Biddeford residents must oppose cell tower

A petition paper to gather signatures of those opposed to the cellphone tower antenna that city councilors and the mayor want to install on Hill Street (.3 miles from the junior high school, .4 from the Biddeford Primary, and .6 miles from John Kennedy School) was circulated this summer, but due to multiple factors, the deadline to submit enough valid signatures was missed.

Therefore, when we went to the city council meeting on Sept. 2, the subject was not on the agenda for councilors to vote about placing it on the ballot for referendum. Could this have been a deliberate oversight to ensure the failure of the petition? I really hope not, but it certainly seems so.

However, so many citizens researched and voiced concern over the danger to people living in nearby homes and schools at the Sept. 2 council meeting that the council decided to add it to the agenda for discussion at the next council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 16 at 6 p.m. in City Hall.

Here is a bit of what the research says concerning the dangers of these towers: The current U.S. standard for radiation exposure from cellphone towers is 580-1,000 microwatts per sq. cm. (mW/cm2), among the least protective in the world. More progressive European countries have set standards 100 to 1,000 times lower than the U.S. Compare Australia at 200 microwatts, Russia, Italy, and Toronto, Canada at 10; China at 6; and Switzerland at 4. In Salzburg, Austria the level is .1 microwatts.

Scientists and advocacy groups say that the current “safe” FCC standards are based on 1985 research. These five studies considered only the “thermal,” or heating effects of the radiation. In other words, the level at which the radiation would heat tissue or “cook” a person, in the same manner that a microwave oven works.

The FCC levels may ensure our tissues are not “cooked,” but the same levels fail to address long-term, chronic exposure at low levels, or what is called “non-thermal” (to which students at schools would be exposed). More recent research on non-thermal, long-term exposure found that people can have brain cancer, leukemia, memory impairment, DNA breakdown, infertility, birth defects, and neurological problems with microwatts at much lower levels.

It will be important to have a large show of people who are against this cell tower placement at the next council meeting. Then the councilors and the mayor will see that they are being held accountable for this action by their constituents. We will not forget.

Meanwhile, people should call the councilors who voted for this dangerous cell tower antenna, despite its known dangers, to tell them how they feel about it. They can be persuaded to put concerns of their constituents first if they receive a great amount of phone calls voicing opposition to their action.

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