5G Earth Day Countdown: Children — Amelia’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Cell Tower Days
My name is Amelia and I am 13 years old.
A Verizon cell tower blindsided my Pittsfield, Massachusetts neighborhood and made us sick. This is my story.
Last March, we were sent home from school due to the pandemic. The ice skating show that we had worked so hard practicing for was canceled. Auditions for my school musical were cancelled. My weekend nature program was cancelled. Everything was cancelled.
Everything except the construction happening in my neighborhood.
Trucks were rolling by our house – big ones, flatbed ones, trucks carrying other trucks. When trying to clear the corner between Plumb and Alma Street, the weight of the truck was so much it crushed the water main beneath the road. We couldn’t get the car out passed the repair crew and went without water for the day. No one knew why.
Widget not in any sidebars
Because we were home with no plan to return to school, we tried to keep busy. For Christmas, my sister and I got mountain bikes and we went riding up our street like we always did. But this time, at the top of the street, we saw parked trucks and the cleared trees. Where there was forest that was once part of the Herman Melville Farm, a land called “Arrowhead” after Melville having found them in the fields, was now a big, open clearing.
Trees by the dozens had been chopped down and were lying on the ground. Some had been wood chipped and spread from Alma Street to the clearing. None of the neighbors waking their dogs or out for a jog or pushing their children in strollers had any idea why.
Mom called our City Councilor and he didn’t know why. He said he would call the Department of Public Works and put some calls into the city to find out. When he got back to mom, he said no one knew anything about the construction. Mom came out for a walk with us and took a photo of the trucks. She called the construction company, and asked what they were doing. That is when we learned it was a cell tower.
I didn’t know what a cell tower was, but I knew that at a time when we couldn’t even see our own grandparents, when we couldn’t go to the store or school or participate in any activities – or even take books out of the library – when everything else stopped – that trucks and crews were working all day long at full speed.
The City Councilor said the tower would have “red flagged” all over his desk – meaning it was in his ward, of course he would know about it, but he didn’t. The address was deceptive. There was no publicity around the tower. The whole thing happened silently, without our say, without our input, without our questions and without our objections.
Now our quiet neighborhood was louder and busier than it ever had been before.
The city said they sent notices to everyone within 300’, but had no proof of mailing them. We learned the tower was permitted in 2017, with only one resident in attendance. We learned in 2019 it got a stamp of extension. We learned the land the tower was on was 35 foot height restricted and zoned residential. We learned we were called “open space” and “no one lived there.” We learned the Berkshire County Historical Society didn’t want a tower blighting Herman Melville’s Homestead, a Historic U.S. National Historic Landmark. No one wanted this tower blighting their neighborhood. And then when mom and others started speaking to the workers asking questions, we were told we were “collateral damage” and “people of low education, living on land of low value.”
We were told they were going to get the tower “up and on” before we had a chance to organize. Even if it meant building it illegally.
The head of the Department of Public Works tried to help us. He put up police tape and told them they would have to build the road from their street address to the construction site and not use out roads. No one listened. The DPW put up a sign that there was no access, and they went around. Even when the DPW put up a concrete barrier, some trucks went up our road anyways to still access the site.
Mom would go up and take photos. Workers would come to our house, take photos of us and harass us. My little sister got scared. We used to live in a quiet, safe, private little neighborhood.
Now our neighborhood was anything but quiet, safe and private.
All of it was awful. People were worried about their house prices, their views, and the residential qualities of the neighborhood. Mom had run a preschool in a church basement for many years and when it closed, mom wanted to re-open it here at our house. Mom asked the parents if they would feel comfortable sending their children to preschool if the tower went up and the answer was “no.” There went her business. We had a tag sale to sell all the preschool items to raise money to stop the tower.
The Worst Part –
Being ignored by a city that you love was hard. Getting sick when the tower was turned on was even worse. My sister felt it first. She was dizzy, headachy and had a buzzing feeling in her head. That was the day the tower was “fired up.” Neighbors came by complaining of insomnia, dizziness, palpitations, headaches. One had tinnitus so bad he was thinking of moving. One was so dizzy he couldn’t drive his car. People thought the tower must be on now because they felt differently. No one announced the tower going on. They didn’t have to. By December, we knew of at least 13 people who were sick. One had cancer.
