Ever since AT&T installed two wireless phone antennas outside their third-floor bedroom window, Joseph and Josephine Silvaggio have been thinking of little else.

		The Silvaggios, 30-year residents of Southbridge Towers, a cooperative housing complex, say they worry night and day about the possible health effects of the equipment, so much so that Joseph is trying to calm his nerves with sedatives prescribed by his doctor. “We’re afraid,” said Joseph, 69. “We’re elderly, we spend most of our time in our apartment and we worry about it. We can’t sleep.” Silvaggio added that some friends with pacemakers refuse to visit his apartment. The Silvaggios, who live at 333 Pearl St., are not alone in their worries. Other Southbridge residents say they are also afraid of the potential health hazard posed by the antennas, and they’re campaigning to get AT&T to remove the equipment, which was installed in December.
The president of the Southbridge board of directors, Seymour Winick, signed an agreement last year giving AT&T permission to put up the antennas. Under the deal, AT&T is paying Southbridge $2,500 a month. Winick says he was unaware then of the possible health risks from electromagnetic radiation. But when the antennas were installed, residents immediately protested and in January, the board, which had never approved the deal, voted unanimously to nullify the agreement. Shouting “Take the antennas down!” about 60 residents, most of them elderly, gathered at a rally on April 14 at the corner of Pearl and Frankfort streets, right below the spot where the antennas sprout from metal boxes on the side of 333 Pearl. That night, at a meeting at Councilmember Alan Gerson’s office, residents became even more angry when AT&T representatives revealed that the company had turned on the antennas without notifying Southbridge. “They had promised that they would let us know if they turned it on,” said Winick. “When I told them that they had lied, they said it wasn’t a lie but ‘an omission,’ and that they ‘didn’t want to make it an issue.’” AT&T said at the meeting that it would look into alternative sites for the antennas, but that Southbridge would have to cover the cost of moving the antenna. “It’s perfectly safe in the present location, but if moving it would make people more comfortable, we can do it,” said Diane Saffioti, an AT&T spokeswoman. “As long as the new location works from a radio frequency perspective.” She also maintained that the power level of the antennas was well within federal standards. Regarding the notification of tenants, Saffioti said: “We were under the impression that they wanted us to meet with them and explain everything, and we did that.”