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Is there a global conspiracy
to deny appalling health risks from cellphone bases,
especially school sites?
Emma Relph reports
The fashion for being on call
anytime, anyplace, anywhere, seems to have taken over the
general populace of Brighton. Once it was only thought
necessary if you were a business mogul or a surgeon. Now most
anybody's answerphone sports the message "or you can
contact me on my mobile on…" There follows a series of
numbers delivered so quickly you have to ring back before you
get them all down.
Amidst the evening shoppers at
Waitrose, someone idling down the aisles is likely to be
talking live to an absent partner, considering what to buy for
supper. Even on the pavement: it seems as if every tenth bloke
passing by has a phone clamped to his ear while he engages in
cheerful banter with some distant mate.
However the image of the slick
and essential, of the family-friendly Christmas gift for the
kids, has been hard to reconcile with the lurid health horrors
graphically depicted by the tabloids. Associated with the
radiation the phones and base stations emit, are brain tumours
and blood cancers, and if you do your research, even genetic
damage to your DNA. So far, however it seems the fashion for
phoning has outweighed the health considerations.
The past few years have seen an
enormous expansion in the mobile phone market. It is estimated
that the penetration of mobile phones within the UK is likely
to expand to 40 per cent by 2005. In Europe and developed
countries generally, it is expected the penetration will
increase to about 50 per cent. And already the Internet and
all it has to offer are available on your mobile handset.
The cause of mobile phone
users' complacency may be that they have heard reassurances,
encouraged by the cellphone industry, bandied about again and
again that there is "no conclusive evidence" against
them. The same thing was said about cigarettes. Stewart Fist,
an Australian investigative journalist and science writer who
is in the forefront of the cellphone controversy, draws an
interesting analogy between the cellular phone industry and
the tobacco industry.
Until the Sixties, the
potential health dangers from cigarettes were almost unknown.
But there were suspicions, research reports, claims and
counter-claims, and lobbying from both sides. There were
dozens of top scientists obviously in the pay of the tobacco
companies, protrayed by Al Pacino in The Insider, whose job it
was to publicise scientific reports worldwide which disputed
any links between smoking cigarettes and health problems. Fist
thinks that eventually, when enough bad evidence does come
out, the results will be catastrophic for the industry itself.
Currently US State Attorney-Generals have charged the 'tobacco
scientists', along with cigarette companies, their lawyers and
the public relations firms who represented them, with
conspiracy. Many people think they have a very good case.
Recently in America also, a
woman dying of brain cancer initiated a Chicago lawsuit
against Dr George Carlo and the Health and Environmental
Sciences Group for concealing and manipulating evidence on
cellphone dangers. The case was dismissed, yet an appeal is
underway and there are a number of others in the queue.
Perhaps it is this that
provoked the same Dr Carlo's episode of conscience when he
completed his tenure of office at the above Group. In an open
letter to his employers, an affiliation of cellphone giants,
he insisted on reminding them of his own reports that showed
amongst other things 'the risk of rare neuro-epithelial
tumours on the outside of the brain was more than doubled in
cellphone users. Laboratory studies looking at the ability of
radiation from a phone's antenna to cause functional genetic
damage were definitely positive and were following a
dose-response relationship.'
He writes in his outgoing
letter, reproduced on the Internet: 'Today, I sit here
extremely frustrated and concerned that appropriate steps have
not been taken by the wireless industry to protect consumers
during this time of uncertainty about safety.' He goes on to
claim that the industry 'have ignored the scientific findings
suggesting potential health effects, and have repeatedly and
falsely claimed that wirelss phones are safe for all consumers
including children.'
For the time being, despite the
odd tabloid shock report, the consumer stampede to tool
themselves up with a mobile continues unabated. But there is
an issue looming that may yet make all of us sit up and take
notice. It is about the masts.
At least using a mobile phone
is a choice ,but being exposed to radiation emitting from a
base station near to home, work or school is not something
subject to prior public consultation. The issue of the siting
of masts is a hot international topic. And it's an issue that
Brighton residents should be aware of. Indeed there has been
huge concern in other places in the UK about locating masts at
schools in return for much needed cash.
When I asked the DTI how I
might be able to find out the location of the Brighton masts,
I was told that although the council must be notified of the
erection of a mast they have no responsibility to keep any
record of where the masts have been set.
Nationwide, numerous primary
schools now have a mast attached to the roof and some people
are very alarmed about it. In 1995 US President Clinton issued
a formal Memorandum requiring that Federal buildings be seen
as the main site for cellular-phone masts so keeping the masts
away from schools and homes. The California Public Utilities
Commission also stated that school and hospital sites should
only be used as a last resort.
