The Bad Science Brigade Is Looking to Expel Cell Towers
February 8th, 2009
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Building a cell phone tower on the site of a public school sounds like a good idea to me. The cell phone company gets to increase their infrastructure, the local users of their service get better reception and best of all, the lease money goes to the school. The money a phone company pays a property owner for the rights to operate a full sized transmission tower can be as high as thirty thousand dollars or more a year, for some sites. That’s enough to hire an additional teacher, buy a fifty mid-range computers, refurbish a few class rooms or update the school library.
However, if the school is in Florida, then there’s a group of assclowns who won’t let science stand in the way of their battle to expel cell towers from school grounds. This site come to me from a reader by the name of Greg. Greg happens to be an x-ray and MRI technician, so he obviously knows quite a bit about things like dialectric heating, ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, the inverse square law and the other aspects of this issue.
The group “Expel Cell Towers” is working hard to scare parents and has forced a school board meeting on the subject - you know, because the school board has nothing better to do.
They have also managed to get media coverage in Tampa Bay Online, Tampabay.com and The Saint Petersbergs Times. Of course, portraying this as a battle for the health of children.
They offer the following “Quick Facts”
There is no long term data to prove that cell tower emissions are not harmful – especially to children.
EVERY school in Hillsborough County is eligible to get a tower without notification to the community.
Many people will avoid buying a house near a school with a cell tower because they fear the unknown with regards to electrical lines and cell phone towers.
Cell Towers contribute 0.008% to the annual school budget. This is 80 cents/student per year.
Ah yes, a few common claims that are made include the whole argument that the tower emissions must be harmful because we don’t know that they’re not. This is, of course, not true at all. There have been many studies on the issue and, despite what people may like to tell you, living with RF radiation is nothing new. Then there’s the “no notification to the community” thing. I might point out that the schools also don’t have to notify the community when they get a new refrigerator for the cafeteria or any other piece of equipment that has no direct baring on them.
As far as people not wanting to buy houses near cell sites, there are two things that come to mind. First, this is nothing but a pat on the back to all the scaremongers. Aren’t you proud of yourself? You went and made everyone panic. Secondly, if this is actually true, then I definitely need to move to one of these sites. If it means I won’t have idiots for neighbors, then I’ll more than tolerate the site of the tower.
As for the claims of the school budget, they don’t offer much in the way of citations, there’s no way of confirming how valid that is, but given the information source for their other claims, I’ll just say that I’m skeptical about the accuracy.
One of the big claims they have made is that the emissions are too high to be safe. They complain that even though the emissions are orders of magnitude bellow the FCC’s safety limits they’re still dangerous, because the FCC hasn’t updated those limits since 1996. And ya know… stuff gets more dangerous over time, right?
But this is my FAVORITE of all their FAQ’s:
Q: The tower is only supposed to put off as much power as a light bulb
A: Each cell carrier that is added to a tower will emit up to 100 watts of power. With the ability to hold 5 carriers a tower can emit 500 Watts! A walkie talkie which uses similar technology usually puts out between 1/2 – 2 watts and is limited by the government to a maximum of 4 watts. Let’s not even talk about baby monitors…
Oh, no. Lets talk about baby monitors, because here is where my favorite law of geometry comes into the picture. And we can use this law to calculate just how much exposure you might get from something like a baby monitor. And while we’re at it, lets talk about some other very common sources of non-ionizing radiation!
A cell phone tower could theoretically put out 500 watts or more, if it has multiple services on it. It’s remotely possible, though unlikely that a cell phone tower could put out even more, if it happens to have other services on it as well, things like paging services, datacasting, local emergency service communications repeaters and so on.
So lets see how bad a cell phone tower could effect RF exposure with this nifty little calculator that you can use to calculate RF power density from an antenna of given gain and power.
Lets consider the following worst case situation for a cell tower:
Transmitter Power: 1000 watts – an exceptionally high transmitter power for a cell site, but not beyond the realm of possibility of the site hosts multiple services and is intended for large area coverage (such as in a sparsely populated area).
Distance: 50 feet – Extremely close, but we’ll assume it’s a short tower and the person is standing directly at the base. (That’s really short for a powerful transmitter, but we’ll say this hypothetical tower is on a hill to begin with, so it doesn’t need to be that tall.)
