"The Sutro Tower is a prominent structure on an elevated site in San Francisco. Since 1973 it has provided radio and TV signals for the San Francisco Bay region. There have been long-standing concerns about the health effects of this high-powered transmitter located in the centre of a large urban population.

"The a priori hypothesis is that RF/MW radiation is a Ubiquitous Universal Genotoxic Carcinogen. This is based on a number of occupational studies and previous studies that have shown elevated cancer rates in residential populations living in the vicinity of radar and RF/MW broadcast towers. It is supported by many laboratory studies showing that ELF and RF/MW signals damage DNA. Thus it is predicted that at residential levels of RF/MW exposure cancer rates will increase in the vicinity of the Sutro Tower. This is tested by using the childhood cancer data-set from 1973-1988 with residential locations analysed to see if there is elevation of cancer and possible dose-response relationships. All of the analyses support and together confirm the hypothesis, and the radial patterns eliminate potential confounding factors.

"The objective of this study is to test the a priori hypothesis by analysing the spatial distribution of childhood cancer to determine its relationships to the emissions of RF/MW radiation from the Sutro Tower. The Sutro Tower is 977ft high, on a hill that is 921ft high and the top of the tower is at 1898ft (577m) above sea level . . .

"This is a 24 page article from The Federation of Canadian Municipalities telling us what we can expect over the next while: more cell transmitters, less municipal and citizen involvement, and the opening of the cell industry to foreign investment without control or limit. This full scale onslaught on local communities is being inflicted upon people even though risks are becoming more apparent, and even when the government is calling for more studies.

"Will a surge in foreign investment in telecommunications infrastructure lead to increased costs to municipalities to accommodate increased access to municipal rights of way? For the municipal sector, the real question is "Will the federal government's stated objective of increasing the scope of foreign investment in Canadian telecommunications unleash another wave of new investment in infrastructure similar to that post-1993? And will that will put comparable pressure on municipalities to accommodate the increase in telecom companies seeking access to municipal rights-of-way (ROW)?

"This brief paper sets out to provide some answers . . ."

• BACKGROUND 
• SNAPSHOT OF THE TELECOM INDUSTRY
• COMPETITION IN THE TELECOM INDUSTRY 
• FOREIGN INVESTMENT RULES
• FUTURE DEMAND AND TRENDS
• POPULATION GROWTH IS ROBUST IN CANADIAN METROPOLITAN AREAS
• NEW FIBRE TECHNOLOGY
• WHAT POLICY ON NEW FOREIGN INVESTMENT AND COMPETITION COULD MUNICIPALITIES ADOPT?
• CONCLUSION

"Several years ago, the psychologist D. 0. Hebb appeared at an interdisciplinary symposium and read a paper entitled Alice in Wonderland, or, Psychology among the Biological Sciences. The thrust of Dr. Hebb's remarks is that the psychologist does not communicate as easily with his confreres in biology as does, for example, the geneticist with the botanist or the physiologist with the biologic chemist. That the psychologist speaks a technical language that differs from that of the biologists is a pervasive and mischief-making fact, although the burden of guilt is far from his alone. He deals with concepts and problems that are unique to the intact organism, particularly those that attach to what David Hume had the courage to call the "operations of the mind" (and what the modern experimental psychologist often clothes in such vagaries as "higher nervous activity"). To the extent that cognitive processes, sentience, thinking, emotions, and feelings, or however else you wish to label the mind's operations, enter into the organism's reactions to physical events in its internal or external environment, a problem is at hand that requires the minis- trations of the behavioral scientist. With respect to the many unresolved questions about the biologic effects of microwave radiation, the psychologist is not going to answer them by himself, neither is the biologist nor the engineer. Nor will these three would-be-resolvers of the microwave riddle make much headway until they learn to speak each other's languages and enter into those happy collaborations that alone will make for a successful quest."

As the high tech age takes over more and more of our lives manufacturers will go to any lengths to get the sometimes scarce minerals that go into them. Tantalum is one such rare ingredient. Few of us know that in the middle of Africa much human suffering is created in the pursuit of it.

Swiss Com is Switzerland's leading telecoms provider, with 5.8 million mobile customers and around 1.6 million broadband connections. It is partially owned by the Swiss Government and has an "A" top business viability rating from Standard & Poors for investment purposes.

The following Swiss Com document has specific wording on pages 2/3 regarding DNA damage and other important health issues. Also, it was after the government reviewed and approved the Swiss Com patent that they recommended wired connections wherever possible, and definitely in homes, schools, and anywhere that people spend time.

