I am very sensitive to the microwave frequencies of these cell phone company transmitters that were discussed in last week’s paper. I feel them as I drive along the canyons and have even counted them-at least 35 to each mountain road, like Malibu/Las Virgenes, Topanga, Kanan, the Mulholland stretch from Las Virgenes to Calabasas, Sunset, etc. San Vincente recently erected four-way arrays, but much higher up in the air: modern mini-cell-towers to go with the modern architecture proliferating amongst the Spanish Mission style homes. My little Malibu Road, only two and a half miles long, has three. People walk, work and drive beneath them all day long.
I first discovered microwave repeaters when waiting at the intersection of my mother’s road, Harbor Vista, trying to enter traffic on Malibu Canyon. I noticed a queasy feeling as I sat there, five minutes of an afternoon, attending to the almost blind curve with streams of cars climbing the hill. When I realized this feeling was from a funny speaker-like looking device perched partway up the telephone pole and hidden in the trees, I was curious. Then I started to notice them on the curves in the roads, because apparently microwave rays can’t go around curves, so they’re set up in sightlines to the next open place on one’s journey. The thing is, each company has to have their own, so now we get square white, long skinny white, long brown, some grays, four or more in a row. There’s a section around 24450 Mulholland where four or five repeaters are sandwiched between the sides of a hill where the road was blasted through – one might as well be right inside a microwave oven!
Check out every school you pass by: the Malibu Presbyterian nursery has one broadcasting right into the windows; Viewpoint in Calabasas has one on either side of the Mulholland entry, so it cooks you as you wait for traffic; Canyon Elementary on Entrada in Santa Monica Canyon, practically at the gate; Topanga Day School, as you sit on the bridge, gauging traffic. Not only are they contributing to the weight of the poles, but also they are much closer to a person’s head (a child’s head) riding in a car than a more-seldom encountered cell tower would be. And the sheer number of them one passes is consternating – what is this accumulation of Extreme Low Frequency waves doing to our health? Just in the last few months, traumatic effects of the gigantic sweep of cell phone use have seen testimony to Congress by scientists and doctors. Many countries don’t allow children under the age of 12 to use them at all. And I really don’t think you need the recurring panoply we see here in L.A.-Santa Barbara hasn’t got them. Norway, my father’s country that has one of the top telephone systems in the world, doesn’t dot their fjords with these things. We have got to wake up and look up. If we can use the cumulative weight to get rid of them, let’s do it.
Beate Nilsen