At first glance, the handful of Craigavon residents, in Fourways, come across as complete lunatics for complaining they are sick because of an iBurst tower.
Come on, towers like these for wireless broadband and cellphones have been up - all over the show - for well over a decade. If they really made people sick, surely the Department of Health would have banned them and insist they be replaced with something else, like tin cans and string.
Let's face it, who is going to take anyone seriously when they admit to lining their houses with tin foil? That sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie - the sort where people make themselves tin hats to avoid being kidnapped by aliens.
Fauna and flora
The question is - is there any empirical proof that cellphone and wireless masts can make people ill?
No, says iBurst. To prove its point, it has pictures of birds living in the towers, right at the point where all the antennae converge, which is apparently the strongest point of transmission.
iBurst also argues that the tower's radiation is well below international guidelines, and cannot possibly make anyone ill. The company will happily roll out studies showing no tower has ever been found to be the cause of an illness.
How do you prove it's the iBurst tower, and not something in the water?
Nicola Mawson, journalist, ITWeb
But the residents have pictures of rashes and dead plants to prove the tower is deadly. The problem with the photos of the dead plants is that they look just like my dead plants, and I don't live near a tower - I just have no gardening skills.
The residents also point to studies that show a concentration of cancer sufferers around a tower, and others that found increases in headaches and other ailments because of towers.
Proving they are sick because of the tower is going to be a challenge.
He said, she said
It's not only that for every academic paper the residents can produce, iBurst can counter it with another one arguing the exact opposite. Because they are making the allegations, the onus is on them to prove it. How do you prove it's the iBurst tower, and not something in the water?
Could it be something else, like a sudden burst of electricity through the power lines? What if a dodgy government department is testing its nuclear capability in the area, illegally?
How can the residents be quite sure it is this particular tower that has caused a range of illnesses, from nausea to rashes?
Despite the obstacles in their path, the residents are determined to carry the matter all the way to the top court in SA if they need to. And that's going to cost them a pretty penny.
If these business people are determined to go to court, and have even hired a lawyer, then it is possible there could be some truth to their claims.
On the face of it, their claims that residents all got sick at about the same time, with similar illnesses, is compelling, if circumstantial, evidence.
I have no idea who is right, or what this will mean for cellular and wireless broadband providers in SA if the residents make it all the way to the Constitutional Court and win.
What I do know is I'm not taking any risks. I don't want to live anywhere near a tower. My plants would never take it.
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