Towertalk
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [TowerTalk] radiation hazard

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] radiation hazard
From: Jim Lux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 07:31:01 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 5/18/11 6:42 AM, Rob Atkinson wrote:

> Realize that these people may not be rational and are only interested
> in confirmation of what they already believe.
>

Very much..
Also.. based on recent experience with a local power line issue, while 
people talk EMI, the issue is almost always really aesthetic, but that's 
not very tangible and objective (no accounting for taste in art, what is 
beauty, and all that). "Radiation" at least is objectively dangerous in 
some forms, and once you start down the path of trying to explain 
different kinds of radiation, etc. it gets tricky. After all they are 
willing to hold a 2 watt transmitter next to their head.


And you're often faced with "proving a negative"

You can point to all the government reports (e.g. from FCC OET Bulletin 
65), and they'll say "but the govt is in the pocket of big business. I 
remember the plutonium tests"

You can point to the IEEE/ANSI C95.1 standard (hundreds of pages) and 
they'll say "but that's too much to read, and it's not relevant, because 
I know of one case where there was a problem"

The ARRL website has (or used to have, I haven't looked since the 
website redesign)  a nice write up talking about the epidemiology issues.

Getting back to the proving a negative.. there's a lack of general 
understanding about risks and such (John Allen Paulos wrote a book 
called Innumeracy which discusses it).

Some years ago, I was involved in an analysis of strong EM fields in a 
public display application.  I eventually gave up, because they wanted a 
*guarantee* that there would be *no* effects now and any time in the 
future.  As opposed to "compliance with international standards by a 
factor of 10-100".  I couldn't take the risk that sometime 10 years from 
now, someone shows up with a tumor (just like 30% of the population in 
general) and an attorney, and claims that my analysis, shielding design, 
or measurements were faulty.  The revenue from the job was a tiny 
fraction of what it would cost to get the insurance. The insurance 
company clearly wasn't all that well informed about the real risks 
either.. or, now that I think about it, perhaps they were *very* well 
informed about the lack of understanding of the general population, and 
so they thought the probability of such a lawsuit, which we would 
successfully be able to defend at some non-zero cost, was high enough.

I think they either went with a bigger firm (who had the 
assets/clout/team of lawyers on standby) or decided to go bare, and use 
the usual entertainment industry strategy of creating a separate 
corporate entity with no assets to absorb the liability.  Once the show 
is done, there's nothing and nobody left to sue.
_______________________________________________



_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>