Gain: 4 dB Antenna gain measures how the antenna directs power in a given direction. Most cell phone towers direct their energy in a primarily horizontal plane, but since this is the worse case, we’ll assume the antenna is actually directing the power toward the ground area with a slight amount of directional gain.
Frequency: This doesn’t actually matter because it doesn’t change the power density. The only reason it’s relevant is affects the standards for acceptable exposure. We’ll use 850 Mhz, since that’s one of the major wireless phonebands.
The result: 0.2204 mw/cm2
Now, lets try a more reasonable cell tower:
This time, the power will be 500 watts, which is still quite a bit, but not beyond reason for a suburban tower. The gain will be 2 dB, which would represent an antenna that radiates slightly more power toward the horizon than it does toward the area around the base of the antenna. The distance to the transmitter will be 80 feet, which is about the distance from a person standing a few feet outside the equipment area of a 60-70 foot tall cell tower. (This is still on the high end of transmission power and the low end of tower height.)
The result: 0.0272 mw/cm2
These are both well within the safety limits of 2.84 mw/cm2 for a controlled area and 0.57 mw/cm2 for exposure to the general public. These standards, I may add, are extremely conservative to begin with.
Now a few other situations for comparison:
A 3 watt GMRS walkie-talkie held at arms length:
0.1214 mw/cm2
A 1 watt baby monitor, next to a crib, two feet from the baby:
0.0910 mw/cm2
Standing next to a police car, five feet from a 25 watt dispatch radio antenna:
0.3640 mw/cm2
Sitting at on a school bus, with the two-way radio antenna just outside your window at about 4 feet away:
1.0236 mw/cm2
S0 even a baby sleeping near the baby monitor is in an area of considerably higher power density. If you’re the cop whose radioing in a call then you’re orders of magnitude higher in terms of power density. In reality, these numbers are somewhat conservative. It’s not unusual for mobile radios like those used on police cars and shool busses to be much more powerful than the ones listed. In North Dakota, for example, all public safety and municipal mobile radios are a minimum of 100 watts power.
So, what we see is that the actual RF field exposure from many common sources, even baby monitors, can be much much higher than that of a cell tower, even if we use the most liberal estimates for what the radiative power might be. There are baby monitors that can put out a good watt or two, especially the newer video ones. Four watts is the maximum generally found in walkie-talkies and CB radios, but that’s not universal and there are some consumer devices that put out more than that. Mobile radio networks commonly use much higher power because they operate over much greater distances and may communicate from radio to radio without infrastructure needed.
And at the risk of starting another panic, let me just point something out. This is a typical school bus setup:
(don’t worry. I rode on a bus with a big two-way radio and kids have been riding on buses with such radios for decades. Nobody’s head has exploded thus far)
You can tell these guys what you think by visiting and commenting on their blog. (Warning: They haven’t yet figured out the concept of resizing images)
Also, you can contact the media or any of the persons they have listed on their site and tell them how you feel about bad science.
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 1:24 am and is filed under Bad Science, Education, Just LAME, Not Even Wrong, Obfuscation, Politics, Quackery, inverse square. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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February 8th, 2009 at 3:32 am
“There is no long term data to prove that cell tower emissions are not harmful – especially to children.”
There is no long term data to prove that eating cucumbers are not harmful – especially to children.
Idiots.
facepalm.jpg
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February 8th, 2009 at 3:55 am
I don’t know by what standards you could prove that something is NOT harmful. By all reasonable standards I think we have with low power radio emissions because it’s something that has been studied so many times through and through and some of the studies now have followed people for close to 30 years which is more than enough time for any delayed response to at least state to manifest.
Anyway, it’s not like anyone has presented a shred of evidence to make us presume it would be harmful.
It creates small currents and vibrates water molecules and might cause a tiny bit of heat but it’s too low in any current to be of notice. Why should they have updated the standards? It does the same thing today it did in 1996. It did the same goddamned thing with Nick Tesla was fooling with it one hundred years ago.
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February 8th, 2009 at 3:56 am
Stingray said:
There is no long term data to prove that sunlight is not harmful, especially to children. In fact, there is long term data to prove sunlight is harmful. Sunlight causes skin cancer, cataracts, vision damage, sunburn.
We best all panic and lock the children away in the basement.
