The Vatican Radio lawsuit [when?] was started by the Regional Health Department[vague] for "Throwing of dangerous things" on the Italian ground at their antenna site.[1]
The Santa Maria di Galeria transmitter site is the subject of a dispute between the station and some local residents who claim the
non-ionising radiation from the site has
affected their health.
[2] However these claims are not accepted by the station. The only
peer reviewed study of these statistics did find a statistically higher incidence of leukemia within 6 km (4 miles) of the transmitter site, but stated that no causal implication can be drawn due to the small sample size.
[3] The paper discusses several similar findings around the world, with similar conclusions. Effects are reported to be more significant in the case of Childhood Leukemia.
[citation needed] With one exception in 2005, where a 10 day suspended sentence was eventually overturned on appeal,
[4] every time it has been sued, the station cited the
Lateran Treaty, bilateral agreements signed by the Holy See and
Benito Mussolini which exempt it from Italian law. (The area around the antennas at the time it was built was not heavily populated.)
Vatican Radio covers an area of
Civil Defense and the Department for the Environment of the region of
Lazio.
Residents who have moved to the area near the transmitters have experienced other disturbances relating to the station, as is common near transmitter sites the world over. The most common complaints[example needed] to the devices having poor
electromagnetic immunity to the strong signals). A press report in the Region of
Lazio has also reported
[5] that the people in the area around the transmitters are more likely to have
leukemia; the closer those in the examined sample lived to the radio station, the more likely they were to have leukemia, up to six times the Italian national average. This report may have resulted from a press release of a report submitted for peer review in 2001.
[6] The press report was not itself peer reviewed.
Dramatizing the study, a well known[] that the most affected people are children 0 to 14 years old.
See also
References
