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Katrina Langford (far left) Lynn Goodwin, Phillip Kelly and Virginia Pierce-Kelly stand in front of the cell built behind their neighborhood earlier this year.
Photo: EMILY HANEY / emily.haney@ajc.com
The city of Stonecrest said a controversial cell tower built behind homes earlier this year can remain standing, using a legal reasoning its neighbors called problematic.
The city approved a permit last year for Vertical Bridge to construct the cell tower on Evans Mill Road.
The 199-foot tower sits behind homes in a subdivision, where residents have grown frustrated at the city’s response. The residents were frustrated that is was built without a public hearing being held. Not only is it an eyesore, they said, but they are also worried about the possible health effects of cell towers.
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Sunday, February 2, 2020
UGLY ALERT: City of Stonecrest Allows 200' Cell Tower
Saturday, March 30, 2019
No More Cell Towers in City of Stonecrest, GA (or so they say)
From the AJC, Local Update
By
- J.D. Capelouto, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Stonecrest City Council is moving to enact a moratorium on cell towers after hearing from angry residents about an existing tower that may violate city code.
A Monday night meeting was packed with residents, several of whom held yellow signs with messages like “Do not cell out”and “Remove cell phone tower.”
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A Monday night meeting was packed with residents, several of whom held yellow signs with messages like “Do not cell out”and “Remove cell phone tower.”
The councilors voted to direct the city attorney to draft a 60-day moratorium on the construction of cell towers while the city re-examines the tower built in January off Evans Mill Road.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Friday that records suggest the tower may have been improperly constructed on land zoned for commercial use for a day care.
The moratorium would not go into effect until the declaration is put in writing, City Attorney Winston Denmark pointed out following the decision late Monday. The City Council would have to vote at its next meeting to approve the details of the written moratorium.
The move will give the city time to “flesh out details and legalities” about the cell tower on Evans Mill Road and the process for building others, Councilmember Diane Adoma said.
“I’m asking that we simply take some action, which is the right thing to do,” said Adoma, who represents the district where the tower sits.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Wall Street Journal Announces Cell Phone Cancer Link
U.S. Studies using rats, costing $25 million dollars, leaves no room for debate. The most comprehensive study that has ever been conducted. Exposed for 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off intervals for 9 hours per day to mimic what humans are exposed to daily. Tumors in the brain and around the heart were definitely linked to the exposure.
Expert in clip states:
"You can't say these are perfectly safe."
"This calls into question the previous standards that were based on thermal effects only."
Thursday, July 21, 2016
U.S. True "Causitive" Study Links RF and Cancer
GTCO-ATL followers: Ever wonder if you supported the right side in the debate over whether DeKalb County should take money to place cell phone towers next to young children on their own public school campuses, in the middle of their neighborhoods? Well, if so, you can rest assured that you did the right thing by speaking up for the children in our county and now science is on your side, too. The more research being done on this subject, the more science is siding with you. And this time, the study was conducted to the top level of controls, with plenty of funds to cover the expenses and it was done in the U.S. Here is how things worked out....
Major Cell Phone Radiation Study Reignites Cancer Questions
Exposure to radio-frequency radiation linked to tumor formation in rats
Federal scientists released partial findings Friday from a $25-million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices. The findings, which chronicle an unprecedented number of rodents subjected to a lifetime of electromagnetic radiation starting in utero, present some of the strongest evidence to date that such exposure is associated with the formation of rare cancers in at least two cell types in the brains and hearts of rats. The results, which were posted on a prepublication Web site run by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, are poised to reignite controversy about how such everyday exposure might affect human health.
Researchers at the National Toxicology Program (NTP), a federal interagency group under the National Institutes of Health, led the study. They chronically exposed rodents to carefully calibrated radio-frequency (RF) radiation levels designed to roughly emulate what humans with heavy cell phone use or exposure could theoretically experience in their daily lives. The animals were placed in specially built chambers that dosed their whole bodies with varying amounts and types of this radiation for approximately nine hours per day throughout their two-year life spans. “This is by far—far and away—the most carefully done cell phone bioassay, a biological assessment. This is a classic study that is done for trying to understand cancers in humans,” says Christopher Portier, a retired head of the NTP who helped launch the study and still sometimes works for the federal government as a consultant scientist. “There will have to be a lot of work after this to assess if it causes problems in humans, but the fact that you can do it in rats will be a big issue. It actually has me concerned, and I’m an expert.”