The worst, worst part –
When mom called the Health Department, they said they would send someone out. They never did. Our neighbor, Charlie, kept calling into City Council meetings and was muted – he even wrote a letter to the editor about it. People were so upset that their voices were not being heard. I asked mom, “If Pittsfield thinks it is okay to ignore its adults, do you think it will ignore its children?” I heard my mom calling into City Council meetings. I had already provided spoken testimony about smart meters, another form or wireless transmitting devices that have harmed people. I learned that we can control our level of wireless exposure in our home, but when people place towers outside it, or smart meters on it, there is nothing we can do shield ourselves, and we shouldn’t have to. Our elected officials should protect us. I decided I would call into open comments, too.
The really bad, worst, no good bad part –
We learned that we were not the only ones harmed by cell towers. We were put in touch with Noah Davidson’s family in Sacramento California. Both their girls, like us, got sick when a 5G tower was placed outside their bedroom window. No one listened to them either.
Mom learned about a boy, my age in Canada, also harmed by wireless radiation since he was 5 years old. They made a movie about him and others who were harmed, called Prisoners without Walls. We talked and I learned he liked the same book series. He loved playing video games. He spoke French and liked making videos.
We started meeting families from all over with everyday kids, like us, who had been harmed from wireless radiation either from cell towers or mobile devices. Why, if so many people were being hurt from this, was no one helping them?
So the truly bad, no good part is that the science is here but our legislators simply are not responding fast enough. Dr. Paul Heroux, Dr. Martha Herbert, Dr. Magda Havas, Dr. Cindy Russell, Dr. Sharon Goldburg, Theodora Scarato, Cecelia Doucette and many others have tried to educate Pittsfield about these issues. They have been silenced at our Board of Health meeting, and any letters from them or offers to present information or assist with an investigation have fallen on deaf ears.
My mom would ground me if I was told not to do something and I kept doing it over and over. I’ve heard my grandma say, “When we know better, we do better.”
Big people, we know better. Please, do something. We never thought this could happen to us so please, don’t wait until it happens to you.
I’m asking everyone who is reading this to advocate for cell tower setbacks away from schools and homes. I’m asking everyone to require the FCC standards that fail to protect us from biological harm to be updated. I’m asking you restore my neighborhood to the safe, residential place it was before the tower, and I am asking for each and every person to care about the wireless safety issue.
Our people, our pollinators and our planet depend on you.
Amelia
- http://www.stoptower.com
- https://www.change.org/p/pittsfield-city-council-stop-the-pittsfield-cell-tower
- http://www.facebook.com/pittsfieldcell
Citizens believe 5G is affecting their health – Noah Davidson, others in Sacramento https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtpGf0tpmsI
Prisons Without Bars (English) Jayden Jancovic is a Montreal teenager handicapped by electromagnetic fields (EMFs) since the age of 5. Our environment is saturated with chemicals and electromagnetic frequencies. The adverse effects of these massive exposures affect a growing number of individuals. Among them are Isabelle, Kathya, Jean-François, Sylvain and Jayden. A glimpse into the little-known world of environmental illness. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/prisonswithoutbars
Read more child testimonials here:
https://wearetheevidence.org/children-testimonials/
Generation Zapped investigates the potential dangers of prolonged exposure to Radio Frequencies (RF) from wireless technology; its effects on our health and well-being, as well as the health and development of our children. From its links to breast and brain cancer, to its associations with increased infertility and genetic mutations related to autism and ADHD, to newly developed illnesses, such as Electrical Hyper-Sensitivity (EHS). Today we encounter a hundred thousand times the level of radiation from wireless technologies than we did decades ago. Yet the safety standards set by federal regulatory agencies are outdated. New wireless devices such as smart phones, tablets and baby monitors to the latest “Internet of Things” continue to enter the market without any proper pre-market testing or post-market monitoring. Too little is done to ensure public safety and awareness.
https://generationzapped.com/about/
More Films Here: https://ehtrust.org/films-on-cell-phone-radiation-cell-towers-and-wireless/
DID YOU KNOW?
China bans smartphones in all primary and secondary schools
https://ehtrust.org/china-bans-smartphones-in-all-primary-and-secondary-schools/
Russia bans wi-fi and smartphones for distance learning
https://ehtrust.org/russia-bans-wi-fi-and-smartphones-for-distance-learning/
Worldwide action on wi-fi and electromagnetic radiation in school
https://ehtrust.org/health-effects-wireless-in-schools/
https://ehtrust.org/facts-about-cell-towers-at-schools/
email: [email protected]
Read the other articles from our 5G Earth Day Countdown Series HERE.
