Ronny Karam

12 years after their first protest, the Matn citizens are still fighting against the project aiming to place high tension electrical poles in their backyards.

It’s not the esthetical image they’re worried about but the health of more than 20,000 students exposed everyday and constantly to the electromagnetic fields created by the hanging wires.

12 years and ‘till now, no official governmental community or institute even made a move, or even better, prepared any study about the issue. Why? Maybe we lack the necessary engineers, doctors, specialized personnel, etc. (NOT…), or maybe we can’t afford the materials and the cost (also NOT…), or maybe because the people we elected don’t give a damn about us (Most probably…  Am I kidding…? It’s for SURE).

The problem is not based in Matn only. Many other towns and cities are constantly exposed to different kinds of health threatening materials; whether it was the garbage, the polluted air (smoke, gases, etc.), the polluted waters (garbage, chemicals, etc.), the high tension power lines, etc..
We have them all.

Yet, for the first time in Lebanon, actual living Lebanese individuals decided to move their butts and say loudly…“NO”.
NO… we won’t allow the power lines to pass near our houses, churches, and for sure not near our schools.
NO… we won’t stand still watching our children’s lives get threatened because some stupid politician (whom we all know…) decided to reroute the actual line this project should have taken for his own benefit.
NO… we won’t be crushed under the highest bidders’ feet anymore.
NO and NO and NO and NO… we won’t accept all the bullshit our politicians throw at us and expect us to stupidly believe.

High tension electromagnetic fields are believed to be the main cause of several types of cancer. If there’s a 1% chance of this being true, the government should take the right decisions to prevent such disaster. Yet, there are many studies and proofs that the risk is high and real.

ScienceDaily, a source for the latest research news, posted on its website on the 16th of October 2000, an article titled: “Electromagnetic Fields Affect Human Cells”.
The article lists the results and experiments conducted at Michigan State University (USA) by Professor James E. Trosko (Pediatrics & Human development specialist) and other colleagues, and which result to verify the fact that overhead power lines can cause cancer.

NewScientist, a science & technology news service, posted on its website on the 3rd of June 2005, an article titled: “Large study links power lines to childhood cancer”.
The article states that children living near power lines show an increased risk of leukemia. The study was conducted by the Childhood Cancer Research Group at the University of Oxford (UK) and the National Grid Owners.

You can find a dozen other researches online which prove that high voltage overhead power lines have severe effects on the human body and especially on children (leukemia).

On the other hand, you can find hundreds of researches that contradict this fact. Why? Because they’re all funded by governments and guided by politicians.

I salute the will the Matn citizens have; it takes courage to defy the government. It takes frightened parents to face the world. But most of all, it takes believing humans to fight for their right in a just cause.

“NO MORE TENSION!”