A tower is currently under construction that will improve cellular phone service at McLean High School and in the surrounding neighborhoods, even though questions about possible health risks exist. The tower will be built on the home side of the football field. McLean will receive $25,000 in return for allowing the tower to be built.

Cell phone towers have already been built at eight Fairfax County schools.

The decision by the school board to allow the towers to be built on school grounds has been hotly debated. Some parents have raised concerns about possible health risks from the radiation emitted from the towers. “We think there are long-term health risks posed by these towers,” said Karl Polzer, who runs a group called ProtectSchools.org “The research remains controversial on this subject. Our position is that, until these antennas can be proven safe, then they should not be placed near where children spend a considerable amount of time.”

Principal Paul Wardinski, however, believes that the tower fills an important need, since most students want better cell phone service.

ProtectSchools.org has filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit cell phone towers and antennas from being placed within one mile of schools, playgrounds, day-care centers, and other places where children are commonly found. The group quotes studies from the United States, Great Britain, and Spain, which link the low-intensity radiation emitted by these towers to a wide range of problems, such as increased childhood leukemia rates and increased breakdown of human DNA strands which can lead to cancer and neurological diseases.

Proponents of the towers are quick to point out, however, that most of those studies have not been replicated, and that the radiation emitted by the towers falls well below the FCC’s standards. “I am 100 percent sure that these towers are safe,” said Len Forkas, President of Milestone Communications, the company that is building the tower at McLean. “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t be in this business.”

Forkas has two children in Fairfax County public schools, one of whom has cancer. “When parents come to me with concerns about these cell phone towers giving people cancer, that’s something I take very seriously. I listen,” Forkas said “If I thought I was putting kids in danger like that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

Forkas said that towers are placed around schools and parks because they fit in with the tall light poles that already exist around most athletic fields. A proposal for a similar tower at Longfellow Middle School was withdrawn recently on cosmetic grounds, following a contentious debate about health concerns at a Longfellow PTA meeting in January. The general agreement was that the 140-foot tower would be visually unappealing in an area with so few poles and other tall structures, according to Milestone.

Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, local communities cannot reject a proposal to build a cell phone tower on the grounds of health and safety as long as the tower complies with the FCC’s standards for radiation emissions. FCPS Assistant Finance and Transportation Superintendent Dean Tistadt said that means the school board could not reject the towers because of health concerns.

Polzer disagrees, however, saying that the school board is acting as a landlord in this case, not a regulatory body, and is not obligated to allow Milestone to build the towers on school grounds.