Excellent letter from June 15th written by William Goldstein, General Counsel of Maharishi University of Management to U.S. Cellular president Jack Rooney.We need more lawyers engaging in this dialogue and actively pursuingcompensation for those who have been injured.[ Wireless Victims Lawyer http://wireless-victims-lawyer.info/index.html ] Carl

Cell Towers: Another Inconvenient TruthbyWill Merydithon 20 June 2009activism Tags:cell towers,Fairfield Iowa,FCC,health,Tobacco smoking

This is a reprint of a letter written by William Goldstein, General Counsel of Maharishi University of Management. This letter recently appeared in the FairfieldLedger as a PAID advertisement. I am publishing it here for free.http://fairfieldvoice.com/2009/06/20/cell-towers-another-inconvenient-truth-an-open-letter-to-us-cellular-president-jack-rooney/June 15, 2009Dear Mr. Rooney:

Big Tobacco and Big Cell Towers

A very significant thing happened last week. In addition to your letter toour community printed in the Thursday Fairfield Ledger, the House voted301-97 to pass federal legislation stringently regulating the tobaccoindustry, following the Senate’s 79-17 vote. That marked a greatachievement after a decades long battle.But even more noteworthy is that,

contrary to its competitors, PhillipMorris - the nation’s largest tobacco company - came out in supportof the bill

saying it was behind tough but fair regulation. Rep. Henry

Waxman, D-Calif., sponsor of the bill and committee chairman at thememorable 1994 hearing where tobacco industry executives deniednicotine was addictive, relished the long-sought victory:“I think we are today at the last gasp of the tobacco industry’s efforts toprotect their profits at the expense of the health and lives of the Americanpeople and to get children to take up this habit.”That 1994 hearing seems to have taken place so long ago. We havelearned so much so quickly on the science of cancer and smoking. But itwas only 15 years ago that what we now know to be a dishonestcorporate statement was glibly justified on the basis of their being a lackof any credible scientific evidence that smoking was addictive.

The profitmotive overrode any sense of corporate responsibility, of honesty,or of prudence.

The smoke is clearing now, but only after millions of dollars of lawsuits,cigarette taxes, thousands of lung cancer deaths, and surgeon generalnotices. The federal government is only now stamping out the lastvestiges of that smoky 1994 thinking.

Any Lessons Learned?

It would be comforting to think that we, consumers and corporateexecutives, have learned something from that costly exercise.Consumers cannot wait until the government creates laws to takeresponsibility for their health. Corporations cannot wait for government tocreate laws to take responsibility for their customer’s health. Theconsequences are potentially fatal for both.

The painful reality is that if we do not self-regulate but wait for government regulation to recognize and fix such a problem, thehuman and social costs will be so mammoth that we will never make them up

, let alone recapture the lives of those who have beencompromised by our shortsightedness. And we will have Big Brother mandating solutions to the problem that we could have better and morequickly fixed ourselves.

No Credible Evidence of Health Risks? Your statement, Mr. Rooney, that “to date, there is no crediblescientific evidence that cell phone towers pose a risk to people’shealth” is a public statement you may feel compelled to make.

Youmay feel confident that it is true. You may feel that, if it were not true,your corporation’s interests would be at serious risk. You may not wish toentertain any risky discussion on the possibilities that it is not true now,or may be revealed as untrue in the future. You may fear you will beviewed as a traitor to your industry if you should truly and openly engageon this real debate.

However, whatever is the case, a large and growing number of developed countries and thousands of scientists and doctors have,with the support of voluminous and expanding scientific research,come to a contrary conclusion.

The evidence is not merely credible. Itis mounting and of very serious concern. We can not put our heads in thesand, however inconvenient this truth may be.

The Credible Evidence

To illustrate this point:

The national laws, among others, of NewZealand, Italy, China, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Switzerland,Austria, and New South Wales, Australia are considerably morestringent than the current laws in the US

and would likely not permitthe Depot Street tower installation, which is sited within 1500 feet of three schools (St. Mary’s, Lincoln Elementary, and Maharishi School)and within 50 feet of residences and offices.

The European Parliament, representing all the member nations of the European Union, “concerned about the continuing uncertaintiesabout possible health risks concerning electromagnetic radiation,”adopted a report on April 2 of this year, by a vote of 559 to 22

providing that antennas, mobile phone masts and other electromagneticemitting devices should be set within a specific distance from schoolsand health institutions. The Parliament called for stricter regulation andprotection for residents and consumers. “Industry actors are beingencouraged to use their power to give better protection to people livingnearby and to prevent a proliferation of poorly positioned masts andtransmitters. The placement of antennas, mobile phone masts, and high-voltage power lines should be negotiated between industry actors, publicauthorities, and residents’ associations in order to minimize health risksand legal action cases. This will also ensure that EMF-transmittingdevices are kept clear of schools, crèches, retirement homes, and healthcare institutions.”

The adverse health effects documented at levels below theFCC guidelines you claim your tower is in compliance with includealtered white blood cells in school children; childhood leukemia;impaired motor function, reaction time, and memory; headaches;dizziness; fatigue; weakness; and insomnia.

This is based on numerous epidemiological studies of people living near cell phone antennas in places including Spain, the Netherlands, Israel,Germany, and Austria. In all of the studies, exposures are orders of magnitude below the FCC guideline. [I will transmit to you separately thereference and citations to these studies]. In 2007, Dr. Henry Lai, at theUniversity of Washington, had already documented over 40 scientificstudies showing adverse biological effects of radio frequency radiation atlow intensities below the FCC standards [citations separatelytransmitted].