Army Radio's relay station in Haifa, located in the heart of the upscale residential neighborhood Ramat Almogi on the Carmel, emits electromagnetic radiation at up to 400 percent above the Environment Ministry standard, according to a report issued by the Union of Bay Watch Towns for Environmental Defense on Monday.
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The Haifa-based environmental organization completed its analysis of emergency tests it had conducted at the site and the chairman, Prof. Dan Zilberstein, and director-general Zvi Forer termed the anomalies "severe environmental pollution."
Electromagnetic radiation exceeding the allowable standard was measured, among other locations, at the Einstein Street elementary school near the military antenna compound; at a nearby community center; and in several residential apartments.
Haifa Mayor Yona Yahav dispatched a letter Tuesday to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz demanding that the radio relay station be shut down immediately and moved elsewhere.
Yahav reminded Mofaz that during Yitzhak Mordechai's tenure as defense minister, he promised to relocate the station but nothing was ever done about it.
The site where the Army Radio relay station is housed dates back to the British Mandate period, when the Carmel was sparsely populated.
The 1960s saw a building boom in the area, which included the elementary school on Einstein Street, whose houses abut the fence around the relay station. In the 1990s, the site was surrounded by the townhouses that went up in the Ramat Almogi neighborhood.
From the early '90s, neighborhood residents fought against the radio broadcasts and succeeded in halting the broadcasts of the powerful AM antenna at the site.
Additional antennas located there belong to bodies affiliated with the Defense Ministry. Both then defense minister Mordechai and deputy minister Ephraim Sneh made promises in the past to relocate the site.
The catalyst for the recent emission testing was an increase in the electromagnetic disturbances of which neighborhood residents had complained.
Residents said that Army Radio was coming through the intercoms of neighborhood apartment buildings, through home telephones, and through the speakers on switched-off computers.
The remote-control central locking mechanism on some cars had stopped working, and even the Union of Towns' monitoring station on Einstein Street ceased operating due to powerful electromagnetic interference.
The Union of Towns appealed to the Environment Ministry to run an electromagnetic monitoring operation on site. According to Zilberstein and Forer, an Environment Ministry team came, but found no anomalous radiation measurements.
The Union of Towns Monday pointed an accusing finger at the Environment Ministry over its handling of the matter.
The Union decided to hire the services of an external firm and approached Dr. Ehud Neeman, who formerly headed the radiation division at the Environment Ministry, and he carried out emission measurements on site.
The findings indicated severe aberrations from the norm. The standard established by the Environment Ministry for electromagnetic radiation from radio waves (RF) is 20 microwatts per square centimeter - a far stricter standard than is common throughout the world.
Dr. Neeman's tests found electromagnetic radiation 2.8 times in excess at the Einstein Street school and four times the allowable standard in a residential apartment on Yakinton Street.
The monitoring data indicates that the source of the radiation is an FM antenna belonging to Army Radio. The Union of Towns transferred the findings to the ministries of health, education, and defense and to the commander of Army Radio.
"I think that somebody in the army decided one day to flip a switch and bombard the area with radiation," said Moshe Evenstein of Yakinton Street, who was the first to complain about the coverage of antennas that was interfering with the operation of his car alarm. "It's insufferable."
An Army Radio spokesperson said that "the survey of radiation measurements performed by the Union of Towns has not yet been submitted to the IDF for comment. We will receive the survey, study it and examine the ramifications it raises. The IDF is sensitive to the environmental health risks."
Dr. Stelian Gelberg of the Environment Ministry commented that a binding standard has not yet been adopted in Israel but merely recommendations for minimizing exposure to electromagnetic radiation. "Our recommendations refer to long-term exposure and they await a bill proposal by the environment minister. Opposition by the Ministry of National Infrastructure has delayed the bill proposal for over a year now," Dr. Gelberg said. "In any event, the findings by the Union of Towns are similar to our own findings," he added.
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