BY CHRIS MILLS

This is Exeter

12:00 - 26 May 2005

Cities and nations around the world are banning mobile phone masts or reducing their power near schools - while more go up in Britain. That's the claim of anti-mast campaigners frustrated at what they believe is the industry's failure to adopt the "precautionary approach" recommended in a 2001 report from an independent commission chaired by Sir William Stewart.

Now, Green Euro MP Caroline Jackson is pushing the UK Government to follow the example set by other countries.

Earlier this year, the Express & Echo revealed how the number of masts in Britain had more than doubled to at least 45,000 since 2000. They are allowed on schools, hospitals and other public buildings, as long as they emit at less than limits set out by the International Commission for Non-Ionising Radiation Protection.

However, as the Echo has discovered, many communities and countries favour a harder line.

Both Australia and New Zealand have outlawed masts from within 500m of state schools and in New South Wales, structures are also banned within 500m of child care centres, hospitals and nursery homes.

Italy, Sweden, Luxembourg and, most recently, the Austrian province of Salzburg have adopted lower output limits - Salzburg's 10,000 times less than that set out by the ICNIRP guidelines followed by Britain.

Salzburg's public health officer for environmental medicine Gerd Oberfeld said: "Greater caution should be taken in siting cell towers near places where children spend considerable amounts of time."

Emissions are also controversial in North America. Authorities in Toronto, Canada, have imposed a limit.

And education chiefs in Vancouver have voted to ban any more transmitters at their hundred-plus schools.

School board officials recommended: "There should be global caution exercised on the effects of electromagnetism, until it is conclusively proven to be harmless."

Although the United States has adopted similar guidelines to those of ICNIRP, its own National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement recommended the maximum permitted personal exposure to electro-magnetic waves be reduced by a factor of 500.

Dr Jackson has been pushing the European Commission to enforce a legally binding framework on emissions.

She said: "Without it, the result has been fear and uncertainty as mobile phone masts have sprung up - often requiring no planning permission or even advance warning - on schools, hospitals and in densely populated areas."

However, mobile phone operators insist there is no scientific basis for lowering the ICNIRP limits or a ban on masts near schools.

A spokeswoman for the Mobile Operators' Association said: "Professor Stewart said there were no scientific grounds for setting guidelines below the levels set by ICNIRP.

"Even the highest radio wave emissions from a base station will always be small fractions of the ICNIRP guidelines. Since 2000, Ofcom has undertaken more than 360 random audits of base stations near schools and hospitals. The measurements from these audits show that emissions levels from base stations are typically small fractions of the ICNIRP international health and safety exposure guidelines."

She said parents should be comforted by a National Radiological Protection Board Report in January, which said measurements showed there was no scientific basis for establishing minimal distances between base stations and areas of public occupancy.

The Echo's Shockwaves campaign is calling for more research into the effects of phone masts.

Littlehampton Today

MOBILE phone masts are being blamed for a spate of mysterious car breakdowns which are turning Beach Road into the Bermuda Triangle of Littlehampton. In just one week, signals from the masts are thought to have jammed the immobiliser systems of at least 10 cars, leaving their drivers stranded.

The problem affects only a short stretch of the road's northern end, and once the cars have been pushed or towed 50 yards away, their central locking and immobiliser systems work perfectly well again.

The nearest mobile phone stations to the affected area are at the police station off East Street, where there are three transmitters.

Michael Blackwood, who works at Arun Security, Beach Road, said that in the last week people had been coming into his shop and asking for help because their cars suddenly wouldn't start.

"The first one was on May 16," he said, "when a lady came in and said that her car had just died on her. People come into us here because we sell keys and car keys.

"It happened twice on the first day and it seemed a bit of a coincidence, then it happened three times the next day.

"We've helped push two cars about 50 yards down the road and then they work again. The RAC have been out to two cars and each time they've towed them just down the road. They seem to know what to do."

Jayne Young works in the Spokes bike shop next to Arun Security and parks her car across the road each day.

She said: "My remote locking only works for the driver's door in Littlehampton, but when I go to Worthing to visit my mum it works fine.

"I got the car in February and when I brought it back here the key wouldn't even open the driver's door sometimes.

"Some days I get so annoyed, I leave the car at home and walk into work."

Paul Hodgson, of the RAC said: "It's an issue which has come up on a national level and it's generally accepted that it is the masts that are causing these problems."

