Text of public comment by Lisa Cline on Montgomery County Public Schools Operating Budget April 2021.
Hello. My name is Lisa Cline. I live in Gaithersburg, am an MCPS
parent and child safety advocate. Thank you all for your
incredible work keeping the County safe this past year. I for one
am thankful for the hard decisions you’ve had to make. On that
note, my testimony has to do with the safety of MCPS students
and allocation of funds in the 2022 fiscal budget to test for an
air quality issue that has gone largely ignored for 20 years. That
is: radio frequency emissions.
There are 11 macro cell towers on MCPS campuses. 81% of
them are at schools where at least one-third of students
receive free and reduced meals (FARMs). To put that in
perspective, at a high school where 5% of students are in
financial need, a cell tower was successful fought.
So our poorer communities are disproportionately subject to
the possible health risks of RF emissions. Does this bother
anyone else?
In 2004, it bothered the Montgomery County Planning Board.
In 2004, a mandatory referral letter from the then-Planning
Board Chair pertaining to a tower application (200411-04) at
Northwood HS indicated approval of the tower with the
condition that “a letter certifying [it] operates within FCC
standards is provided on an annual basis to MCPS.”
Last August, I began working with MCPS Real Estate lead Boyd
Lawrence to obtain those annual certifications. Mr. Lawrence
also serves as a member of the Montgomery County Tower
Committee.
He was unsuccessful getting any RF reports and directed me to
file an MPIA request, which I did. The request yielded just three
reports over a 20-year span. Not one tested aggregate
emissions, one mis-named Wheaton as “Wharton,” one only
tested the perimeter of the school, and none measured inside
the schools…where it matters most.
RF radiation is a possible carcinogen. So is radon and lead. So
let’s talk about radon and lead.
MCPS has been testing for radon since the late ‘80s on a five-
year cycle; every two years at schools with a past problem.
Regarding lead…all schools must be tested every three years for
compliance with EPA recommended levels of 20 ppb. But that
wasn’t good enough for many of you…who then passed
legislation lowering the action level to 5 ppb.
Let me underscore that there is NO RF testing in our schools.
I hope you see the double standard here, appreciate the
importance of this request and will allocate funding for annual
RF testing at all of our cell tower-hosting schools.
The MCPS team is quite adept
ReplyDeleteIn order to prevent data theft
Set up a macro cell tower net
To emulate the Van Allen Belt.