This situation causes much disturbance to the lives of the people living in this area: the most common complaints are that one can hear the transmissions breaking through on telephones, and many other electronic devices. (Due in many cases to the devices having poor electromagnetic immunity to the strong signals) The Region of Lazio has also found that the people in the area around the emitters are much more likely to have leukemia: the closer those in the examined sample lived to the radio station, the more likely they were to have leukemia, up to 6 times the Italian national average. (Agenzia di Sanità Pubblica - Regione Lazio - March 2001). Vatican radio was recently subject to a lawsuit from the Regional Health Department for “Throwing of dangerous things” on the Italian ground. Every time it was sued the radio showed the ‘Lateran Treaty’, bilateral agreements signed by the Holy See and Benito Mussolini during Fascism. (The area around the radio station at the time it was built was not heavily populated). A well known Italian TV program called ‘Le iene’ (transl. ‘the hyenas’) went to the radio station and replaced the radio’s insignia with a new one stating ‘Radio Erode’ meaning ‘Herod’s Radio’, referring to Herod the Great and the Massacre of the Innocents, since the studies show that the most affected people are children 0 to 14 years old.