He explained that car locking systems were allocated a frequency of 433.92MHz by the European Radio Committee in 1993 and this became European Law in 1995.

But the same frequency was already allocated to the Ministry of Defence, amateur radio operators and traffic information systems. Some private and public access mobile radio networks also operate close to the 433MHz band and these stronger sources of radio transmission could sometimes block the signal from the radio-activated key.

Simon Bates, spokesman for the Office of Communications (OFCOM) said: "OFCOM is complaints driven so if people who have been affected by this contact us, we will come out and investigate.

"In the past we have found that problems have been caused by interference from a local transmitter but in many cases we have not been able to take action because the transmitter was found to be operating within the terms of its licence.

"In these cases what we have done is recommend that people contact their car manufacturer to see if they can help."

26 May 2005

by Jane Clee

May 26, 2005, 15:06

The Chronicle Great Barr

Oscott councillors have slammed city planning bosses for 'setting a dangerous precedent' and allowing a 12-metre high mobile phone mast to be built despite objections from hundreds of concerned residents.

They have called the decision a 'slap in the face' for the community and say having the phone pole near to homes, a school and a busy shopping area is a bitter blow for campaigners.

Birmingham's Planning Committee have given the go-ahead for the erection of the T-Mobile mast on land adjacent to the Deer's Leap pub, just yards from residents' homes.

At last week's meeting of the planning committee, on Thursday May 19, council chiefs agreed to grant permission for the mast, despite a formal objection from councillors Barbara Dring, John Cotton and Keith Linnecor, backed by a petition signed by hundreds of residents from the Oscott, Sutton Vesey and Pheasey wards.

The team said the decision was a 'slap in the face' for local residents, who have successfully stopped similar planning applications in the past.

Councillor Dring said: "This is a bitter blow to the local community, who have fought hard against this proposal and previous attempts to install these unwanted masts in the Queslett Road area.

"The mast will be within yards of people's homes and is just a stone's throw away from local schools and a busy shopping area. How they can agree to this just beggars belief."

T-Mobile can now put up a 12-metre high phone mast, in a mock telegraph pole design, with two associated equipment cabinets, which would be built at the rear of the pavement.

It would be positioned near a cluster of established trees, the tallest of which is around 11 metres high.

Fellow ward councillor John Cotton said the decision could set a 'dangerous precedent' for the area.

He said: "Up until now, we have been able to hold the mobile companies at bay.

"Walsall Council have already rejected a number of similar applications for the other side of the Queslett Road and I am appalled that Birmingham City Council has not followed their example.

"There is a real danger that this will make attempts to stop any future applications much more difficult."

The team are continuing to battle against a similar application on land almost directly opposite the Deer's Leap, where mobile phone giants O2 are seeking to overturn a Walsall Council ban on putting in a mast close to Doe Bank Lane.

Oscott Councillor Keith Linnecor said: "We are lobbying hard for the Planning Inspectorate to uphold the Walsall Council decision.

'It would be an absolute disaster for this mast to also get the go-ahead following the decision of Birmingham planners to blatantly ignore local residents."

Harborough Today

ANGRY villagers are organising a petition to stop phone masts being put up near their village.

Medbourne Against Masts (MAM) has been formed to fight applications for masts in Drayton Road and Manor Road on the outskirts of the village.

The group, which has already collected a 165 names on their petition, claims the proposals would expose residents to harmful radiation and adversely affect the countryside around Medbourne. Spokesman Nickie Philbin, who lives in Drayton Road, said: "We in the village are totally opposed to these masts. "Five years ago people were only concerned that their views would be spoiled but now they are more worried about the effect on their health. "We would have thought it would be easier to put the masts further into the countryside where there are no homes or people."

MAM organised a meeting with Melton and Rutland MP Alan Duncan, where he pledged to take the campaigners' fight to the relevant authorities.

Mobile phone company Orange has applied to build a 50ft mast at the Drayton Road site, while the Manor Road site would be occupied by a 65ft TETRA, or terrestrial trunked radio, mast which would contain radio equipment for use by Leicestershire Police.

MAM member Paula Parish (42), from Drayton Road, has just recovered from chemotherapy after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She said: "I contracted the illness about 20 years younger than someone could normally expect to be diagnosed, so I think I am in a high-risk group. I also have two young children and I am worried about what the effects could be on them."