There has been no such edict
from the Government although they there is a committee
recently set up called the Independent Expert Group on Mobile
Phones, who are looking into public concerns that children
would be exposed to phonemast microwaves from an early age and
over a long period.
Children, because of their
size, tend to act as resonant aerials at cellular-phone
frequencies, thus enhancing the signal levels in their bodies.
The New Zealand Ministry of Education has issued a policy
statement preventing cellular phone antennas from being sited
at state schools in future.
Here, people are having to
fight at grass roots level. Jerry Hall made daily newspaper
headlines when she joined the campaign to stop a mast being
erected on her children's school in Essex.
In Brighton, there are at least
two schools which have base station masts sited on top of
them. There are also at least a couple of blocks of flats -
one in Kemp Town and one off Trafalgar Street. And Brighton
College of Technology has one on the roof. Students on the
Journalism Course were aware of it, and concerned about those
who had to study on the top floor. Any more information than
that I cannot give you because my inquiries were blocked at
every turn.
I rang Vodaphone to see if it
was possible to get some specific information on how many
masts there are in Brighton, about where they are sited and
how much money has changed hands. About the sites, Vodaphone
said: "it's confidential information because of
security." On the money paid to the Council: "We
don't discuss the agreements we have made. They are private
agreements which we are not at liberty to discuss… As a
network we are not at liberty to discuss that - the agreements
have commercial sensitivity."
When I rang Brighton Council
Estates Department who, I was told grant mast permits and
arrange the deals with the mobile companies, I was told that
after inheriting several base station masts in the East Sussex
County Council reshuffle an embargo was put on erecting any
further masts in the Brighton area. When I asked if there were
any on schools? The spokesman said: "Yes, I believe there
are a couple on schools but I cannot tell you exactly which
schools." Finally I was told that someone would try to
find out, but before I could be given the information I was
told I might have to provide proof that I was 'bona fide'
because this information "could be explosive if it fell
into the wrong hands." Eventually I was handed over to
the Press Office to whom I faxed these questions:
o In which committee was it established that this local
authority will not grant any more permissions for cellular
phone masts to be erected for the time being?
o Is there anyone who will put their name to this policy to
whom I could talk?
o Which specific schools and which specific housing blocks
have masts erected on them?
o Are there any hospitals which have them?
o What is the council's health and safety position re: the
masts?
o Is there anyone who might be keen to be quoted with
reference to this whose direct line number you could give me?
I could not get an answer to
these questions.
If you pay a visit to the
Internet, you will find that some British towns have really
got their act together to oppose the siting of masts. CAMEO,
the Campaign Against Masts in East Oxford was formed by local
residents last June in response to the discovery that BT
Cellnet and Orange planned to site transmission masts in the
centre of a residential area, above work premises and within
range of a local primary school. They say that the current
inadequate planning legislation is weighted wholly in the
interests of the cellphone companies.
Perhaps Brighton families sleep
too well at night, assuming that they are protected by the
National Radiological Protection Board. But according to
Jackie Lawrence MP: "the NRPB is becoming increasingly
isolated in its approach to the levels of radiation to which
it is prepared to allow the public to be exposed. In some
instances, that level is seven times greater than suggested by
the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation
Protection." Ms Lawrence also told the Commons on 18
January 1999: "It is especially worrying that apparently
consultants employed by the NRPB are also employed by the
telecommunications industry, notably Orange".
CAMEO believes this shows the
NRPB to be caught in a conflict of interests which makes its
information fatally compromised and that the Government should
look to international authorities for appropriate safety
guidelines for the siting of transmitter masts and other
sources of microwave radiation. Dr Hyland of Warwick
University reported to the Commons on 15 June 1999:
"There are numerous reports that display a remarkable
consistency world-wide of adverse health effects experienced
both by users of mobile phones and people resident in the
vicinity of base stations, the most common complaints being
...neurological... such as effect on short-term memory,
concentration, learning, sleeping disorders and anxiety
states, as well as increases in the incidence of
leukaemia." He stressed an "unnecessarily hazardous
situation currently in the case of base stations."
Finally, after a lot of pushing
a council spokesperson finally faxed back to me: "There
are mobile phone masts on several council-owned buildings.
These include Bartholomew House, Conway Court in Hove, Tyson
Place off Edward Street and West Blatchington Infant School.
As far as health and safety issues go, our position on them is
informed by the NRPB."
"The tests they have
conducted so far indicate that mobile phones currently used
within the UK comply with their own radiation exposure limits
, and that there is no conclusive clinical evidence to back up
claims of possible health hazards. On that basis we have no
reason to believe that the masts on our buildings pose any
health or safety risk to the public."
It will be interesting to see
whether this attitude remains acceptable to an increasingly
aware public who can gain access first-hand via the internet
to some alarmingly contradictory information.
copyright New Insight 2000
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