Awaiting call from future about 5G
I suggest to Blake Levitt that she is playing whack-a-mole in her efforts to inform lawmakers and the public in different states about the potential perils of 5G.
“I feel more like Sisyphus,” she replies.
I counter that she’s Sisyphus playing whack-amole. It’s a crummy analogy, but she is giving pushback to massive corporations while trying to corral policy issues as they pop up in different states. At the heart of the issue are the effects of involuntary exposure to electromagnetic radiation. Levitt is on the side of the fence advocating caution based on studies indicating it is harmful to the environment and humans, particularly children.
While Levitt, a science journalist, was recently whacking moles in California, where resistance to the 5G revolution has momentum, she realized she averted her gaze from her home state of Connecticut. Gov. Ned Lamont is trying to reverse the state’s business fortunes by claiming the lead in the 5G race.
“This one gives me the willies. This is not thought out at all. I say this as a Lamont supporter — if we didn’t have someone who is so pro technology, Connecticut would not have gone and called itself the first 5G state,” she says. “That did not get anywhere near the scrutiny it should have.”
She’s referring to a law that breezed through the General Assembly last year to establish a council that will set guidelines and review requests from carriers. Most ominously for skeptics, it makes public rights-of-way available for the new technology.
“That’s a big thing,” says Levitt, who studied at Quinnipiac and Yale. “No other state in the country has done this.”
Lamont recently cut a deal with AT&T to give the people — well, the commuters at least — what they want by upgrading trains from New Haven to Greenwich to 4G and teeing up the transition to 5G.
If that’s not enough, Levitt is trying to shove her rock uphill just as it’s gaining yardage with help from the NFL. Verizon’s Super Bowl advertising strategy will wrap the technology’s benefits around firefighters who leverage it to save lives.
Faster Netflix streaming on the rails, firefighters ... football ... Who wouldn’t like that?
Well, the rebellion is growing, if turnout at Wednesday’s Stamford forum about 5G concerns is any indication. As I considered the audience of 165, I spotted several members of the city’s Board of Representatives, along with state representatives Dan Fox of Stamford, Anne Hughes of Shelton, Kenneth Gucker of Danbury and other officials from around the state. Responsible community leaders are starting to seek more information rather than just taking on faith the promise of for-profit companies.
Nick Simmons, who handles the Lamont administration’s 5G policies, told Hearst reporter Kaitlyn Krasselt that “We take any type of health concern very, very, very seriously ...”
He lost me after that. My own antenna goes up when I hear one “very,” let alone three.
Levitt was slated to be the headliner at Ferguson
Library, but missed it for personal reasons. She was born in Bridgeport, has spent her entire life in Connecticut and worked as a journalist in Litchfield County and as a contributor to the New York Times before writing books on the hazards of cell towers and electromagnetic fields. She was wise to seek a longer format, because you just can’t shorthand the complexities of issues such as 5G in a few hundred words.
She joined U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal at a news conference a year ago where he called for more research and transparency from the FCC regarding links between radio frequencies and cancer.
A couple decades ago, she was a delegate who backed Lamont over Joseph Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic U.S. Senate primary. After Lamont took the governor’s seat a year ago, she didn’t give much thought to his interest in 5G because of his cable television career in a wired environment.
“Of all the people who would know that wired systems are safer than wireless, (Lamont) would be the guy,” she reasoned. “I got complacent about Connecticut because we always seemed to be doing the right thing.”
These days, though, wireless environments are perceived as being as elemental as air and water. Everyone craves internet speed like an Olympic athlete tempted by steroids. The only thing faster than 5G connections can be the approval process for upgrades. Among other things, Levitt says some amphibians and insects crucial to the food chain are at risk.
I suggest to her that though change can take decades, there are success stories. Fewer people smoke. There has finally been a reduction in the use of plastic bags.
“But they had to see one coming out of a turtle’s nose in order for people to see we are causing suffering in other species,” she responds.
Ironically, Levitt and her peers are making a call and hoping someone hears them at the other end.
I want faster service too. But I also fear our children may look back at wireless providers as the Big Tobacco of the 21st century.
These days, though, wireless environments are perceived as being as elemental as air and water. Everyone craves internet speed like an Olympic athlete tempted by steroids.