Fighting Optarse
Our neighbour has walked around a bit and talked to other neighbours and also the school, childcare, and retirement village surrounding the proposed site of installation. Obviously, everyone is unanimously opposed to the construction of the mobile phone tower. I’m not sure if the council is much help - the elections I think were held a month or so ago, so obviously they won’t be looking at the community for another 3 years. The mobile phone company and the contractors are also not much help, giving only patchy information and even not responding to requests. The local paper has been tipped off about this. We’ll see what it does.
The scientific data regarding health effects of mobile base stations is patchy. It generally seems like there isn’t any proven link between base stations and direct health effects, but it isn’t unproven either. People living around base stations do complain of depression, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and that kind of stuff, but it might all be psychosomatic. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.
A useful resource is the Stewart Report, and even though that’s for the UK, the basic issues still apply here. Things like sneaky phone companies not properly consulting the community. Things like children absorbing more radiation than adults (I’m sure the parents of the kids that go to the childcare centre and the primary school will be stoked to hear about that). Things like telcos erecting phone towers in the middle of the night.
We’ll wait to see what happens. In the meantime, a letter is going out to the households around the area informing them of this situation. A petition is being circulated as well, and even though they don’t have any legal power, because it is 10 months to the state elections, perhaps the local state member will do something about it.