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February 8th, 2009 at 5:03 am
Well look, there are scientific studies (mostly funded by the phone industry) which say that its safe and scientific studies that raise a lot of concerns. Which are right? I think it’s probably the ones that say there are problems. I admit I don’t know 100% and nobody knows 100%, but why risk it? If we’re all wrong fine but since we just don’t know right now they should be moved away from schools. Children are growing and that is why their bodies are more endangered by anything like this. This is something we should be concerned about because it is not natural and our bodies were not meant to deal with living near this artificial radiation that is being made. Children are a lot less healthy then they used to be and we need to find the reason or at least try to stop encouraging this kind of problem development near schools or homes.
I’d ask you to take this down because it makes the writer look like an idiot because he or she does not have any idea about this and is not literate enough to comment. Also, this kind of item is confusing and is going to make things harder for the school board which is now working to eliminate the towers. Once that is done then we can take a breather and start to look at things but first safety is the priority and you don’t have any business on this one. Stick to your own business please.
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February 8th, 2009 at 5:37 am
BEJ 74VT2FLA99 said:
Don’t you just love the monstrous arrogance displayed here? BEJ doesn’t wish for any contrary view to his/her own to be publically aired, and very much wants this post removed. It’s nobody’s business but BEJ’s that school boards should be lobbied on this issue.
Someone really should contact the school board in question and give them some scientific ammunition for the retention of the tower.
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February 8th, 2009 at 9:31 am
I don’t know. It seems to me that facts are straight forward and clear. Real numbers. As someone who deals with RF and EMF interference issues this post seems correct and straight forward. No “studies” needed to confuse the issue with FUD created by people whose knowledge of RF is less than complete. But letting facts get in the way of your bad policies is of course something that should not be allowed. This is still the US and we still have the first amendment.
BEJ 74VT2FLA99 said:
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February 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am
I plugged in some figures for cellphone user into the RF calculator (1 watt, 0.2 foot distance). That gives a result of 2.1415 mw/cm2 which is 1 or 2 orders of magnitude higher than worst case from a cell tower.
In the real world, cell towers use gain antennas with the main lobe aligned to the horizon for maximum range. The area near the tower certainly has higher signal strength than distant areas because of proximity, but in calculations you would probably use a gain of -6 to -10 db and still be conservative if you are within 3x tower height (300 feet for a 100 ft tower).
Another advantage of having lots of cell towers is that coverage improves – both the cell tower and the cell phone reduce power to the minimum necessary which reduces interference to adjacent cells. A cell tower on a school property may well reduce RF exposure to students from their own cell phones.
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February 8th, 2009 at 11:25 am
The numbers you have there seem reasonable for the absolute worst case scenario of a cell tower that is of very high power and has unusually poorly aligned and inefficient antennas, is on the short side and is otherwise a perfect storm of factors to produce the highest exposure reasonably possible. Brad is right that the area around a tower typically is in a portion of the beam that would result in negative gain. You only really would see omnidirectional antennas for very small footprint cell sites, like the repeaters for areas in cities.
In the real world, the power density bellow a typical cell tower which is hosting multiple carriers is going to average less than .001 mw/cm^3 but could be as high as .002 in a few cases. That’s right at the tower when it is on full power and is handling conversations on all channels. In all cases it is less than .01 and possibly substantially less. It’s not uncommon to be less than .001 which might be recorded as zero because it’s below the reading of many meters and its also close enough to the ambient power density to be considered to be zero.
If a measurement at the base of a tower was anything higher than .005 or so, my first thought would be that there was RF leakage or a lose fitting somewhere in the line. This is not so much of a safety issue as it is the quality of the service and the effectiveness of the tower.
Also, by the way, school buses have had two-way radios that are considerably more powerful than cell phones since the 1960’s and some places mandate them in all buses. School districts commonly have high power base station radios in the school office or somewhere else nearby and the antennas are not as high. I’m not saying that this is a danger to anyone, because they are well within the safety limits by a good amount. Schools may have other high power radio transmitters and it’s not that unusual. A ham radio club might have a goof 1500 watts coming out of an antenna on the side of the school or a small college radio station antenna could be even higher. I’ve seen schools that have microwave video links to get educational television programing relayed, especially if the school has multiple buildings then there could be some kind of wireless link for the cctv or PA system or something like that.
None of this is any concern, really, but it just goes to show that this whole cell antenna thing is idiotic to the nth degree because these morons are totally unaware that we’ve been living in a world full of radio antennas for most of the 20th century. Most of the older analog systems are a lot more powerful than cell phones or the trunked radio systems that are more recent. There are plenty of places that still use analog VHF dispatch radio systems because they work very well and there’s no reason to replace them.
