital just 24 hours after she was admitted.

Mrs Bambrough previously told the Chronicle of her fears about the masts. She said: "During the day I get noises in my ears and headaches. It frightens me. I've got no strength left. It's just lucky my neighbours are so good about looking out for me. I believe I am going to die soon. When I sit down I can't get up again, and when I go to bed, I can't get up."

A response to this from Dr Bill Curry, a USA based EMF bio-effects expert:

The two described symptoms from which Ena Bambrough suffered until her death - severe headaches and loud tinitus - sound to me like part of the microwave sickness syndrome that Russian scientists studied over a period of 40 years of observations of people who worked around sources of RF radiation.

It should be recalled that these scientists (quoted in Ana G. Johnson Lyakouris' recent paper about the microwaving of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow) stated that the early phases of the syndrome are reversible, but that over time it becomes LETHAL.

Ena's neighbors should demand an impartial measurement of the microwave radiation density in her apartment before anyone else moves into it.

Get the pulse magnitudes, not averaged readings. Forget the European standards (I presume this is ICNIRP) and get the absolute numbers - not percent of permissible exposure. Then compare those numbers with the published studies of biological effects. The Proceedings of the International Conference on Cell Tower Siting that was held in Salzburg,
Austria last June include one of the compilations of the bioeffects found at various values of both radiation density and specific absorbed radiation (SAR) dose. Also, the Proceedings lists the official radiation standards of various countries and provinces. Many regions have radiation limits far below ICNIRP and a number of European countries have refused to be bullied into accepting the ICNIRP standards -- which are as bad as the U.S. FCC Guidelines, insofar as protecting the public is concerned.

Having seen a resident of Vienna whose apartment is right across the street from a cell phone antenna installation and whose legs are red as boiled lobsters' legs, I am a believer in the deleterious effects of microwave radiation.
   
Having also witnessed what the radiation has done to people on a scenic ridge in upstate New York that puts them almost on eye-level with directional cell phone antennas on a tower rising from the base of the ridge, my realization that the medical profession will eventually have to acknowledge the existence of RF sickness is strengthened.

There are two providers on that tower with one set of antennas 50 feet below the other set. This means that the lower set of antennas is only about 20 feet above the top of the ridge. One lady (in her early forties) on that ridge has suffered internal bleeeding around the periphery of her brain - hemmorhagic stroke. At her deck, which is about 500 feet from the cell phone tower and at an elevation somewhat lower than the antennas, I measured radiation density consistently in excess of 64 microwatts per square centimeter - sometimes as high as 70.

An even younger man on that ridge suffered a stroke at age 39. I didn't measure radiation level in his location, because I did not know about his situation at the time. On the same ridge, I witnessed people suffering from the blinding headaches and the tinitus that afflicted the late Ena Bambrough in the U.K.

These people have also described pressure in the temple and the eyes and severe pain in the eyes. They are a family in which the parents are in their fifties and their daughter is in her early twenties. The daughter did not suffer much for a while, but now she has become sensitized to the microwave radiation, as well as her parents. The parents began to notice the symptoms about 6 weeks after the cell tower began operation in early 1997.

Note that the symptoms were present, when I visited, at radiation levels no higher than 25 microwatts per square centimeter on a day when the residents said the raidiaton was "light."

These people often have to sleep in their car miles away from the cell phone tower. At home, they can't sleep on some bad nights. On the same ridge, dogs had come down with tumors and died.
   
I have also witnessed people in the South Bend, Indiana area suffering from effects of cell phone towers placed as close as 25-50 feet from their houses.

In one case, the tower was covered with nondirectional whip antennas, and directional antennas were placed at the top of the tower. There were at least four providers on that tower, and I measured radiation density on an upstairs porch in one house that was nearly 80 microwatts per square centimeter. The mother and the father (both younger than my children)
suffered from pressure in their chests, and the mother and one of the two young sons (ages 2-4 yrs.) had undergone removal of superficial skin tumors on the face.
   
While there undoubtedly is an effect of genetic variability, I am fairly well convinced by these observations and by stories I heard from other people in Texas and on the West Coast that anyone subjected to microwave radiation on a chronic basis will eventually become electrosensitive.

One of the people on the ridge in New York state has now been sensitized to powerlines, as well as microwave radiation. Before his sensitization by the microwaves, he was not aware of sensitivity to powerline fields. Also, the man in Texas became sensitized by working around very strong magnetic fields for a period of years. He is a retired aerospace engineer who developed a form of electron beam welding that required his being around strong magnetic fields, and he was in this work situation for a number of years.
   
I know a couple in California who live in the coastal Mendocino Mountains and are apparently affected by scatter or spillover from a Pave Paws radar beam whose source is 150 miles away near Sacramento. The state health department won't touch this issue (because of the Air Force's involvement) and they dismiss it as being impossible because of the distance. In this family, the father and mother have suffered from a variety of illnesses such as those I have previously mentioned, but both children have had forms of cancer. One had leukemia, and the other had a non-malignant brain tumor removed.

Significantly, when these people have driven away from home and traveled tothe areas that are shadowed from the radar, their symptoms have ceased. From people in similar peril from the Pave Paws radar on Cape Cod, I have learned that the Air Force always excuses itself on the basis that the average radiation level is always measured to be very low. While correct, this is a subterfuge, because the pulse power of these sysems is half a megawatt.

Because our government is so blinded by the absurd notion that only biological heating is important, they completely ignore what pulses do to biological cells. This is an untenable situation, yet an FCC senior scientist told me that when the radiation limits are revised, they will probably be relaxed, rather than tightened - this in spite of the letter
from the RF Interagency Working Group to the IEEE RF safety committee complaining about the inadequacy of the standards to protect people.

This letter criticizes the standards on 14 different grounds, one of which is the absurdity of not weighting vital organs with extremely vulnerable tissues - such as the brain - more highly than, say, bone tissue. The implementation of the present standards involves considering radiation averaged over time and over spatial regions of the body - sometimes the
whole body.
   
Incidentally, the same FCC scientist told me (via forwarded Email) that my measurements on the ridge in New York were at least 50 times higher than their measurements - though I don't know whether their measurements were in the same places as mine or, indeed, whether they took any pains to make sure their measurements included a time when the cell phone traffic was maximum. I measured a large dynamic range of radiation density - both in terms of the variation of radiation density due to location and of the radiation density variation at a particular location over a time duration of many hours. The overall variation went from a low of less than a microwatt per square centimeter to a maximum of nearly 70 microwatts per
square centimeter on the day I visited.
   
I guess I got wound up here, but I just cannot countenance the official blindness of government institutions that are supposed to protect the populace, but, instead, act as promotional agencies. The FCC and similar organizations in
other countries should be split into an agency which promotes the technology and an independent, separately funded agency whose only fucntion is to regulate providers of the technology and to protect the public.

The precendent has already been set. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission had to be separated from the descendants of the Atomic Energy Commission to protect the public from inadequately regulated nuclear power systems. The National Transportation Safety Board had to be separated from the Federal Avaiation Administration to assure independent investigation of accidents in the travel industry and unbiased promulgation of adequate rules to protect the traveling public.

Note that the NTSB often criticizes the FAA because of its failure/slowness to implement the protective aviation rules recommended by NTSB. I think the time has come and is long overdue to separate the promotional and regulatory activities of the FCC.

Bill P. Curry, Ph.D.                 Physics is fun.
EMSciTek Consulting Co.      Trying to make a living!
22W101 McCarron Road,       Phone: (630) 858-9377
Glen Ellyn, IL 60137                 Fax: (630) 858-9159
Web page:                              http://www.EMSciTek.com
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