Wireless signal making you sick?

Monday, July 05, 2010

Tags:

local/state

RALEIGH (WTVD) -- The City of Raleigh is joining a growing number of cities looking at wireless signals from a health perspective.

On Tuesday, the Raleigh City Council will take part in a presentation on microwave radiation sickness and hear a testimonial.

The discussion stems from a growing number of people who say wireless signals make them physically ill.

Raleigh resident Andrew McAfee says it all started for him about seven years ago when he and his wife bought a house next to a television tower.

"After a couple of months living there, I started getting more headaches and bags under my eyes, my skin became like reptile leather," he said.

McAfee says his symptoms kept getting worse and he eventually made the connection.

"Driving by the tower I'd just start feeling like, 'wow, something hit me from the tower,'" he said.

They wound up moving, but McAfee says other electronics, including cell phones, had also begun to make him sick.

"It was very difficult to have this reputation that 'oh, you can't be around Andrew with a cell phone,' and especially for my career, it's been very difficult," he said.

The studies on electro-magnetic sensitivity are inconclusive. But increasingly, cities are starting to take stories like McAfee's seriously.

San Francisco just passed a law requiring cell phone retailers to post how much radiation their phones gives off. And many cities are considering moratoriums on building new towers.

McAfee is hoping Raleigh will do the same, but knows not much is likely to change anytime soon.

So in order to deal with it, he wears a lead hat when he travels by plane.

"It's typically used by people after they get a radiation treatment to not let the radiation get out of their head; I've found it helps lessen the radiation that comes into my head when I'm around other people with cell phones," McAfee said.

In Raleigh, one doctor's office says they have treated multiple cases of electro-magnetic sensitivity and in that McAfee sees hope.

"There are now more and more of us, locally, that are supporting each other, so I don't feel so alone anymore," McAfee said.