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February 8th, 2009 at 11:46 am
BEJ 74VT2FLA99 said:
Apparently you think we are as stupid as you are.
We both know, you and I, that this has nothing to do with the kid’s safety, and everything to do with property values, because this is the sort of thing that can be a problem when selling a house. In fact this is at the bottom of all the opposition to radio towers, except for the few jackholes that get the ball rolling. I’ll bet that was part of the campaign, as least the word-of-mouth part. I know because it is always trotted out when there isn’t enough support for the ’safety issue’.
BTW you have a worse grasp of English tense agreement than I do, and I’m a Francophone.
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February 8th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
DV82XL said:
I will say that I am at least somewhat sympathetic to the argument that cell towers are an eyesore or that they can reduce value by putting a big industrial-looking metal tower in the middle of an otherwise unobscured vista. That’s a valid argument – not a valid argument against towers, but an argument in favor of trying to take reasonable steps to reduce their visual impact. This can be done by setting them back a bit away from residential areas or (even better) by using church steeples, water towers, old smoke stacks or other structures to host the transmitters.
However, when idiots play the ‘radiation’ card, then IMHO, they lose their legitimacy to contest the tower on visual grounds. At that point they’re being totally dishonest and I have no tolerance for that. The other thing is when it comes to property values and the idea that cell towers could hurt it because of fear of the health effects, don’t blame the tower, blame the idiots who are perpetuating that fear campaign!
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February 8th, 2009 at 1:20 pm
If the concern is visual then there are better ways to address the issue. Most cell phone companies are willing to take reasonable steps to reduce the impact of the transmission towers. In general, the companies prefer to keep the peace and do what is necessary to appease the community, if the alternative is being faced with a fight before a zoning commission, bad publicity etc.
Here is my advice; write to the company that owns and operates the tower. Be civil and polite. Do not start threatening them with any protests or legal action or act like you’re looking to pick a fight. However, do use some indirect references that imply you might consider further action if things don’t change.
for example (and you can use this directly if you like)
“My neighbors and I have had some concerns about the aesthetic impacts of the tower you operate on Oak Street. The tower is easily visible from my home and the surrounding area. Some of us feel that it was unfair to build the tower without any input from the property owners in the area. This area is zoned for residential use and we feel that such visual impact may infringe on property rights of those who bought realestate before the tower was built.
We request that your company look into options for reducing the visual impact of the tower to those who live in the area. “
If a company reads a letter, especially if they get more than one, they are fairly likely to consider a compromise of lowering the tower a little, moving it back further or somehow disguising it. The important thing to get it noticed is to mention words like “zoning” and “property rights” becasue that implies that they could have a situation on their hands if they don’t respond by doing something. The company would almost always rather settle things like that without taking it to the next level and facing litigation or zoning hearings or something. They just don’t want to deal with that if its avoidable.
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February 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
A school site cell tower would also give the school the opportunity to install a NWS alert siren (useful here in the Midwest, perhaps not so much in Florida), install antennas for a student club ham radio station, install security cameras or webcams, all sorts of interesting ideas.
While I remain open to the possibility that the 2 mW/cm² that one gets from using a cellphone next to one’s head might be incrementally damaging in the long term, there is as of yet no convincing evidence that even exposure at that level is dangerous. The FCC’s exposure studies (see OET bulletins 56 and 65, required reading for any wireless licensee anyway) are based on whole-body models and may be inadequate for wavelengths shorter than 1 meter, but at this point we don’t have any science that clearly indicates that the FCC’s models are inadequate.
I think in most cases the problem is that people think cell towers are ugly (and many of them are, although they are getting better at making them less so), but they think that argument won’t fly and so they rely on the FUD objection instead as that’s perceived as more likely to work. And besides, think of the children!
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February 8th, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Kelly Martin said:
Utility poles and wires are an eyesore as well, it’s just that we have gotten used to these things as part of the visual landscape. This whole issue has been permitted to get out of hand by pandering to these people in the beginning.
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February 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Well, well so you’re THAT Kelly Martin….