Earlier this year, proposals for two masts near Newton Harcourt were thrown out by Harborough District Council.

26 May 2005

I agree, the funding of these studies is huge compared with the potential outcome. Same is true for the MTHR study at King's College. But both are short exposure studies, therefore looking for quite acute and fast responses. I have told them that long term studies in people's home environments, measuring the right things in the right locations, might yield more telling results. I agree with them that measuring biological electrical activity in an electrically isolated environment is not easy, but EEGs, body magnetic field changes, NO levels in the breath or changes in the blood etc., all can and should be done.

I asked James Rubin and Simon Wessely at King's what they would do if their study of phones and EHS yielded a positive response. The answer of course is to do it again. And then, what would it show? The answer is that it would show the people who say their phones hurt them are not lying. How many generations of this kind of study to show that phone radiation damages people? And then, what if you sufficiently prove phone radiation presents a rik to health? The answer is to start negotiating with the industry -- the "low tar" argument, while you do the cost-benefit equation with people's lives. How many years, nay, decades, does that represent?

Andy


The Problem with Laboratory EMF Experiments
http://omega.twoday.net/stories/721570/

Are you aware of this research?
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/ptk/3rdgen/radiation.pdf

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WARNING on supposed Finland 3G study

Could you please distribute this to make sure Mast Sanity does not quote it. It may be a trap to discredit!

Regards

Don



To All

The below message, and link, came in this morning and will probably be doing the rounds on Internet as further evidence that cell phones and 3G in particular, are a health hazard.

However the whole paper, supposedly "published" in Nov. of 2002, looks +VERY+ suspect to me for quite a few reasons. Note in the photo how the phone is placed and the test tissue still has a supermarket shrink rap and scanner price sticker attached! It looks more like a joke! From the looks of their test chamber their conclusions seem a bit over rated. I'm thinking this whole thing is either someone's idea of a joke or an after-hours school science project conducted in a tree house. It looks like they essentially just made a crude home-built microwave oven.

Have a look but pleeeease don't quote it as science!

Don Maisch

http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=58

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I looked at this study, but it is rubbish as it stands: all they did was to show a temperature rise when a 3G phone is left on inside an aluminium lined box, and reported no biological effects at all.

Roger Coghill
MA (Cantab) C Biol MI Biol MA (Environ Mgt)
Coghill Research Laboratories

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Could be fake, check
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/index.php?section=personal
and
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/images/virne.jpg
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/images/virne2.jpg

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May 27, 2005

The research paper about the 3G mobile phones at

http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/ptk/3rdgen/radiation.pdf

is fake. I have explained to him that it is not funny to make a joke like this. It may even be damaging to people suffering from electrohypersensitivity c.q. microwave sickness. He does not understand. Here are his data:

Topi Mäenpää
Information Processing Lab
Dept. of Electrical and Information Engineering
University of Oulu, Finland
phone ++358 40 7747749
phone ++358 8 5532796
email topiolli@ee.oulu.fi

--------

From Don Maisch - I really hope Dr Tech uses his mobile 6 hours a day ...

Best Yasmin Skelt


'A very Finnish sense of humour'

As for the that Finnish paper on 3G (last message) it turns out to be a Uni prank. The person who earlier sent it to me has since spoken with Topi Menp the "author" (alias Dr. Tech) at Oulu University.

Dr. Tech has left his photo at
http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/images/virne.jpg which illustrates who has the last laugh on this one!

Topi's details are at: http://www.ee.oulu.fi/~topiolli/index.php?section=personal

Don Maisch
http://www.emfacts.com/weblog/index.php?p=59

So mobile phones are not marketed at kids? Anyone who has had ITV on recently will have been plagued by the crazy frog ad fro ringtones from jamster. So it says sales only to over 16s? Since when was a phone tagged with the age of its user? And who is it buying all the CDs, so that it runs to the top of the pop charts above real music -- on ringtones?!

Now parents are discovering massive bills on their kids' phones. In some cases the kids innocently download a ringtone, unknowingly "subscribing" to a new ringtone every week, which they don't realise until they see their bill (if they look at it) and do not know how to stop it. One mother said her child learned they had to text "STOP" in capitals back to the vendor, and didn't know how to do capitals, so could not immediately respond anyway. And now the kids are getting porn ads sent to them, because the phone companies "don't know" the age of their subscribers.

