The Trouble of Trinidad and Tobago's Cellular Towers: What The Problem Really Is.

There's been a lot of noise about cellular towers around Trinidad and Tobago. Concerned residents of developed areas have been banding together and screaming about the health risks of these mobile phone towers. Sounds like one for MobileActive, actually, but this is pretty easy to put to bed.

The towers are only health risks if they fall down. The transmitters themselves are what people might be able to complain about, but the radiation is Non-ionising radiation which means... it doesn't affect humans in any studies done so far. I'd dismissed this whole thing as some uneducated people complaining out of fear, and thinking that someone would come forward and actually explain it, be it from Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT), or Telecommunications Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (TATT), or even the Town and Country Division of the Ministry of Planning.

Nope. And the media hasn't really dug into the actual problem, instead sensationalizing it. A quick search on google for health issues related to cell towers quickly brings up FAQs that answer these concerns clearly in a manner that the average person can understand. No such thing as investigative reporting and informing the public, I guess - answering fears with something easily found: information. The unknown is always scarey. Let people understand.

But a few points in this Guardian article demonstrate what this is all really about (the link will change because the Guardian does not have a decent website) -

On February 21, the Telecommunications Authority and the Town and Country Planning Division published a cell tower advisory that noted concerns by the public about possible health hazards from exposure to radio frequency (RF) emissions.

The advisory said: “The Federal Communications Commission in the USA, Maximum Permissible Exposure (MPE) limits to which people may be exposed, provide a substantial margin of safety and were well below levels generally accepted as having the potential to cause adverse health effects.”

When asked what this meant in layman terms, the authority’s communications people could not say.

This means that the authority's communication people aren't well articulated. Send them back to the labs and get some people who can explain things out. In laymans terms, that cock and bull double talk means that they don't know but they have been told. It's real simple, though - it's non-ionising radiation. AND - the kicker - the entire tower is not used for transmitting signals, a popular misconception. Don't believe me? Read this, and study the picture at top.

So - point one: People aren't being communicated with intelligently. In fact, they are being communicated with poorly and the irony is stunning when it comes to this because... this technology is supposed to be about communication. The whole ARTICLE not only demonstrates poor human communication, it also demonstrates that the media is not leading the way when it comes to informing the public. Most of the problems have been that people have been lied to ('we are just digging a drain...') and completely uninformed.

So the choice for the manner in which all of these agencies - including Digicel - have handled things? Simple. Either they are incompetent, stupid or a grotesque combination of both. The public has not been communicated with, and given actual facts the public can make more informed decisions. They need to stop treating people like idiots and explain to them what these things mean - if they actually understand what these things mean themselves.

In summary: The businesses are giving legal explanations for the public who is concerned about technical matters regarding health. Duh. They aren't answering the questions in context. This means that they probably aren't listening.

The towers aren't a health hazard, but I would have to say that the businesses and media are if they can't explain this to people in a manner which they can understand. This means that someone in their organizations needs to be able to investigate, report, and have discussions.

It's all a crock, and in an odd way I find this whole thing hilarious. Instead of informing the public, these people are doing what they normally do - trying to sound authoritative - and people are seeing that the Emperors have No Clothing. Quit the BS paradigm, start the information paradigm. And in this case, it's working against these organizations in a manner which is... too funny.

Trinbagonians aren't stupid, stop treating them that way.