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February 8th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
All these parents act and seem so worried about these towers seems so very hypocritical to me…I noticed no one mentioned the wireless wii games systems and xbox and such… Go ahead and take those items from your kids too…. As he said best lock them in a basement, which would be sick, because life has all kinds of potentially dangerous things including falling so dont let them walk or run. Wait… dont some of these same kids walk to school alone and can be snatched and taken in a second? I dont see these over protective “wonderful parents” walking them all to school? They are all talk and more worried about the lookes of their homes rather then taking the real time it takes to get facts about their own children….These are the same parents that complain when they have to donate a dollar for a school fundraiser or a party or some fuction for them to have some fun at school….whats up with the double standards here…. How very sad……
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February 8th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
Kelly Martin said:
If I had been asked a year or so ago whether or not there is any danger from exposure to RF fields bellow the levels of thermal dangers, perhaps as much as 2 mW/cm^2, I think I would have responded similarly: there is no evidence that clearly indicates this to be the case, but it’s possible that there is some long term risk that has not been detected or that there are effects not documented.
However, having addressed the issue of dangers from RF fields on numerous occasions, I’ve gone out and taken a look at some of the data that is avaliable. There have been some extremely large studies, some which followed groups for very long periods of time, even some which have analyzed populations like real estate agents who have been heavy cell phone users continuously since the early 1980’s – initially using large and powerful analog phones. There have been animal studies, tissue studies, in controlled environments, meta analysis of data and numerous investigations on numerous levels.
There has been a lot of publicity for the various studies or groups that have come out and said they found an increase in risk but on review all of these have been rejected as being fundamentally flawed methodology or controls.
I think at this point we are as certain as we can reasonably be that there is no long term risk, or that if there is one, it is so tiny, so miniscule, that it can’t even stand out against the statistical noise in our most well controled studies. There have even been some very well done studies that found those who heavily used cell phones seemed to have slightly better health in general. While this tended to bellow the numbers that are considered signifficant in those situations, I think you could make a good argument that based on what we know, there is a higher probability that lack of exposure to rf fields is harmful.
I’d say in the end we’re about as sure as we can reasonably be that low power rf is safe and we’re absolutely certain that it is less dangerous than sunlight.
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February 8th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
DV82XL said:
At the risk of sounding like an idiot, is this someone I should know of?
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February 8th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
Nate Gr8 said:
I think he has me confused with the actress. I’m not nearly so cute.
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February 8th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Kelly Martin said:
No I’m not, I know you as the Wikipedian Kelly Martin, dear.
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February 8th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
DV82XL said:
My condolences, then. Sane people keep their distance from Wikipedia, as I learned far too late.
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February 8th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Kelly Martin said:
I left too, a little before you did, enraged with the workings of the place. BTW, I cannot be counted as one of your legion of enemies from there. What few dealings we had were civil and productive.
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February 8th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Lest anyone think that that theory that this type of opposition is all about property values, I present the following for your consideration:
The Impact of Wireless Towers on Residential Property Values from the Assessment Journal.
And
The impact of cell phone towers on house prices in residential neighborhoods. a reprint on Entrepreneur.com from the Appraisal Journal.
In both cases it was found that real selling prices were on the average 10% depressed over local norms in the presence of tower, but more importantly for us, the second article reports that the perceived potential reduction of value by local homeowners is 20% on average.
Anyone who claims this isn’t driving the show here is a fool.
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February 8th, 2009 at 8:38 pm
Well, that might be the case, but it still does not justify lying. Also I’d be interested to find out if there’s any way of determining how much of this is related to the actual visual impact of the tower and how much might be related to perceived health impacts. If it’s mostly the later then that just proves that this missinformation campaign is to blame for starting this and fanning the fires. In that case then the towers should not be blamed or removed as an appeasement to ignorance. The answer is to address the silly myths that cause the problem.
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February 8th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
drbuzz0 said:
No question
drbuzz0 said:
For the homeowner it is six of one to half a dozen of the other, because keep in mind it is the fear of reduction of value that drives the protests, and thus it becomes self-fulfilling. However it is plainly obvious that without the ‘health fear’ component, the visual impact issue would be minor, as feeds back off the other.
Look, I know the health issues are a crock, and I don’t give a damn if I can see one of these things out of my window. Like I said, it’s like utility poles, they vanish after awhile anyway. BUT having said that I would not consider buying an investment property backing on to a high voltage transmission line right-of-way, or in plain sight of a cell tower, because as an investor I have to take into account that this will be a negative feature that will adversely effect the value of this property and the number of potential offers I would get when trying to sell.
This is the major impact of public FUD of this sort, even if you are a total skeptic, and comfortably familiar enough with the subject that you know it’s a crock, most people can’t afford to make a stand when it comes to the biggest investment that they have.
