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Across the world: masts, money and medics

In Beer Sheva and in Sutton Coldfield the sentiments and fears are the same. The research they have read and cite is the same, as is the insistence that their living environment must not be determined by coporate interest and profit. The difference appears to lie in doctors’ acceptance in Beer Sheva that mobile phone antenna above your living space are an explanation of headaches.

• Israel: ‘Antennas on roofs are mortal danger.’
• Sutton Coldfield, UK: ‘Just because it is a slow effect doesn’t mean there is no effect.’
• Mast studies to date

Here is a useful case study of why it is wrong to simply ascribe the psychosomatic/group hysteria theory to health problems around masts, and a Swiss survey among general practitioners:

• The Case of the Felpham TETRA mast
• Consultations in primary care for symptoms attributed to electromagnetic fields – a survey among general practitioners, A Huss, M Röösli (Switzerland)

So the question remains: is this empty fears and scaremongering, resulting in psychosomatic response or group hysteria? Is it rational to suppose that there are connections between short-term onset of headaches and long-term incidence of cancer? Yes; visit our health research pages to find out more.

Here is an example of a completely misguided approach.

• Carriers say cell phone transmitters pose no danger.

Apparently: ‘The test involved generating signals identical to those output by WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) base stations. WCDMA is the most common 3G cell phone technology and is already in use in Japan and many other countries. The signals were up to 10 times more powerful than the maximum limit allowed in Japan and even so they had no harmful effects on cell samples put in their way.’ Three profound issues stand in the way of this study meaning anything at all:

1. Were the generated signals fully characterised as transmitted in exactly the same way as a base station? Control channel frequencies are highly significant, as is the actual behaviour of base stations in use.
2. Much more to the point is the assumption that 10 times the power means a direct relation to the strength of effect. This implies a dosimetric model that does not exist [see dosimetry] and that power density is the controlling factor.
3. The use of cell samples is quite inadequate. The effect on living organisms in all likelihood is systemic (whole, operating, communicating) at the macro level, as much as it is purely electrodynamic at the cellular level.

This four-year study may not have been deliberately engineered to ‘prove’ transmitters are harmless to living things, but it was certainly an over-simplification of the known issues.
 

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