On the proposed PMRF ICBM intercept radar
Radiation: With the military hoping to add more radar to PMRF in the form of a missile interceptor, I thought of how much we don’t know about the full scope of the PMRF radar already in use 24/7.
I thought about how much radar it must take to track missiles as far away as thousands of miles, and that we should be informed about the hazards of continuous radar by the military and what it does to life forms.
Of course, radar isn’t visible. We can’t see the radar already in use, but we know it bathes the entire island and far out to sea. Go fishing miles offshore, you are still in it.
Radar is one if several types of radiation. In looking at sites foreign and national, including our military sites, there is nothing saying how much radiation is coming from military radar.
One U.S. military site explained that radar can damage or kill birds, but that can be mitigated by turning off the radar during bird migrations. But the radar at PMRF never stops.
Shouldn’t we have been given the information years ago as to the radar load we are being subjected to and its potential effects on animal and human bodies?
Now with the proposal to add more, I think we better have this current load information as well as the load for the new intercept radar and its total, as well as its potential for damaging life forms in its coverage area.
I did see that radar can be hazardous to wildlife, as well as cumulative in humans. In looking it up, I found the military is aware that radiation has been implied as a cause of cancer, of brain and internal-organ damage, cataracts and impotence/shrinking testicles.
What they don’t or won’t say is how much you would need to cause this, but you can bet Kaua‘i already has one of the higher radar loads, and now might have more heaped on top of that.
Multiple missiles, multiple decoys: If the time were to come that an enemy country launched a missile directed at us, do you think it’s going to be one measly ICBM? Not likely. It will be multiple warheads and several decoys. How is an intercept missile going to handle that? Not well, I’d imagine. Maybe it would take out a decoy or maybe one of the nukes. Not all of the nukes and maybe none of them.
Paulo Tambolo, Wailua Homesteads
Proposed radar will blast electromagnetic radiation
I appreciated Gary Hooser’s excellent editorial about why the 1.9-billion-dollar radar blaster proposed for Kaua‘i is a spectacularly dumb idea.
The thing will be obsolete as soon as it is built, the military doesn’t want it, it’s a massive waste of money, it fuels cold-war stupidity. But there is one other harm that this boondoggle will cause: electromagnetic radiation.
Presently, we are already bathed in electromagnetic radiation. It has been around since the early days of radio and TV.
We tell parents not to let their little kids put their cell phones near their face. We have microwave ovens and we have Wi-Fi everywhere. Soon, big cities will have 5G networks.
BUT, we have no idea what the long-term effects of this technology will do to us. Doctors used to tell patients that cigarettes were healthy and kept you slim. Doctors prescribe amphetamines and opiates. The military exposed soldiers to atomic bombs to see what would happen to them.
I was a professor of family medicine. I would ask my residents to order an EEG (electroencephalogram) to check a patient’s brain-wave activity. No electromagnetic activity in the brain means you are (brain) dead. If a patient has suspicious chest pain, we would order an EKG (electrocardiogram) to check for a heart attack. If your EKG shows no electromagnetic activity, you are dead, the heart stops beating.
My point is that the entire mammalian body works on electromagnetic radiation. This proposed monstrosity will blast electromagnetic radiation all over the island and all the way across the ocean, the reefs, the fish, the birds and the humans. O‘ahu’s representatives and our new congressmen stuck together to oppose putting it on O‘ahu. Now the only other potential site left is Kaua‘i. Let’s support the Pentagon and say “NO” to this stupid thing.
Gordon LaBedz, M.D., Kehaha
Source: The Garden Island
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