What is needed here is for the whole industry to get together and launch a full PR assault on the myths, such that you isolate the nut-bars, and remove the leverage that they use in these situations. Education is everything here.
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February 8th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
DV82XL said:
It’s a crock, and that’s for sure and if they really wanted to get this fixed then I think Gordon has the right idea on it, like trying to compromise. In this situation, however, is it just property owners in the area? maybe that’s who started it but I think that they seem to have gotten their scaremongering to get more people on board who might not even be in sight of it.
One other thing: This could backfire badly and make things much much worse. Lets say they lose the battle and the tower stays up. Then guess what they have done: They’ve given the ‘danger’ of the tower tons of publicity. People looking to buy property in the area might have barely noticed the cell tower before, but now, they’ll automatically realize that it’s the place that got all that media coverage about the controversal cell tower.
They’re drawing attention to a negative feature near their property in the hopes it will be removed. What if it’s not? That’s going to make things WAY WAY worse.
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February 8th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
DV82XL said:
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February 8th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
DV82XL said:
OOps. I double-posted the quote. Now here’s what I was going to say:
Why would it bother you if the property had the cell tower or the transmission lines up to begin with? I could see if they were put up after you bought the property, but if you buy the property with the lines or the pole there to begin with then it would be factored into the price you pay to buy it from the start.
That’s like an example I was talking with some of my friends. If there is a house that something happened in that’s well known as a horrible incident, like maybe it’s a house where there were several murders or a well known suicide or something and it has a reputation for that, then some people would not buy it and property could be really depreciated for that. If that happened somewhere I wanted to move I’d jump at the chance to buy a house for a lot less just because some silly superstitions are tied to it.
If I were looking to buy a house in the area near a cell tower, I might make a big deal about it in the hopes of driving the price down
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February 8th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
Q said:
Without underlining it too hard Q old boy, that’s what these people are bitching about. You also have to consider that it’s not just the price dropping that’s the issue, it’s also the number of offers that you might get at all with something like this.
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February 8th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
There is also a difference which depends heavily on what you intend to do with a piece of property. If it’s an investment or if it has more practical purposes.
Like going back to the house where the gruesome homicide occurred as an example: if I saw the property as having investment potential or some place I didn’t think I’d be staying in for that long a time then I would have to consider that even if the history didn’t bother me, it would come back to haunt (no pun intended) me when I go to sell the house again and the fact that I got a good deal may be outweighed by the difficulty in selling it.
On the other hand, if I wanted the house because I intended to live there for many years or maybe the rest of my life, then the fact that I could get it cheap would matter a lot more than the investment issue.
I agree with Gregor though: This is only a minor issue to begin with that prospective buyers might not even notice and they are turning it into a HUGE issue by making such a big stink over it. If they manage to get rid of the tower then that’s fine, but if they lose in the end, then what? Not only do they have to live with it, but they’ve made sure nobody will forget it!
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February 8th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
drbuzz0 said:
I could not agree with you more! There is now doubt in my mind that this all first started as “NIMBY” issue in South Tampa where the founder of expelcelltowers.org is from. After his group successfully overturned the South Tampa Schools decision to erect a 100+ foot cell tower on school property the group became empowered. Now Expel is trying to take down existing cell towers on ALL school properties….Some of which have been in place for 10 years or more. My area has only two cell towers (Both are on school properties) If we don’t win this fight my community will lose all cell service to roughly 2000 people.
It’s not just the school board that needs to stand up to this group of zealots the entire state of Florida needs to step in, otherwise what will be next? T.V. transmitters, FM Radio, HAM Radio’s near schools. The Tampa Bay area is now boasting about its new 1.25 million Watt weather radar: http://www.baynews9.com/content/36/2009/1/4/420986.html?title=Coming+to+BN9:+
What will it take to end the madness and stop this group for good?
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February 9th, 2009 at 12:00 am
What puts the icing on this, is that in my school district they put towers on all the schools several years ago for cellphone service, because the board cut a deal with the provider to give them a broadband connection between schools. In fact I recall a town had its arm twisted by the parent’s committee of one school when it was being difficult about zoning.
