Cellphone towers

MacDoctor blogs on cellphone towers and NIMBYs. He comments on a Vicky Webb who is terrified by a cellphone tower 45 metres away from her as she is so scared of RF radiation she does not have a microwave:

Ms. Webb you can relax. At 45m, the cell tower is producing less EM radiation than the signals from the TV and radio stations that are currently sleeting through your house. This poor woman is having a complete melt-down here because of the insane amount of complete disinformation circulating about cell phone towers, mostly on the internet. Disturbingly, I note that some MPs seem to be buying into the myth. This is not at all helpful.

That is a Green MP he links to. The anti-science party. He then fisks further:

Quote: Ms Grey, a Nelson environmental lawyer and scientist, said companies could put up towers as long as they were within New Zealand electromagnetic exposure limits. She questioned the standards, saying Austria’s, Russia’s and China’s were more than 100 times stricter.

Macdoctor: Note the world leaders in EM reduction here – Austria, Russia and China? Perhaps Austria doesn’t like the towers because they are ugly – this is it’s way of getting them to be smaller. Russia and China probably don’t like them because they don’t like cell phones. At any rate, Ms Grey is not telling us that everybody, except Austria, Russia and China, follows the accepted international guideline of 0.08 watts/kg, which is 50 times lower than the lowest level that could conceivably have any effect. She then uses this dumb observation to plug for stupid legislation:

It is a pity we only get this information in a blog, not in the main article.

Quote: She said the proposed National Environment Standards for Telecommunication should be amended so all cellphone towers and phone masts within 500m of any house, school, preschool or hospital were designated as non-complying and communities would have to be notified before they went up.

Macdoctor: This means there would have to be a full resource consent process for virtually every cell-phone tower. Say goodbye to cheap cell-phone coverage. Say goodbye to improvements in coverage in marginal areas. Say goodbye to competition for cell phone use. And all for a spurious piece of junk science.

The Greens say listen to the scientists when it comes to climate change, but the rest of the time they seem to scaremonger against science – anti GE, anti cellphone towers etc etc.