By Jill McManus
Can anyone tell me of a good restaurant where I can be spared the self-absorbed conversations of cell phone users all around me, and rest my body from microwaves?
Many people are trying to fight a robotical addiction to their cell phone. And many others are becoming EMF-sensitive from an overload of electromagnetic radiation in their homes, offices, schools, libraries, and in trains and buses. Some are getting cancer.
Utilities are replacing older analogue electric and gas meters which required employees to read them with new digital “smart meters.” Unless you opt out in advance, these will be sending out thousands of one-way or two-way pulsed signals a day to communicate your usage data.
For the coming of 5G this fall, “small cell” towers and antennas are now being installed on buildings and utility poles in every block. Unless the much-touted 5G Rollout—faster connections, the internet of useless things, self-driving cars etc.—is stopped (it promises $12 trillion in profits for the telecom industry), these towers will be silently and invisibly blasting data-rich “millimeter wave” frequencies past walls and objects they can’t penetrate. Some of these frequencies are used by the military for “non-lethal” crowd control. All this adds up to higher continuous exposure than a civilian population has ever experienced.
Exposure is cumulative. The risk to living things depends on proximity and duration. We will be getting close-up exposure 24/7. No health testing is being done by the FCC, the agency that ordered this “visionary” project without any public input.
Here is a new market for forward-thinking venue owners: a new kind of place to hang out in the West Village—“NO CELL PHONES/ NO WIFI”—a restaurant where one can enjoy a good dinner without sitting in harmful crossfire from a roomful of phones, even if only on certain nights, or a tea/coffee room where one can read paperwork or get into a good novel while lowering one’s daily exposure to microwave fallout or “dirty electricity.” Wifi-free meeting rooms? It probably wouldn’t hurt if there was one computer in the place to write up checks, especially if its wireless router is shielded by a Faraday cage. A safe place to park phones (turned off or in “airplane mode”) is not hard to arrange. Storefront locations near rooftop arrays can use microwave-resistant curtains or special blocking paints.
Maybe some “smart people” will realize the growing need for such places. There is such a restaurant in Queens, one in LA and in a few other cities. How ‘bout Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too? If you are creating one, please let WestView readers know!