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February 9th, 2009 at 7:38 am
The oddest thing of all is that siting cell towers far away from schools will actually increase the amount of radiation those children will be subject to each day. The reason is quite simple: The amount of radiation one receives from a transmission tower is negligible compared to that one receives from the handset through normal use. Closer to the tower your phone will reduce its output, so people living closer to towers actually are exposed to less readiation than those living far away…
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February 9th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Krist said:
That has been mentioned, but I kinda think that if you tried to explain it to some it might go too far over their heads. People have short attention spans you know
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February 10th, 2009 at 11:03 am
BEJ 74VT2FLA99 said:
I love that, I’m going to start using “take this down” in my searches, looking for blogs that have intelligence behind them. You got that back in your “10 things for environmentalists…” thread, didn’t you? I think it’s a sign that you’re speaking truth, these idiots just can’t handle it…
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February 21st, 2009 at 2:56 am
Updates? Is there any word about how successful this effort is and how successful the opposition is?
I see nothing new on their page.
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August 15th, 2010 at 6:50 am
From our local school board policy on cell phones: ‘Students may not use, display, or have in operational mode any telecommunications device at school during school hours. While on a school campus, all electronic devices must be in the OFF position during school hours. Any electronic device that rings, beeps, vibrates, or otherwise indicates the receiving of a signal during school hours shall be confiscated.’
If it is a safe assumption that many or most schools have similar regulations, what’s the point in giving kids cell phones? Aren’t we just setting them up for problems? And since the school office has landlines which can be used in case of an emergency, I’m not clear on why kids would need cell phones at school anyway.
So my beef with this actually has nothing to do with the radition but instead is that this could encourage more cell phone use in the schools. To erect a cell tower on a school campus and then ban the use of cell phones there is rather hypocritical. But kids don’t need cell phones (period) – and they especially don’t need cell phones at school.
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August 15th, 2010 at 7:21 am
@Rob O.
I don’t see that the two things have anything to do with each other.
The school’s policy is in place to make the school a better learning environment. It doesn’t mean that kids can’t have cell phones just that they can’t, in any way, be used during school hours. They could, quite legitimately, be used after shool to arrange afterschool activities, etc. Whether or not a kid should have a cell phone is a decision for the parents and no one else. As long as they are not a distraction, the school has no grounds to complain about them.
If the school property is a good place to place a cell tower, I do not see this as a legitimate reason to prevent it.
The idea that being able to see a nearby cell tower might make the temptation to use cell phones (that they are allowed to have anyway) too strong to resist doesn’t give kids enough credit. If they can’t follow the rules, keeping others from having good cell reception won’t help them follow the rules.
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August 15th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Rob O. said:
The general goal of phone companies is to provide reliable contiguous coverage in populated areas, and of course that includes schools. When I went to high school cell phones worked well in the school and school area. At the time, it was less of an issue whether students had them because this was ten years ago and they were too expensive for most students to carry their own phones, although some had them.
Phones will work in the school area either way. If the tower is banned from the grounds, it will be served by other local towers.
Sure, phones are generally banned from classrooms because they’re a distraction. That does not have much to do with the sight of the tower, which could generate quite a bit of income for the district.
By the way: At the school I went to, phones were tolerated after regular class hours, which was quite useful when staying late for clubs or sports and needing to notify parents that you’d be late to come home or needed a ride.
A lot of schools have wifi these days too. That would be an even more tempting means of getting access to high speed data for devices and downloading music and videos IMHO. Of course, school wifi is usually supposed to only be used by authorized devices for legitimate purposes. Given how insecure most wifi networks are these days, I doubt anyone would be stopped from getting on with their iPod or laptop. I’d assume there are rules against that too though.
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August 15th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Chuck P. said:
No, that’s the point I was (poorly) attempting to make: I understand that one has little to do with the other, but it would outwardly seem quite contradictory for a school to have a cell tower on-site, yet not allow the use of cell phones on campus. Perhaps it seems that way because the hospital I work for has an AT&T cell transmission tower on-site AND, as a result of that lease arrangement, offer a special discounted rate on that carrier’s cell coverage plans for us employees.
Actually, I have no issue with cell towers being erected on school campuses. In fact, I really like that it’s a way for schools to pull in monies that can be used to keep underfunded interests afloat.
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January 20th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Hello there, just doing some research for my Tampa 4g website. Can’t believe the amount of information out there. Wasn’t what I was looking for, but cool site. Have a good day.
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January 20th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Carole @ Tampa 4G Wireless said:
No you’re not, you’re a low life spammer who needs to have a magnetron pointed at them.
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