[South Florida DX Association] Fwd: [Fwd: Fwd: Fw: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham Activ...
BALDYBAER at aol.com
BALDYBAER at aol.com
Wed Apr 8 15:09:36 EDT 2009
____________________________________
From: w1agp at arrl.org
To: martfalk at bellsouth.net
CC: BALDYBAER at aol.com
Sent: 4/8/2009 10:33:04 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: RE: [Fwd: Fwd: Fw: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham
Activity]
It was a very bad April fool joke written by unknown author.
But the author is now in legal troubles with their local newspaper and the
people at the county offices there are NOT happy at all about it. Totally
false.
Do all you can to squash it.
Not true and just causing over-reactive hams to look dumb
Allen G Pitts, W1AGP
Media & PR Manager
ARRL - the national association for Amateur Radio
225 Main St. Newington CT 06111
(860) 594-0328
apitts at arrl.org
See our Field Day Announcement!
-----Original Message-----
From: mail.martfalk at bellsouth.net [mailto:martfalk at bellsouth.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 10:23 AM
To: Pitts, Allen W1AGP
Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: Fw: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham
Activity]
Allen
Thought you should see this. It is unsubstantiated. It comes from Chuck
W4ROA in So. Florida
Marty
KI4IQZ
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Fw: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham
Activity
Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 09:44:49 EDT
From: BALDYBAER at aol.com
To: BALDYBAER at aol.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: angler88 at comcast.net
To: cewald at icgconstruction.com
Sent: 4/8/2009 9:27:59 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: Fw: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham Activity
*Melk--W6FDR sent this to me*
----- Original Message -----
*Subject:* Fwd: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham
Activity
THIS IS ABSOLUTLY REDICULOUS!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
**
Subject: California County Taking Actions To Silence ALL Ham
Activity
*From http://www.radiobanter.com/
**
*San Luis Obispo county supervisors took drastic and
unprecedented action
yesterday by passing an ordinance that would prohibit amateur radio
operators, known as "hams", from operating their transmitting
stations. The
measure was put in place to eliminate what officials said were
health risks
associated with transmitters located close to children. A legal
struggle is
expected.
By a vote of 4 to 1 with one abstention, the governing board of
SLO county
took action aimed at addressing a recent Stanford University
study that
showed a correlation between ham radios and attention de ficit
disorder and
hyperactivity in children, as well as nagging reports of
interference caused
by radio hams operating their high-powered transmitters in
residential
neighborhoods.
"Our primary responsibility is to provide a safe environment for
children to
live without the dangerous effects of radio waves constantly
bombarding them
and causing proven neurological and psychological problems,"
said E. Duane
Nyborg, an attorney who represented the county in several court
cases in the
past year. "Hams are not the only culprits, but they are usually
in very
close proximity to children and are no doubt a major contributor
to the
health problems we've been seeing. The interference is just the
last straw
that convinced the county that something had to be done about it."
Atascadero city manager Laura Lopez said that she has seen a
tenfold
increase in the number of complaints of interference from ham radio
operators in the last six months. New housing developments which
have
dramatically increased the population there and placed homes
unusually close
to each other are the predominant contributing factor. Similar
conditions
exist in most of the county.
"We have radio hams getting into toasters, electric pianos,
light bulbs,
everything, from their powerful transmitters that cause all this
static.
Many of our citizens can't use basic appliances or watch
television because
of all the junk that the hams are broadcasting," she tol d the
Press-Telegram
by telephone.
Hams can't say they didn't see this coming. They were warned by
the county
last year that if they did not submit to a check of their
stations by
officials, they would have limits imposed on their operation.
Few consented
to the searches, which most decried as invasive. But nobody
expected a total
ban on transmissions.
"This is outrageous. You'd better believe we're going to fight
back and win.
This is a totalitarian seizure of our rights that is totally
illegal and can't
stand up," said Frank Wilson, a local ham club president. He
said there were
no formal plans for an appeal yet but preparations were underway.
Wilson claims that a federal preemption of local zoning
ordinances, called
PRB-1, delineates three rules for local municipalities to follow in
accomodating antenna structures such as are used by hams. But
Nyborg says
that PRB-1 applies to antenna structures only, and not the
transmitters used
to feed the antennas with a radio signal. "We know all about
PRB-1. That's
why we said nothing about antennas. This law is not about
antennas. It goes
after the root of the problem, which is the transmitters that
put out huge
signals that get into the brains of our children and
short-circuit them out.
Those are the facts, that's what the scientific evidence points
to," he said
at a news conference called shortly after the county's action.
In 2008, a grou p of researchers in the school of Environmental
Health and
Safety at Stanford published their findings that exposure to ham
radio
signals for three hours per day increased the risk of
hyperactivity and
related disorders by 10% in children aged 12 and under. This
effect was seen
when a typical ham radio was turned on up to ¼ mile away. The
San Luis
Obispo city office says that up to 11,000 children in that city
live that
close to a ham radio station.
The Stanford study showed that frequencies around 3.5, 7, and 14
Megahertz
were the most harmful, but that the danger existed all the way
up to 450
Megahertz and above.
"We know where the hams are, that information is easy to get on the
Internet," said former mayor of Paso Robles and current county
supervisor
Anthony Wu. "Most of these guys are running one hundred watts of
power, that's
an incredible amount of radiation, and you can't block it out.
