CITY OF CALAPAN, Oriental Mindoro—When Rosendo Rojas came home from a month-long vacation in Tarlac to vote in last year’s May elections, he was startled by an unlikely neighbor beyond his fence: A rising telecommunications tower.

Rojas and the other residents of Camia Street in Calapan’s Sitio 1, Barangay Suqui, asked the local government for the “immediate stoppage” of the cell tower’s construction because they were not consulted. Their petition, however, was denied twice by the local government.  

Redentor Reyes Jr, then city housing and urban settlements officer and zoning administrator, said that during the coronavirus pandemic, the new requirements and processes for such projects had been streamlined for greater connectivity. In the case of Camia and Daisy Streets, where there is no homeowners’ association, the residents’ consent and social preparation were no longer needed. 

The company complied with all requirements and if the local government would delay approval, it could face a lawsuit, Reyes said.  

A standard cell tower stands at 50-200 feet (three to 14 stories in a building) and costs at least P15 million to build, according to experts’ estimates.

The most that the petitioners could do is hang tarps in front of their houses that read “Telco Tower Itigil, Hindi Kinunsulta ang mga Tao, Banta sa Kalusugan” (Stop Telco Tower, People Not Consulted, Threat to Health). 

Fast document processing

In August 2020, then Interior Secretary Eduardo Año announced that the old government processing system that took 241 days for 19 permits with 86 document requirements would be trimmed to 16 days.   

Then President Rodrigo Duterte had earlier urged telecommunication companies to report local government units hampering the permits to build cell towers. The new guidelines for cell tower sharing issued by the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) now allow independent companies to build their sites and lease them to telco operators.

According to the Asian Development Bank, the Philippines had about 27,000 telecom towers as of 2021, or only 167 cell towers per 1 million people—one of the lowest cell site densities in the region. With only about 16,000 cell towers in 2019, the DICT said the country needed at least 50,000 more cell towers to improve telecommunication services ad by 2031, 60,000 more in unserved and underserved areas. 

Duterte’s successor, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., stressed in his first State of the Nation address that the government should digitalize its operations for easier access to its services. 

In June 2021, the DICT, as directed by Duterte, announced the “common tower policy” amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Under the policy, the department, along with the Anti-Red Tape Authority and other agencies, expanded a joint circular to fast-track the processing of documents and authorizations of “Passive Telecommunications Tower Infrastructures.” 

The new guidelines that streamline the permits and processes for cell tower construction provided in the Bayanihan to Recover as One Act or Republic Act No. 11494 are evoking questions among legal practitioners:  

Should it be brought to court for interpretation? Is the right to a healthy environment under the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, not in conflict with R.A. 11494? Does the right to public consultation in the Local Government Code prevail over RA 11494, which is a specific law?  

The case, according to a public attorney at the central office in Manila, is a novelty and would take time, endurance and resources, which telcos may have to their advantage.

Moratorium

Meantime, cell tower petitioners find support and strength in an online community of volunteers called Stop 5G Philippines. 5G (5th generation) is the latest generation of mobile technology and is said to be 10 to many times faster than 4G, so thousands of 5G cell sites have been installed across the country, and more are being built.

Stop 5G Philippines is “not anti-technology but for safe technology,” its founder and lead convener Lynn Malaya, an IT specialist, clarified. 

On its Facebook page, with nearly 5,000 members, is an online tutorial on 5G to learn how it affects people and their families, how it harms human beings and all life on the planet, and how to protect oneself. It includes a signature campaign addressed to the President, lawmakers, and concerned Cabinet secretaries and commissioners.

“In the absence of independent tests or studies to prove that these are safe for humans and the environment, we call for a moratorium on 5G wireless networks,” it said. 

Malaya said the “precautionary principle should prevail.” She added: “As of June 26, 2022, an international appeal has been signed by 301,546 scientists, doctors, environmental organizations, and citizens from 216 nations and territories, addressed to the United Nations, WHO, and governments of all nations to urgently call for a stop to the deployment of 5G on Earth.”

She said the Philippines’ Food and Drugs Administration brushed aside the group’s petition letter that cited, among others, the BioInitiative Report 2012 and articles from the Environmental Health Trust that showed evidence of harm even below the claimed safety limits of RF exposure.

The BioInitiative Report 2012, prepared by 29 experts from 10 countries, laid down a rationale for biologically based public exposure standards for electromagnetic fields. 

Malaya also quoted from cell tower epidemiological studies. “Within 100 meters, there is a 35% increase in cancers, high rates of prostate, breast, lung, kidney, and liver cancer. Within 350 meters, a fourfold increase in the incidence of cancer.”

