Jeff attaches cables. Above him, the 4G transmitter cell he is installing. Is the apartment below safe?

“I’m a node worker,” says Josh Montes.

He’s in the alley, sitting on a makeshift work bench, fiddling with metal brackets. Jeff, his buddy — supervisor actually — is up in a bucket, attaching cable to a pole.

“Uh, node worker?” I ask. I’ve just stopped for a moment to see what this is about. Because it’s all happening something like 20 feet across the alley from where my bedroom is. Josh and Jeff are installing a 4G transmitter cell up on this wooden pole.

“Yes, this is technically considered a node, a cell site,” Josh says. “We’re installing it to allow better cell service.” He’s 21 years old. Been on this job two years. Could probably have it for the rest of his life, like his dad. He’s part of a quiet army that so far has set up a reported 600,000 sites like this across the US. “And what we’re installing is 4G. We’re still finishing it off,” he says.

Josh Montes

So what about me and my bedroom? And this little signal booster, whatever, that he’s installing? Because you can get a real scare just reading WHO (World Health Organization) info about all this — for instance, that high exposures to electromagnetic frequencies can double the rate of childhood leukemia. And we’re not even talking about 5G yet. One of the most alarming critics of 5G, Martin Pall, a retired professor of biochemistry from Washington State University, says 5G will cause an “almost instantaneous” collapse of human reproduction “almost to zero.”

Google’s top answer on the matter: “Current studies both short term and long term suggest health risks within 300-400 meters of a cell tower.” No comfort to me. But Josh points out that what he and Jesse are installing is more like a local booster device. “Still,” I ask, “isn’t there a kind of radiation pool underneath that thing?”

“No. It emits horizontally, straight out to the next cell site,” he says.

But when 5G comes? Because I see that Scientific American magazine is predicting a “flood of wireless-connected devices that 5G will make possible” and that 5G systems will rely on “a multitude of small cells mounted close to subscribers, often on utility poles running along public streets.”

Uh, hello! Like here? Looks like that’s exactly what Jeff is installing up this pole.

“That’s above my pay grade right now,” Josh says.

But does he worry about himself, working this close to all those electronic waves? “I don’t stress on it. My dad has been doing this for about twenty years, and he’s still kicking. And he was working on the big towers, the cellphone towers.”

But what about me, in repose upon my bed, twenty feet across the alley? Or the folks in the apartment right next to this new “node-on-a-pole”?

“As I say, these are directional,” says Josh.

Turns out it’s not just me. “People come up to us all the time. Last time we were here, we had someone asking if we could Take. It. Down, because they didn’t want 5G. I get all ages, women, men, young, old. I get them everywhere. ‘Is this going to affect us?’ ‘Can you take it down?’ My thing is, ‘Contact the City, discuss it with them. Otherwise, I’ve got to continue doing my job.’”

Me, I’m thinking of tonight, dossing down, listening for microwaves coming through the wall.