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The sacred and the profane merged this week atop Park Slope’s Greenwood Baptist Church as workers from Verizon installed cellphone antennas — a move that some critics worry will increase radiation in the neighborhood, but the church says will save the congregation.
“For us this was a divine intervention,” said Alice Cheng, a member of the congregation of the church at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Sixth Street. “The money will help take care of the church infrastructure.”
Cheng said that “nobody in the community” complained about the installation of the cellular equipment, but one anonymous tipster called us extremely distraught the other day.
“This is a situation of concern for the community!” the woman said, citing a still-unproven link between cellphone radiation and brain damage.
The issue of cellular antennae comes up from time to time. In Park Slope, residents of an Eighth Avenue condo building voted against allowing Verizon to install equipment on the roof of their building. In Bay Ridge, protesters failed to dissuade the company from installing equipment on a Shore Road building.
That said, the American Cancer Society says that “cell phone towers are not known to cause any health effects.”
Nonetheless, Cheng said that the church was wary of the equipment before allowing the installation.
“We even asked the hospital, and they had no problem with it,” she said, referring to New York Methodist Hospital on nearby Sixth Street.
©2010 Community Newspaper Group
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