When Local Media Goes to the Dark Side on 5G/EMF/RF; Berkshire Eagle’s Unsigned Opinion; Ken Gartner’s Response
By Patricia Burke with Ken Gartner
As noted in yesterday’s article at Natural Blaze, a local community newspaper recently printed an unsigned editorial dismissing the plight of those living in close proximity to a poorly-sited telecommunications tower that has devastated a neighborhood in Massachusetts.
The article follows the tobacco industry playbook of deny, defend, attack and demonstrates an alarming new pivot point in information and propaganda wars surrounding EMF/RF/5G exposures, when the local media joins forces with industry and turns against its community.
The Natural Blaze article noted that this “pivot point” has been occurring in many jurisdictions, as local media begins touting the corporate line, and no longer gives voice to the citizens.
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In particular, the Berkshire Eagle’s Op Ed casts doubt on the validity of health complaints.
Ken Gartner is one of the MA residents providing testimony to various agencies in the Commonwealth about RF exposures and microwave illness, also known as EHS, working with colleagues at MA4SafeTechnology.
Ken Gartner received a BSEE degree from MIT in 1987 and worked as both a hardware engineer and software developer for more than three decades. Now semi-retired, his world was rocked when his partner became Electrically Hypersensitive in 2019, immediately after moving into their newly constructed home, which had an RF broadcasting smart meter positioned to irradiate part of the home. Only after taking steps to remove all RF radiators plus shield the AMI meter did the crashing health stabilize. Several years later, the electrical sensitivity persists and everyday life remains challenging. Mr. Gartner now earnestly studies the entire scope of environmentally-induced electrical sensitivity — the origins, the remediations, the effects, and the paths to permanent recovery. – Patricia Burke
Ken Gartner’s comments on the article in the Berkshire paper dismissing the adverse health impacts on the residents while expressing the need to protect growth of the 5G telecommunications industry:
Unfortunately, the evidence is neither thin nor unprecedented for these residents who all tie their symptoms to the operation of that one tower, which was installed without proper scrutiny during Covid lockdown.
In addition, the symptoms disappear when they leave the neighborhood and reappear when the return to their homes.
All of their symptoms are well understood to be associated non-thermal effects of microwave radiation.
Anyone who has heard 13 year old Amelia Gilardi’s testimony about she and her sister having to routinely sleep with ‘vomit buckets’ next to their beds would be hard pressed to think this is a NIMBY issue.
The Health Department did very little. ‘Hands being tied’ by jurisdictional authority has not stopped anyone who needs to fight such an injustice. Even if there could be no legal requirement, they could have coordinated with the state Public Health authorities (who unfortunately are also asleep at the wheel).
Underlying this is the not-so-subtle message that “this could happen to you too” — lose the value of your home, lose your ability to live in your home, have to spend many thousands to try to shield it and still deal with the possibly permanent electrosensitivity, which is hardly recognized (yet) among US allopathic doctors.
Those Pittsfield residents have sought redress in every public testimony opportunity. To the DPU as they discuss forcing more broadcasting smart meters onto people’s homes. To the Committee at the statehouse considering whether to form a commission along the lines of the NH legislators – whose research absolutely validated everything the folks in Pittsfield have indicated.
The 2020 NH Committee Final Report shows that there is indeed unacknowledged harm due to the wireless and cell infrastructure and explains how several Federal agencies have dropped the ball. Only the first few dozen pages need to be read to understand the gist of their detailed analysis of the issues and their recommendations.
We hope that MA will continue the work NH began and start regulating this industry, for the health of everyone who is currently over-exposed.
The NH report authors actually contacted many federal agencies and asked hard questions to get their responses on the record — here are a few relevant paragraphs to consider in light of this post.
