Dear editor,

Another cellphone tower has just been approved for our area, adding to the more than two dozen towers already in place within a 12-mile radius of Jim Thorpe. (And those are just the ones registered with the FCC.)The new tower will be installed in the Mount Pocahontas development near Meckesville Road and Route 534 in Penn Forest Township.The proliferation of cell towers in our area is disturbing, not only because these towers are eyesores that mar our scenic landscape, but also because of mounting evidence these towers are not as benign as the telecommunications industry would have us believe.Controlled studies show a higher incidence of neurobiological complaints such as headache, memory changes, dizziness, tremors, depression, and sleep disturbance among those living close to cellular towers as compared with those living at greater distances.There are environmental concerns as well. Researchers now believe EMF radiation from the thousands of mobile phone base station antennas dotting our landscape could be a contributing factor in the worldwide decline of honeybees, especially in the United States and Europe, where cellphone usage is highest.Bees depend on the earth's magnetic properties for navigation. Electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phones and relay towers interfere with these properties, resulting in a loss of navigation capacity among worker bees so they fail to return to the hive.Experiments in several different countries have found that proximity to a hive of either a cellphone or a cell tower causes a hive to lose most of its worker bees, causing the colony to collapse, sometimes within a surprisingly short period of time. No pollinators, no food.Sincerely,Juliet PerrinAlbrightsville