WYANDOTTE, MI (WXYZ) — The cell tower over Washington Elementary in Wyandotte is still causing an uproar among parents at the school. On Tuesday nights many gathered at Washington Elementary's school board meeting to express their outrage.
"It is terrible that I am put in this position. It is terrible that these parents are put in this position," one Wyandotte parent said.
According to representatives with T-Mobile who were also at the meeting Tuesday night, the cellular antennas, like the one on Washington Elementary, are one of the hundreds on buildings across the country including schools, colleges, and nurseries.
"This is not a unique situation," Michelle Sanders with T-Mobile said.
She adds that the tower has not been turned on yet, but once it is, it will omit radiation.
T-Mobile brought in a third-party company called Site Safe to see if the tower could be safely built on top of the school.
"In that review, I found that the maximum exposure levels on the top of the rooftop is well below the FCC standards for electromagnetic field safety," Site Safe representative Anthoney Handley said.
The reps from both companies took questions from the board after the presentation and then left without parents being able to ask their own questions. That sent some parents over the edge.
"My daughter's crying at school because she thinks if the cell tower turns on she's going to get cancer. Then she's crying at home because she doesn't want to leave Washington. Give us answers," one parent said during the school board meeting.
The school district superintendent asked the board and the crowd to give her a week to reevaluate and to see how much it will cost the district to break the contract and move the tower somewhere else. According to the board, terminating the contract is not an option.