More than 90 percent of American adults use cell phones. Relatively little is known about their safety, however, because current exposure guidelines are based largely on knowledge about acute injury from thermal effects, not long-term, low-level exposure. The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2011 classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. But data from human studies has been “inconsistent,” the NTP has said on its website. Such studies are also hampered by the realities of testing in humans, such as recall bias—meaning cancer patients have to try to remember their cell phone use from years before, and how they held their handsets. Those data gaps prompted the NTP to engage in planning these new animal studies back in 2009.
The researchers found that as the thousands of rats in the new study were exposed to greater intensities of RF radiation, more of them developed rare forms of brain and heart cancer that could not be easily explained away, exhibiting a direct dose–response relationship. Overall, the incidence of these rare tumors was still relatively low, which would be expected with rare tumors in general, but the incidence grew with greater levels of exposure to the radiation. Some of the rats had glioma—a tumor of the glial cells in the brain—or schwannoma of the heart. Furthering concern about the findings: In prior epidemiological studies of humans and cell phone exposure, both types of tumors have also cropped up as associations.
In contrast, none of the control rats—those not exposed to the radiation—developed such tumors. But complicating matters was the fact that the findings were mixed across sexes: More such lesions were found in male rats than in female rats. The tumors in the male rats “are considered likely the result of whole-body exposure” to this radiation, the study authors wrote. And the data suggests the relationship was strongest between the RF exposure and the lesions in the heart, rather than the brain: Cardiac schwannomas were observed in male rats at all exposed groups, the authors note. But no “biologically significant effects were observed in the brain or heart of female rats regardless of modulation.” Based on these findings, Portier said that this is not just an associated finding—but that the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer is clear. “I would call it a causative study, absolutely. They controlled everything in the study. It’s [the cancer] because of the exposure.”
Researchers at the National Toxicology Program (NTP), a federal interagency group under the National Institutes of Health, led the study. They chronically exposed rodents to carefully calibrated radio-frequency (RF) radiation levels designed to roughly emulate what humans with heavy cell phone use or exposure could theoretically experience in their daily lives. The animals were placed in specially built chambers that dosed their whole bodies with varying amounts and types of this radiation for approximately nine hours per day throughout their two-year life spans. “This is by far—far and away—the most carefully done cell phone bioassay, a biological assessment. This is a classic study that is done for trying to understand cancers in humans,” says Christopher Portier, a retired head of the NTP who helped launch the study and still sometimes works for the federal government as a consultant scientist. “There will have to be a lot of work after this to assess if it causes problems in humans, but the fact that you can do it in rats will be a big issue. It actually has me concerned, and I’m an expert.”
More than 90 percent of American adults use cell phones. Relatively little is known about their safety, however, because current exposure guidelines are based largely on knowledge about acute injury from thermal effects, not long-term, low-level exposure. The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2011 classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. But data from human studies has been “inconsistent,” the NTP has said on its website. Such studies are also hampered by the realities of testing in humans, such as recall bias—meaning cancer patients have to try to remember their cell phone use from years before, and how they held their handsets. Those data gaps prompted the NTP to engage in planning these new animal studies back in 2009.
The researchers found that as the thousands of rats in the new study were exposed to greater intensities of RF radiation, more of them developed rare forms of brain and heart cancer that could not be easily explained away, exhibiting a direct dose–response relationship. Overall, the incidence of these rare tumors was still relatively low, which would be expected with rare tumors in general, but the incidence grew with greater levels of exposure to the radiation. Some of the rats had glioma—a tumor of the glial cells in the brain—or schwannoma of the heart. Furthering concern about the findings: In prior epidemiological studies of humans and cell phone exposure, both types of tumors have also cropped up as associations.
In contrast, none of the control rats—those not exposed to the radiation—developed such tumors. But complicating matters was the fact that the findings were mixed across sexes: More such lesions were found in male rats than in female rats. The tumors in the male rats “are considered likely the result of whole-body exposure” to this radiation, the study authors wrote. And the data suggests the relationship was strongest between the RF exposure and the lesions in the heart, rather than the brain: Cardiac schwannomas were observed in male rats at all exposed groups, the authors note. But no “biologically significant effects were observed in the brain or heart of female rats regardless of modulation.” Based on these findings, Portier said that this is not just an associated finding—but that the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer is clear. “I would call it a causative study, absolutely. They controlled everything in the study. It’s [the cancer] because of the exposure.”
Read the full article here.
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