 "The risk of damage to health through electrosmog has also become better understood as a result of more recent and improved studies. When, for example, human blood cells are irradiated with electromagnetic fields, clear damage to hereditary material has been demonstrated and there have been indications of an increased cancer risk . . "

 ". . . Thus it has been possible to show that mobile radio radiation can cause damage to genetic material, in particular in human white blood cells, whereby both the DNA itself is damaged and the number of chromosomes changed. This mutation can consequently lead to increased cancer risk. In particular, it could also be shown that this destruction is not dependent upon temperature increases, i. e. is non-thermal."

Out of great concern for the health of our fellow human beings do we - as established physicians of all fields, especially that of environmental medicine - turn to the medical establishment and those in public health and political domains, as well as to the public . . .

" . . . Above all, we are, as doctors, the advocates for our patients. In the interest of all those concerned, whose basic right to life and freedom from bodily harm is currently being put at stake, we appeal to those in the spheres of politics and public health. Please support the following demands with your influence:

• New health-friendly communications techniques, given independent risk assessments before their introduction and, as immediate measures and transitional steps: 

• Stricter safety limits and major reduction of sender output and HFMR pollution on a justifiable scale, especially in areas of sleep and convalescence 

• A say on the part of local citizens and communities regarding the placing of antennae (which in a democracy should be taken for granted) 

• Education of the public, especially of mobile telephone users, regarding the health risks of electromagnetic fields 

• Ban on mobile telephone use by small children, and restrictions on use by adolescents 

• Ban on mobile telephone use and digital cordless (DECT) telephones in pre-schools, schools, hospitals, nursing homes, events halls, public buildings and vehicles (as with the ban on smoking) 

• Mobile telephone and HFMR-free zones (as with auto-free areas) 

• Revision of DECT standards for cordless telephones with the goal of reducing radiation intensity and limiting actual use time, as well as avoiding the biologically critical HFMR pulsation 

• Industry-independent research, finally with the inclusion of amply available critical research results and our medical observations

"Clinical Manifestations of Reactions to Microwave Irradiation in Various Occupational Groups

"Studies on the biological action of microwaves have been widely conducted in the USSR over the past 20 years. The investigations have been devoted mainly to hygienic, experimental, clinical and ecological aspects of the problem. Studies are being performed in the USA, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and in Western Europe.

"Results of our own clinical observations of many years, as well as literature data . . . show that, as a consequence of prolonged work involving exposure to microwaves, changes take place in the functions of the nervous, cardio- vascular and other systems of the organism leading to a characteristic complex of symptoms.  A distinct form of occupational disease microwave or radiowave sickness - has been identified as a nosologic entity.

"However, up till now, numerous questions concerning the clinical course and pathogenesis of certain lesions have been insufficiently elucidated. The present communication presents clinical observations on the health status in two groups of workers engaged in the regulation, tuning and testing of diverse radio-equipment emitting radiation in the microwave range . . .

This article,  which appeared in The New York Times on March 30, 1959, is the first intimation, apart from the claims of various radionic operators, that radio waves can affect cellular behaviour. The information comes somewhat as a shock to all physicists judging by the remarks of the physicists and biologists visiting Dr. Heller's laboratory who say "I'll be damned". . .

"Many investigators have reported that microwave radiation can interact with the basic genetic apparatus of cells and cause abnormal biologic expression. These reports have left varying degrees of doubt as to whether the absorbed radiation energy was enough to cause generalized heating and, if so, whether this heating caused a temperature rise in the system which thus produced the observed effect . . .

"For the first time in history, we face a situation when most children and teenagers in the world are continuously exposed to the potentially adverse influence of the electromagnetic fields (EMF) from mobile phones.

"Electromagnetic field is an important biotropic factor, affecting not just a human health in general, but also the processes of the higher nervous activity, including behavior and thinking. Radiation directly affects human brain when people use mobile phones.

"Despite the recommendations, listed in the Sanitary Rules of the Ministry of Health, which insist that persons under 18 years should not use mobile phones . . .  children and teenagers became the target group for the marketing the mobile communications.

"The current safety standards for exposure to microwaves from the mobile phones have been developed for the adults and don't consider the characteristic features of the children's organism. The WHO considers the protection of the children's health from possible negative influence of the EMF of the mobile phones as a highest priority task. This problem has also been confirmed by the Scientific Committee of the European Commission, by national authorities of the European and Asian countries, by participants of the International scientific conferences on biological effects of the EMF. . .