“Among women, the increase in cancer was 10 times the norm. Within 500 meters is the highest death rate from cancer and increased prevalence of adverse neurobehavioral symptoms,” she said.

Malaya pointed out that “within one kilometer, one could experience headaches, skin rashes, sleep disturbances, depression, decreased libido, increased rates of suicide, concentration problems, dizziness, memory changes, and increased risk of cancer, tremors, and other neurophysiological effects.”

In Barangay Apas, Cebu City, Annie Reniva, a physical therapist who has been among those leading the campaign against cell towers in her community, challenged the DOH director for instrumentation and stakeholders of the telecommunications company:  

“Why don’t they try to live within the zero to a 600-meter radius of the mobile phone station and tell me after three years if they have not experienced any of the symptoms listed in the epidemiological study. Kung wala silang maramdaman [If they don’t feel anything] or any health-related problems, then I rest my case,” said Reniva.

Relocation call

She clarified to mobile phone users, especially to young people, that “we are not against improved connectivity for work-from-home jobs, and we just want relocation of cell towers away from residential areas where there are no humans or even animals. We need to weigh the pros and cons.”

The most affected, she said, would be those vulnerable sectors left at home—the very old, young, pregnant, nursing mothers, and those with comorbidity because, she pointed out, radiation penetrates metals and buildings.  

The Stop 5G Philippines petition cited recommendations, including a preference for “wired communication using fiber optic technology which has been proven to be safer, faster, and more reliable than wireless communication.”

But Reniva, having encountered cancer cases in Apas, said: “Our right to life, liberty, and security, as provided in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights supersedes whatever executive order because lives are at stake.”

“We will have to consult the community because they are the ones affected, who bear the brunt of effects of the mobile station, and the common tao will have to make sure he or she is aware of the effects,” she said.

“It is not enough to listen, we have to do our research, to keep an open mind because we don’t know, and one day, it will be us.”

Reniva said she hoped the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government would heed their call. 

“Come to Apas and meet the children, husband, and wife of those who have gone, calling on everyone in different parts of the Philippines. Many of you are fighting, you are not alone.”

Reniva recently returned to Apas, where a Sun Cellular tower still operates, and asked Porponio Lapa Jr., a doctoral degree holder who is the president of the Calvary Hills Apas Residents’ Organization Prospero Lapa, for updates. “I found out a cancer survivor just died in 2021.”

(Madonna T. Virola wrote this article as part of the journalism fellowship of the Philippine Press Institute under the auspices of the Hanns Seidel Foundation. —Ed.)

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CITY OF CALAPAN, Oriental Mindoro—As far back as Genita Romero could recall, it was in the 1990s when her family’s health troubles began: Her 84-year-old mother Rosita had been plagued with tuberculosis, while her children had abscesses in the groin that had to be surgically removed at the health center. They also coughed persistently despite medication.

The Romeros have been living near the foot of Calapan City’s oldest cell phone tower in Barangay Calero, and they believe, with their experiences, that radio-frequency (RF) radiation emitted by the metal frame structure was harming them physically.  

“We were children when we saw (that) Extelcom tower constructed, and we were made to sign a document saying we would benefit one day, but without telling us the negative effects,” said Genita, now 47.

Medical science has attributed tuberculosis and abscesses to bacterial infection. It has so far found no evidence of noticeable harm to humans from exposure to RF radiation from cell phone towers, even cell phones, computers, WiFi, microwave ovens and other electronic devices. 

‘Non-ionizing radiation’

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, RF is a form of “non-ionizing radiation” with the lowest energy in the electromagnetic spectrum, “not enough energy to remove electrons from atoms and molecules but has enough energy to heat substances such as in a microwave.”

Some groups, however, seek to stop cell tower projects as a precautionary step to protect public health. 

The divergence of views has seen micro-pockets of protests in communities surrounding cell phone towers in Calapan and elsewhere. Some residents still feed stories of malaise, though doubtful, to the neighborhood narrative, unconvinced of the safety assurance coming from the telecommunications giants. 

Daniela Marie, 21, another Calero resident, said she suffered two seizures three years ago, and another in July last year. “I don’t have a history of other illnesses except asthma, but I don’t get seizures with it. … When I was brought to the hospital, the doctor said it could be overfatigue and radiation.” She failed to ask the doctor if it could be radiation from the cell tower.