This is the truly cynical and manipulative side of the mobiles market, and there should be a massive outcry against this kind of unregulated and unrestricted selling.

Andy

A newspaper report giving a comment from the company who market this brain-numbing drivel says that they will not reduce the amount of advertising as it is successful! This is despite hundreds of complaints to the ASA - some saying that people are turning their TV's off because they cannot bear to hear the sound of that ad. I think this is proof that minds are being affected and a folk tale springs to mind - The Pied Piper???? Where are our kids being lead?

We really should be calling for a national move to take the phones off our children in view of the chilling scenes recently shown on TV news regarding "happy slapping", and constant reports of muggings and violence surrounding mobile phones.

Sylvia


I have just e-mailed Sir W (copy to Beverley Hughes), calling for urgent action to address the problem of mobile phones and children. A failing in this duty will surely cause the health tsunami we have recently been warned of.

Sylvia

A LEADING mobile 'phone company has moved to quell the storm of protest over its mast in Formonthills Road.

Last week's Gazette revealed how angry residents tried to block workmen from erecting the 15-metre-high monopole after it had been taken away for repairs.

But the firm behind the equipment, O2, has expressed its disappointment at the way events have unfolded. Ken Leitch, O2's regional communications manager, said the company appreciated that locals had concerns. However, he maintained there is no evidence of a link between masts and ill health. "We've been in discussions with the community council and they've put a number of options to us," Mr Leitch said. "Unfortunately, it's just not possible for us to move the mast. "These things are not cheap and it costs quite a lot of money - we're talking tens of thousands of pounds. "It's just not commercially viable for us to do that. "But we are extremely concerned by some of the tactics that have been used and it is extremely disappointing that these things happen."

The mast had to be removed after it was badly vandalised, although O2 has now fitted CCTV cameras to its replacement as a deterrent. Mr Leitch revealed that much of the research now being done was focusing on mobile handsets, as opposed to masts themselves. And he maintained that masts were much less powerful than TV or radio transmitters. "All I can do is point people to the research and I would just have to re-iterate the message that the balance of evidence says there is no risk," he continued.

Omega this is just and plain not true. There is much risk. See under http://omega.twoday.net/topics/Wissenschaft+zu+Mobilfunk/

"I don't have a crystal ball, but all we can do is look at what is there at the moment. "The more masts there are, the less work your phone has to do. "I would tell people that are using mobile 'phones to use handsfree kits wherever possible. "But we welcome people's comments and all we can do is give people a bit more education on mobile technology, which we do on a number of occasions."

Despite the reassurances, Councillor Bill Kay said the whole affair had "alienated" the community in north Glenrothes. He said: "It was very cursory the way the company went about things - they followed the strict legal requirements for consultation and I feel they didn't go any further than that."

But Mr Leitch responded: "The council has been quite happy that we carried out a sufficient level of consultation and I'm satisfied that our officials have done their job to the best of their abilities."

25 May 2005

May 25 2005

By Jamie Oliver, Crewe Chronicle

BATTLING residents are being backed by the borough council in their war against mobile phone masts.

Planning officers are recommending the refusal of applications for masts in three areas from phone companies Vodafone and Hutchison 3G.

The Chronicle revealed last month how hundreds of families had joined forces to prevent a mast being erected in Chapel Lane, Coppenhall.

Within hours of the plan being made public, residents formed protest group Coppenhall Residents Against Masts (CRAM).

CRAM spokesman Patrick Sutton is delighted they are being backed by the planners.

He said: 'I am very pleased and I hope that the planning committee goes ahead next Tuesday and backs the recommendation to refuse the mast.

'The proposed site is 100 metres from the Willow Nursery in Warmingham Road and nearby Monks Coppenhall Primary School.

'The mast would be 50ft high and a complete eyesore.

'It would have six antennae, belting out electromagnetic radiation, which so far no-one has been able to say is not harmful.'

Petitions have been put together against mast proposals for Stewart Street in Crewe and Newcastle Road in Shavington.

The application by Vodafone for Stewart Street has prompted hundreds of objections.

Shavington Parish Council has objected to a proposed mast in Newcastle Road, with borough councillor David Brickhill spearheading a campaign to stop one being built at the rear of a residential property.

He said: 'There is fierce opposition to this.'

A council spokesman said: 'In -frastructure has to be located closer to mobile phone users in order to enable the system to work efficiently. However, the proposals conflict with policies in the replacement Local Plan.'