ORIGINAL COMMENT · UNEDITED TEXT
WALLINGTON, NJ: OUR CHILDREN LIVE INSIDE THE SIGNAL, 24 HOURS A DAY.
Every person in Wallington lives within half a mile of a cell antenna installation. Most live within half a mile of two or more.
I ask HHS to make Wallington a pilot site and to come see it. My full report is attached.
ABOUT ME. Szymon Sikorski. Medical degree; 20 years in medical research analysis, the last five on cancer. Parent of a child in Wallington public schools. I write for no institution.
For six years I lived and worked from home near the Hathaway Street Park cell tower. Day and night. Then I was diagnosed with cancer.
Now I live with it, and with the fear of it getting worse. How much of it came from six years of round-the-clock RF and EMF exposure? No one can tell me. No one ever measured it.
PEOPLE SEE ONE TOWER. WE HAVE SIX INSTALLATIONS. They carry more than 70 panels, most hidden in plain sight: on a water tank next to an elementary school, an apartment roof where families sleep directly under eight antennas, a self-storage building, an old water tower and a chimney. You may see a tower 2,000 feet away and miss the antennas much closer to home. Not one has ever been held to Wallington's own 500-foot rule.
THE WARNINGS ARE NOT NEW. The World Health Organization's cancer agency (IARC) lists radio-frequency radiation, and magnetic fields from electrical equipment, as possibly causing cancer in humans. In 2019, and again in 2024, its advisers called a new cancer review a high priority. The American Academy of Pediatrics told the FCC its limits do not account for children and pregnant women, and a federal court ordered the FCC to explain how they protect children long term. Firefighters asked for a federal study of antennas on their stations in 2004. It was never done.
WHY 1,500 FEET? In Germany and Israel, studies found more cancers among people living within about 1,150 to 1,300 feet of cell antennas. A 1,500-foot buffer covers that distance. Legislators keep proposing 1,500 feet or more from schools; in New Hampshire, 1,640 feet from homes and schools. In Wallington, 83% of homes are within 1,500 feet of an installation.
24 HOURS A DAY, NOT 30 MINUTES. FCC limits were set in 1996 to stop tissue heating, averaged over 30 minutes. They do not count years. Our exposure does not stop after 30 minutes. It never stops.
THINK OF ONE WALLINGTON CHILD. She spends her school day at Gavlak Elementary, 180 feet from antennas on the water tank, with three installations within half a mile. Then she comes home, still within reach of more. She sleeps there. In the morning she goes back. Year after year, while her brain and body are still growing, her exposure adds up.
No one has ever studied a child like her. Her teachers may spend whole pregnancies 180 feet from those antennas. No one has studied that either.
WHAT I MEASURED. In neighbors' homes within 900 feet of the tower, RF read about 7 mW/m². In the park where children play, 20 to 33. Magnetic fields at the tower's base reached 45 mG. All far below FCC limits. Yet studies found effects at these levels: where RF was higher, students scored lower on memory tests, schoolchildren had more DNA damage markers, and residents reported more symptoms. Children in homes averaging above 4 mG had about double the leukemia risk.
RISK VERSUS BENEFIT. The Borough collects about $80,000 a year from two of these sites. That is $6.78 per resident per year. About $41 over six years.
$41. Against cancer. Against a parent's worry that never ends.
THE TOWER COMPANY WILL NOT CARRY THE RISK. The company holding the Hathaway tower lease tells investors it has no significant insurance against RF health claims. Insurers have long excluded these risks.
Why are they worried about liability? What do they know that we do not?
TOWNS ARE REMOVING ANTENNAS, NOT JUST BANNING NEW ONES. In California, a carrier removed a tower from an elementary school after four students got cancer, even though it tested within federal limits. In New York, a 150-foot tower beside a public housing playground came down after residents objected. India's Supreme Court ordered a tower switched off for a cancer patient who said it hit his home 24/7 for 13 years.
Here, no one was even told. Not residents, not parents, not the school.
Everyone who understands this now carries one more worry, every day, especially parents. Home values and taxes suffer too; the report covers that.
WHAT I ASK. (1) A health-based distance from schools and homes, and moving antennas that are too close, starting on public property. (2) Make every antenna's owner, frequencies and power public. (3) Link cancer and birth records to antenna history. (4) Study children exposed at school and at home, for years. (5) Come to Wallington.
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