Airport radar not
a health hazard
AIRPORT--Transport Minister Maurice Adriaens has reacted with surprise to reports in the media that there is a potentially hazardous situation for the health of the workers at the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower in St. Maarten.
“If you stand next to radar maybe it can be hazardous, but the fact that the radar is placed on a different floor from where the air traffic controllers are working gives enough separation,” he said in response to concerns raised by United Federation of the Windward Antilles UFA advisor Willy Haize on Radio Soualiga yesterday afternoon.
Haize was concerned that radiation from the ATC radar might be hazardous for workers in the tower.
Adriaens said radar gave out radio-magnetic waves. “The discussion is whether these waves are hazardous. There is no scientific proof that they are,” he said.
Adriaens added that the same argument went for the use of cellular phones. “It is said that holding a cellular phone next to your head for a long time is hazardous. They also emit radioactive waves, but it’s not the same as standing next to an antenna. The waves there are much more concentrated.”
He said it was up to the Safety Inspectorate to make the inspection. In this regard, Constitutional and Home Affairs Minister Roland Duncan said that as far as he knew, there hadn’t been a safety inspector in St. Maarten for years.
The Safety Inspectorate falls under the Labour Department and was decentralised about 20 years ago, Duncan said.
“Now we are working on decentralising the Labour Department, but government in the past never provided the infrastructure for the decentralisation of the safety inspection to take place. These are the things I constantly talk about. The islands want to decentralise, but the infrastructure is not provided.”
Peter Fontilus of the Health Inspectorate also reacted with some surprise at the contention that there could be a hazardous situation at the Air Traffic Control tower. Radar doesn’t give out radioactive waves, but radio-magnetic waves, he said.
“There is a worldwide discussion whether these waves are hazardous or not. That’s why in the Netherlands, for example, pregnant women are not allowed to sit for too long in front of a computer screen,” Fontilus said.
He added that it had been said as well that sitting in front of a television set too long could be hazardous.
He also said the Safety Inspectorate was the entity that should carry out the inspection, but that inspection of ionising rays also fell under the Health Inspectorate. However, Fontilus said it was impossible for the Health Inspectorate to perform checks at random.
