 Wed, Nov 19, 2008 04:20 PM
| 2005-10-13 |
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2008-06-12  Golden News | Golden's 'pin cushion' broadcasts new signal
Lookout Mountain digital TV tower goes live
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| | By Meredith Knight |
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June 12, 2008
The complications and controversy surrounding construction of the latest tower to be built on Lookout Mountain are history. In early May, Lake Cedar Group's digital TV tower began broadcasting the HDTV signals for channels 4, 7, 9 and 20.
But residents who live near the tower, just outside of Golden's city limits, are still concerned.
Lake Cedar Group and Jefferson County agreed that the media conglomerate would tear down the four existing broadcasting towers and monitor the signal coming from the new tower and four existing towers to make sure the radio frequency (RF) levels did not exceed the federal safety standard set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Although some residents have voiced concern that this monitoring is not taking place, Lake Cedar Group, Jefferson County and an independent electrical engineer who lives on Lookout Mountain confirmed monthly monitoring is happening.
"All of the reports can be looked at in the planning and zoning division at Jefferson County," said Tim Carl, development and transportation director for the county. The records are open to the public.
Myron Oliner, a retired broadcast engineer, was hired by Lake Cedar Group and approved by Jefferson County to monitor 11 sites, or hotspots, on the mountain. Oliner has been monitoring these locations since 1998 before construction on the new digital tower started.
"Since the digital broadcast tower went online, the RF level has not changed at all," said Lake Cedar Group spokesman, Marv Rockford.
Al Hislop is an electrical engineer who lives on Lookout Mountain. He regularly looks at the monthly monitoring reports because the electronic equipment he uses in his home-based business are extremely sensitive to outside electrical signals such as the one coming from the tower.
Hislop has found some discrepancies during his analyses of the monthly monitoring reports. Monitoring is done with two different scientific instruments, one that measures the total energy being emitted by the towers and one that can pull apart the signals and measure the strength of each station's broadcast.
"When [Oliner] splits it out into the different stations, it turns out the sum of two stations is more than 100 percent [of the FCC standard]," said Hislop. He added that the accuracy of the monitoring is "somewhat poor."
Hislop calls Lookout Mountain a "pin cushion" because of all the radio and television towers erected on it. He and other residents have taken precautions to reduce the amount of broadcast signals that can get into their homes by lining walls with aluminum foil and installing special metallic-coated windows that "shield" their houses by reflecting back the waves of energy coming from the towers.
The heart of the issue is whether standards for human exposure set by the FCC are a reasonable and safe level. Currently, the FCC sets its safety limit at 200 micro watts per square centimeter.
"The amount [of RF] that is considered safe for the public would actually run 10,000 TVs," said Hislop of the standard.
Safety standards were originally set for military personnel, mainly radar operators who temporarily become sterile because of their jobs. Other experiments were done on animals that were exposed to high doses of radio signals, but only for a short time. Since the 1950s, there has not been much research analyzing the long-term effects of lower levels of radio frequency exposure, like that coming from the Lookout Mountain towers.
"This is an experiment that this society is conducting right now," Hislop said.
Need to Know
In the agreement between Lake Cedar Group and Jefferson County, the media company has a year after the official analog to digital transition date on Feb. 17, 2009, to tear down the four towers that currently broadcast analog signals. "Every indication from our discussions with [Lake Cedar Group] is that they want to try to take the towers down as soon as possible once the transition occurs," said Tim Carl, development and transportation director for Jefferson County.
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