iBurst who own a telephone mast (Craigavon tower) play a trump card to residents who are complaining of health issues.
“Over the past few months a battle between certain concerned Craigavon residents and iBurst reached fever pitch, with residents demanding that iBurst move a tower that was erected in Fourways Memorial Park on 12 August 2009.
A ‘Craigavon Task Force’ was established shortly after the erection of the tower, partly because some residents in the area complained about ailments which they attributed to the tower. They staged a protest a few weeks after the tower went live, handing out flyers with the message: “iBurst subjects a residential community filled with children to uninvited microwaves from their tower”.
In an email one Craigavon Task Force member, Tracey-Lee Dorny, describes the affected community’s symptoms: “several rash cases were presented in person and by photos from people who could not attend [a meeting with iBurst]. Headaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns, especially with some of the children, were some of the issues presented by the residents.”
Dorny told The Star that she and her son are spending alternate nights at her mother’s house to get some relief. “When I’m off the property, the symptoms subside,” she said.
Another resident, Dave McGregor, is also quoted in The Star as saying that his wife and nine-year-old son suffer bouts of nausea and retching, and have developed skin rashes since the erection of the tower. “We’ve told our son that the tower is only switched on one day a week, so it’s not psychosomatic,” McGregor told The Star.
iBurst CEO Jannie van Zyl said that no medical proof regarding the ailments was presented by any resident to date, but notwithstanding this absence of medical proof iBurst agreed to meet with the Craigavon residents to address their concerns.
At the meeting Van Zyl agreed to turn off the tower with immediate effect to assess whether the health problems described by some of the residents subsided. What Craigavon residents were unaware of is that the tower had already been switched off in early October – six weeks before the November meeting where residents confirmed the continued ailments they experienced.
Van Zyl argues that this clearly proves that the iBurst tower could not be the cause of the health symptoms described by some of the residents. Van Zyl reiterated that residents said that the symptoms typically subsided in hours or days after leaving the Craigavon area, and since it still prevailed in mid-November it means that it could not have been related to the iBurst tower radiation.”
Read more at My Broadband
I love this!
It really shows people are making these things up.
Very
very
funny
Hah.
I think the correct response to this is ‘lol’
Whatever it is i wouldn’t want to hang around to find out… :S
Out in the wilds of Craigavon they don’t hold with outsiders or communication with them apart from the tankers of Buckfast.
In the 70s the governent paid people to move there, nobody stayed longer than 6 weeks.
The true resident can easily count to 6 on the fingers of one hand.
Check the unicyclopedia entrys for Portadown, craigavon and lurgan
But what about the followup? I ‘d like to know what happened next. Did the residents
(1) admit they were wrong
(2) continue to claim the microwaves were the cause of their ailments – bringing on the next level of fancifulness to explain a delayed effect
(3) become silent
Msg From Abeo: The rest of the article has some more details (http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Wireless/11099.html).
Placebo illness?
Ha ha ha, I like that……
LC x
If you look hard enough you could find a post box with an outbreak of people living nearby with similar conditions. Just because you’re near and you have a complaint, it does not mean the item in question is causing it!
Lovely.
Don’t ya just love it when the ‘placebo effect’ kicks in
They were probably just annoyed with the tower ruining their skyline so they came up with a ‘brilliant scheme’ to get rid of it
The Company should have used the meeting to hand out some branded tin foil hats…
No doubt the residents will claim the company is lying about the earlier switch off date, and that it was their direct action that eventually caused the switch off.
If they all believed that the tower was to blame for so long, I doubt they wouldn’t want to accept that they must now blame something else and it wasn’t the tower causing illness.
It’s a bit like admitting you were wrong and who in their right mind, after dedicating so much time and effort to a unsubstantiated cause, would want to admit they are wrong?
I think Iburst should just tell them they have turned it off for good, but can’t knock the tower down or it will leak a huge radiation cloud over the environment and then just leave the tower running. The residents are obviously that silly they wouldn’t know any better!
We have a huge debate going on near us about a gas storage plant that some gas company wants to build but a lot of people don’t want it as they think it will end up blowing the place sky high, yet you hear them all complaining about the high cost of gas!
Rob, this is Craigavon in Johannesburg, not good old Norn Iron.
I can only think of one outcome that would have been funnier than this…
“iBurst, your telephone mast is giving our children radiation sickness! We want it removed!”
“I’m afraid we haven’t actually set up a telephone mast near here, Mrs Idiot.”
“What? Then what’s that over there?”
“A tree.”
- A bizarre but related Story greatly abridged -
Afew years ago an old friend of mine started to suffer aches and pains at night in his bones that got worse over time. He stopped sleeping and eventually suffered anxiety and an altered consciousness (sense of another being in his bedroom at night). Diagnosing his condition was a long journey that included many doctors, tests and dead ends. After stripping bedrm paint, testing for noxious gasses etc he stumbled appon the true cause. He has an physiological reaction the electro magnetic fields created by transformers in appliances, namely his alarm clock had large field that reached across top of his bed. This diagnosis was proven by double blind tests. I even tested him myself. He can consciously tell you if theres a field around. Sadly his condition got so bad that he had to move out bush
Would you be over the moon to have one anywhere near you..? Would you be prepared to take that chance with your kids’ wellbeing..?
Cell phones now seem to have a positive effect on Alzheimer … so who knows what positive effects those masts may have. All things have several sides. Positive and negative.
Ofcouse people like to have something to blame for lots of things. Or someone.
The backdraft of the modern world … the opponent of healthy ageing …
Wow, people will believe anything they read on a blog. Actually people will believe pretty much anything. Like the CEO of Iburst, Jannie Van Zyl, who has admitted to lying to residents about the tower’s switch off date.
Funny how iburst won’t produce any evidence whatsoever of having turned the tower off. And funny how during this time the tower was allegedly off, two separate phone calls to the call centre confirmed that the tower was in fact ON. Further, the CEO himself confirmed that the tower was ON during the period that he later said it was off.
If the tower was off, why won’t iburst prove that it was off? Instead, this CEO has lost his job, and this tower has since been dismantled under an agreement where no party is allowd to to discuss the terms.
Hmmm.
I went to see enigma, it was the mosy amazing show ever! I loved the song at te end.cant wait for the next show