It enters
your house, it gets into your body and does a lot of damage there."
Cindy MacMahon, 41, of Morro Bay, soccer mom of two and
volunteer at city
bake sales, praised the action by the board of supervisors and
looked
forward to radio-free days ahead. "I'm always getting
interference on my TV
and stereo that I'm sure is from the guy down the street with
his big tower.
I don't know why they even allow those big, ugly things. I know
that my kids
are harder to control whe n he turns that thing on and I've been
saying that
for three years."
Most area hams were totally unaware of the new law and Wilson
believes there
will be a revolt when they discover it. "I will be speaking
about it at our
club meeting on Friday. We would normally disseminate the
information by
radio, but of course that's illegal for the moment."
Amateur radio operator Clay Collins of Pismo Beach, was
incredulous. "We
provide free emergency communications for the county, we assist
the police
department, we help out several times a year on all manner of
public events,
and this is the thanks we get. Someone is badly informed. Next
thing you
know, we'll be accused of being responsible for global warming."
Another
radio ham who identified himself only as "Deke" said that
although a number
of hams were mobilizing to do what they could he was
pessimistic. "I
actually know that Nyborg guy. He walks around twelve hours a
day with a
cell phone up to his head and yet he's worried about the tiny
amount of
radiation from my transmitter." Deke claims that the frequencies
of a cell
phone are close to that of a microwave oven. "You hold a [cell]
phone up to
your head, you're cooking your brain slowly," he warned.
Collins, a ham of fifty-three years and grandfather of six,
lives in a
housing tract with a homeowners' association that already
regulates ham
radio operators. He says that restrictive H OA agreements
exacerbate the
problem. "By prohibiting high antenna towers, [the HOA rules]
force me to
place my antennas lower and closer to my neighbors, and force me
to use
higher power to make up for the difference in performance." He
said that his
antenna, which is located in his attic, creates far more
radiation on the
ground than if it were up on a 50-foot tower-the same type of
tower Collins
applied for in 1997 but was denied a permit for. Hams are
required by the
FCC to keep track of the amount of radiation from their antennas
but Collins'
station is far below the allowable limits, he says. "In the next
earthquake,
all of my neighbors will be running to my house to send messages
out to
their loved ones in other places. I hope they remember this."
Dick Henley, a member of the Electronic Industries Association
who lives in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, claims that most of the interference to
appliances,
televisions, and phones can't be blamed on hams going about
their normal
activity. "The vast majority of these appliances is
insufficiently shielded
against external fields. The slightest interference- even from a
garage door
opener or a cell phone-can disrupt it. In most cases, it's not
the ham's
fault." He said that on the contrary, hams are usually the ones
who must
suffer with interference from these electronic devices. "Most of
the stuff
coming out of China spews interference to radios, but the h ams
have just
learned to live with it. Homeowners are totally oblivious to
this," he said.
Xiang Qang, the principal investigator at Stanford who
co-published the
original paper, explained that the radio waves, over the long
term, polarize
cells in the brain tissue and bias a child toward rough or
anti-social
behavior. "We saw these children who couldn't sit still,
couldn't listen to
a book being read to them, and who had severe reading delays and
disabilities. We started to see that each time a television was
turned on
near them, they would actually exhibit worse behavior. So we
followed that
path: why the television? Why the television? Then we discovered
that is
wasn't the television, but the radiation from it. So we tested
many other
types of transmitters and found that the worst ones were ham
transmitters
from Icom and Yaesu, with the Kenwoods being marginally better."
Qang explains that it is the brain's frontal lobe which is most
vulnerable
to external radiation due to its location at the front of the
cranium just
behind the forehead, its proximity to the sphenoid wing- the
bone at the
temple that houses the pituitary gland- and it's large size.
"The frontal
lobe absorbs a lot of radiation and since it governs our
behavior, this is
why we think that attention deficit and hyperactivity are the
symptoms of
prolonged absorption of high-frequency waves in that region,"
she said.
"Nonsense," says Dr. V. Subrahaminayalakshminirayana, head of
neurology at
Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco. "There is absolutely no
conclusive
evidence in the literature to support an ambitious and
imaginative theory
that ionizing radiation can deleteriously and negatively affect
behavior in
children whether the exposure is at a relatively constant
low-level or
periodic." He believes that attention deficit hyperactivity is
more likely a
function of exhaustive over-stimulation of the brain by video
games,
texting, and television viewing. "Ask the Asian parents of your
child's
playmate why they never seem to have this problem," he laughed..
In fact, the Stanford study found that Hispanic children were
fourteen times
as likely to suffer the effects of radio waves than were Asian
children.
Hydra Brock-Parker, dean of sociology at Cal Poly San Luis
Obispo and a
consultant named in the Stanford study, says that Hispanics live in
depressed parts of a city where houses and apartments are packed
closer
together and the possibility of exposure is much greater. "Where
are all of
those children going to go to escape radiation from
transmitters? There's no
backyard to play in and besides, you wouldn't want your children
playing
outside in those neighborhoods. If you've got, you know, a ham
serial-killer
type next door flooding your apartment with high-intensity radio
waves, you
have no choice but to sit there and get sick," she said.
Representatives20from Marin, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties
were present
at the press conference and were said to be keenly interested in
the
implementation of the new law. A similar measure was introduced
into the
L.A. County Board's docket on Monday and may be considered at
the next
session in May.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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