“I find it shocking that the FDA would casually dismiss the carcinogenicity findings from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) studies on cell phone radiation in experimental animals, when it was the FDA that requested those studies in the first place ‘to provide the basis to assess the risk to human health,’ and when an expert peer-review panel carefully reviewed the design and conduct of those studies and then concluded that the results provided “clear evidence of carcinogenic activity,” stated Ronald Melnick PhD who led the design of the $30M NTP study.
Melnick sent a letter to the FDA documenting the scientific inaccuracies in their review.
“When I worked as a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service for 17 years, I collaborated with the late Dr. Ted Litovitz in 2000. Dr. Litovitz and his colleagues studied the impacts of low-level, non-thermal radiation from the standard 915 MHz cell phone frequency on chicken embryos. In their laboratory studies, control/non-treated embryos suffered no effects, but some of the treated/irradiated embryos died — at levels as low as 1/10,000 the normal level of cell phone radiation exposure to humans. This was an eye-opener!” stated Albert M. Manville, II, Ph.D.; retired Senior Wildlife Biologist, Division of Migratory Bird Management, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Washington.
The NTP study that returned in 2018 clearly showed the cancer risk from microwave radiation. Microwave radiation from all sources has been listed as a Class 2B Agent (a possible human carcinogen) on the WHO/IARC website since 2011 (this is the same category that lead, DDT and Parathion occupy).
If you look on the NTP web site you will see that the last update of their national cancer database was #14, in 2016, before that 2018 study completed. Various agencies like Cancer.gov say they only respond to NTP official database updates (which has not happened in 5 years). Either government sluggishness or politics are involved, but there is plenty of research since at least the 1960s (when it was primarily a military technology) and there exists indisputable evidence of harm (look at the Zory Glaser archives that Magda Havas had scanned).
Well, industry apologists refuse to believe it and otherwise muddy the waters.
Is it morally right that people are not notified that microwave antennas are both ubiquitous and harmful? Instead of apologizing about some possibly unfair treatment of the Telecom operator conducting their usual shenanigans (permitted by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which forbids any local town from invoking environmental or health concerns to stop deployment of a cell tower) some of that energy would be better spent asking for what pre-release health testing has been done on 4G and 5G?
The answer is that no one has conducted long term health testing a priori — you and I are the lab animals in this study.
Torpor at the Federal level should not mean inaction at the state level to protect the residents from chronic over-exposure.
The August 2021 FCC loss in DC District Court, where the judge said that the FCC *ignored* proper science in setting their exposure limits (an act regarded as ‘capricious’ of its duty as a public agency) makes the malfeasance plain. This was a great victory and augurs the day when Telecoms will be held liable for their blithe disregard for human health.
The FCC radiation limits were never established for newborns or pregnant mothers or desperately ill people — though one can be forgiven for thinking they have been. They are about heating only, like a microwave oven, but there are many non-thermal effects at significantly smaller power levels. Our EHS person experiences them every day she chooses to leave our home sanctuary, including tinnitus and spiky headaches.
There are those of us working to let the MA government know and force them to respond to such situations. Come join us to make the world a better place, at least in MA. – Ken Gartner
LEARN MORE: EMFs: Field Updates by Ken Gartner, published August 24 in Spirit of Change Magazine
To learn more about Building Biology, or to find a local expert, visit https://buildingbiologyinstitute.org/
The NTP carcinogen study was replicated by the Ramazzini Institute.
42-minute update about the Pittsfield Tower recorded October 7 on the John Krol show:
Pittsfield Tower Traction On 5G Cell Tower Fight
https://www.facebook.com/JohnKrolShow/videos/2915731195358833
“Gaining traction on achieving healthier standards for cell tower sitings: progress in Shacktown to move the cell tower casting a shadow on a residential neighborhood, taking a pause on a project at the Curtis building In Lenox. Dr. Kent Chamberlin talks about his work for a commission making recommendations for state legislation in New Hampshire. Courtney Gilardi updates on the recent meetings with the Pittsfield Board of Health, and talks with Verizon. Let’s move that tower.”
Pittsfield Cell Tower Concerned Citizens
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