The debate over whether radio frequency emissions from cell towers are safe enough for school sites continues to rage.

Varous scientific studies about radio frequency emissions were discussed at the Las Virgenes school board’s Aug. 18 meeting amid concerns that the placement of cell towers on campus poses a health risk to children.

The school district has contracted with OmniPoint Communications, the parent company of TMobile Wireless, to build an unmanned wireless telecommunications facility on the campus of Lindero Canyon Middle School in Agoura Hills.

Agoura High School already has four cell antenna installations, and Calabasas High has two. Another is planned for A.E. Wright Middle School in Calabasas.

Agoura Hills residents and city officials have been sparring with the district and T-Mobile on many fronts for most of the year .

The city says the school district should have conducted a public hearing before the contract was signed and that the city currently has no power to reverse the agreement.

Under the Federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, the city can debate only the location and appearance of cell towers, and not their potential health risks.

According to school officials, the agreement with TMobile represented “business as usual.” Superintendent Donald Zimring said the district has pursued contracts with cell tower providers for 10 years, initially to improve emergency communication capabilities following the 1994 earthquake. Cell coverage at the time was nearly nonexistent, Zimring said. The community urged the district to improve cell coverage around schools, he said.

The city approved the cell towers at Agoura and Calabasas high schools.

Leading the cell tower opposition at one recent school board meeting was Rina Baraz Nehdar, an Agoura Hills resident.

Nehdar presented a letter from Cindy Sage of Sage Associates, a Santa Barbarabased environmental consultant firm. Sage worked on electromagnetic studies for the Las Virgenes district during the design phase of the new Yerba Buena Elementary School.

Sage co-edited a 2007 BioInitiative Report, which contributed to the body of scientific data about elecromagnetic fields, including radio frequency emissions.

Sage’s letter stated that the existing standards regarding safe levels of radio wave emissions apply to 6-foot men, not children, and that the standards were not designed for “persistent, daily exposure.” She said new limits should be thousands of times lower than current FCC standards.

Evidence shows that children have “greater neurological sensitivity” to many “toxic environmental exposures” and are more susceptible to harm because they are still growing, Sage said.

Chronic, lowintensity wave radiation exposure can cause memory loss, sleep disorders, slowed motor skills, headaches, increased risk of Alzheimer’s and altered white blood counts, Nehdar said.

She listed several groups that concur with the warnings, such as the World Health Organization, the Environmental Protection Agency and the California PTA. She also cited an article in the American Pe diatrics Journal .

Dr. Jerrold Bushberg, clinical professor of radiology and radiation oncology at the University of California Davis School of Medicine and director of the Environmental Health and Safety Department for the university’s Health System, said cell tower waves are safe.

Bushberg contested the methods of analysis by Nehdar and Sage. He said the BioInitiative Report has been discredited in the scientific community because it “contrasts” with 35 existing scientific studies.

“It is not a balanced or objective analysis,” Bushberg said. The paper, he said, was written in “alarmist” and “emotive” language, with results and conclusions that differ from national and international reviews.

In his report, Bushberg said the scientific method used to determine what levels of emissions were safe was based on the “worst case” projection for power densities.

He produced charts showing that wireless communication systems emit fewer electromagnetic waves than televisions, cordless phones, Wi-Fi laptop computers and microwave ovens. One chart showed that the typical maximum public exposure from a transmission site equaled the amount of waves emitted by a baby monitor.

The lowest exposure, Bushberg said, was right beneath a cell tower. He said a tower across the street from a school exposed children to 10 times more waves than a tower on campus.

Nehdar and other residents say they want the Agoura Hills City Council to pass a moratorium on cell towers until the FCC changes its tack and allows local governments to make cell tower decisions based on health and environmental concerns, and not just the way they look.