In Cebu City, Annie Reniva, a physical therapist and an advocate of the right to a safe environment, learned about nine cancer cases in her parents’ hometown in Sitio Calvary in Barangay Apas, after two cell towers were installed. She was staying barely six months in the area after working in the United States in 2009. 

“The first thing that shocked me was that the husband of the shopkeeper died of cancer, then a neighbor, until I learned more and there were those donation drives in the community.  Me coming from the healthcare sector, I got to thinking, why?” said Reniva.

One of the cell towers was erected by Globe Telecom in 2000 and another by Sun Cellular in 2004. Reniva eventually met people who started a petition to relocate the towers to nonresidential areas. In 2012, they formed the Calvary Hills Apas Residents’ Organization (Charo).

“We asked government leaders and politicians to give us a voice, held rallies, set up human barricades and blocked the cell sites (between 2013 and 2015). We prayed hard though we came from different religions,” Reniva said.

“This battle is difficult. You get tired. But when you talk with cancer survivors, like a mother told me, Annie, I don’t want to die. My children are still small, who will take care of them?” she said.

Globe Telecom, in a statement, reiterated that no clinical studies have proved that exposure to RF emission causes cancer, citing remarks from the Department of Health. 

“Radiofrequency emissions from cell sites are categorized as non-ionizing and will not impact human cells or organs. Even renowned international agencies like the World Health Organization have indicated that the level of radiofrequency exposure from cell sites is so low and does not affect human health,” Globe said.

It added that information and communication technology brings progress to large cities like Cebu. 

Charo said her group did its own research on the issue. “I found out just in Sitio Calvary in Apas that we had 31 people who died from varying stages of cancer,” Reniva said. “We took the fight seriously because] people have been dying … . There had been opposition before,” she said in Filipino.

Community-based research

Reniva, citing epidemiological studies worldwide, said the radius of zero to 600 meters around a cellphone tower or base station is considered “the hazardous distance.” 

“I saw the first three years of exposure, [when the] initial electromagnetic hypersensitivity reactions manifest, like insomnia, difficulty in eating, anxiety, depression, and aggravation of existing conditions such as hypertension, heart ailments, etc., and worst of all – cancer,” she said.  

“[Not all listened to us], but this led me to producing a visual PowerPoint presentation where I highlighted the people with their photos – those who are fighting for the petition and their lives because they were cancer survivors undergoing chemotherapy.” 

She added: “These people are taxpayers, the electorate. This was my selling point to the local government. It was alarming because most of the cancer cases had no history of such in the family.”

Reniva presented the materials to the local authorities and the local press. In 2015, the Cebu City council revoked the special permits they gave to Globe Telecom and Sun Cellular and ordered the cell towers deactivated, which prompted the companies to file cases in court. Some believe that the officials’ decision was politically motivated, not health-related. 

Sun Cellular secured a 72-hour temporary restraining order from the Regional Trial Court and its tower was spared from the scheduled deactivation. Globe did not seek injunctive relief but eventually removed its tower a year later after a compromise agreement with the residents. 

In Calapan, similar community actions, including petition signing and tarp displays, took place but resulted in little success.

“We had a meeting with authorities but (were) told that the project was part of development. The petition eventually died down, and then we learned that it was already Smart [using] the tower,” said Carmelita Cruz, the administrator of the nearby Mount Tabor Formation Center for Mangyan college students.

The Calero residents were worried that prolonged exposure to cell tower radiation could take a toll on their health, said Cruz, who now stays at the Mangyan Center in her senior years with her lay missionary colleague.

Ma. Yvette Macaruyo, chair of the barangay’s health committee, said she knew of cases of brain and breast cancer, and weak lungs, especially among those financially struggling to live within the tower area. “But we don’t know why there are these illnesses,” she said.

Asked if the DOH had issued any advisories on the effects of 5G cell tower radiation last year, a DOH officer in Oriental Mindoro immediately coordinated with the regional Center for Health Development through its Field Health Operations. The officer later received a message from the Occupational Health and Safety Center in Manila stating that it could not directly correlate radiation to health effects for lack of validating studies. 

“Until such time that there are several studies and research, only then can we say that there are direct health effects,” the center said, adding:

“We do not have [much] research or studies regarding this worldwide. Expert organizations around the world like the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the American Cancer Society, and even the US National Toxicology Program have yet to issue any official statement or position because studies are not enough and cannot yet be correlated to any health effects.” 

(Madonna T. Virola wrote this article as part of the journalism fellowship of the Philippine Press Institute under the auspices of the Hanns Seidel Foundation. — Ed.)

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