Beginning Anew

One of the biggest problems we face in the broadcast industry, and all RF related industries in general is the NIMBY attitude. People are constantly complaining about the flashing red beacons on towers, and heaven forbid you want to build a new tower. Then the NIMBY folks really get fired up.

A great example.... read the full story here. I'll summarize:

A struggling church has agreed to allow a cellphone company to put an antenna on their steeple in exchange for rent. It would be flush mounted on the sides, painted the same color as the structure and would be hardly noticeable by passers by.

This church is in a residential area, and when they heard about this what did they do? The community didn't rally around to try and help the church avoid this or give them some money to help prevent needing to rent (essentially) tower space to T-Mobile. Nope... they started a petition against the church. Did they have good research? Nope... they had unfounded fears and myths that they blindly followed.

Their argument centers around the health factor. They say that we can't be sure that these antennas won't hurt our children, mabye even cause cancer. This is relatively new technology and we don't know all the facts. WRONG!

This is NOT new technology. We have been aware of Radio Frequency energy for decades. We know it is totally safe at certain distances, and usually an unsafe distance is totally unattainable by the general population. Here is a fact. I am legally allowed to be exposed to 10 times the amount of RF that most of you reading this blog are. Why? Well, the FCC decided it was safer that way. I had to go through the training and be certified in high RF environments. Radio engineers mostly live to be very old people, in their 70's-80's, even some into their 90's. No more people in RF related jobs die of cancer than the average of any other jobs. Why?

RF isn't harmful in the right dosage. All RF will do is heat your skin, or at certain frequencies it can cause some cell damage IF YOU STAY IN THE HIGH RF FIELD TOO LONG! Here is the trick. Cell phone antennae, at a proper height are totally harmless. Your microwave oven can be more harmful! Now, if you got a ladder and stood in front of one for about 3 hours, you'd be sweating and very dehydrated... if you were looking directly at it, you might even develop a cataract in a few years. But who is that stupid???

I'll end this rant like this. Get your facts straight before you start attacking something you don't understand. Those of us who work in high RF fields are not at any danger if we take the right precautions... and it is our responsibility to you to make sure you are exposed to less than 1/10 of what we are... if we are safe at 10x the amount of exposure... don't you think you'll be fine?

And don't be a hypocrite. How many people on that block do you suppose have cell phones?