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George Hooker
Radiation Unit
Health Protection Directorate
Department of Health
Skipton House
80 London Road
London
SE1 6LH
Date: 22 April 2004
Dear Mr Hooker
Many thanks for your comprehensive letter of 20 April relating to my enquiries regarding TETRA base stations.
I have indeed received all this information previously from NRPB and other sources, and note that there are still no direct answers to the direct questions. I am familiar with all the ICNIRP, AGNIR, MTHR, IEGMP material and it all bypasses some serious issues.
If I may address one or two particulars of your letter.
In your second paragraph you say "there is little doubt that people genuinely feel affected by the presence of TETRA masts, but the scientific evidence would cast considerable doubt as to whether the effects are due to the radio frequencies waves they emit".
This stock phrase I have heard before is a paraphrase of "when people see masts they imagine all sorts of illnesses", which phrase was used in a Meridian TV programme in February and attributed to, but refuted in writing by, the NRPB. It also implies that it is the appearance of the masts that causes adverse health reactions. In my case, we live with three other mobile phone installations, co-located with TETRA, which have caused no imagined or otherwise ill effects for years. When TETRA was turned on (and not when erected, or rather just added to a mast) the adverse health problems I described started. Some people get headaches standing near these masts, anywhere. I get a physical pain in the head, for example, just driving past these masts (which I do twice a day). I could tell you blindfold where masts are and whether they are on or off. It really is not about seeing these masts, and it most certainly is not imagining.
When these masts are turned on, people have nosebleeds and disrupted sleep and headaches etc. When they are turned off, or the people go away, the effects cease. When they return, or the masts go on again (and often the people do not know), the symptoms return. This is firmly attested in many places that I can list for you. The evidence for this kind of electrical sensitivity is widespread, and most certainly cannot be described as a psychological effect — psychosomatic, and wholly uncharacteristic, nosebleeds, for example?
You refer to scientific evidence. There is no research, current or complete, into the epidemiology of people's reports of adverse health effects from TETRA base stations. There are no plans to do so. The MTHR researchers at Essex are entering a phase of study like this, it is true, but of GSM, and expressly exclude TETRA. I have, may I reassure you, volunteered for everything I see that relates to my own "electrical sensitivity" to TETRA masts! All the TETRA research relates to predictive laboratory studies or long-term effects. This is not good enough, and certainly is not the route by which foods and drugs are permitted onto the market. However, in those cases of course people have a choice. With 24/7 TETRA base stations they have none.
There is something about TETRA that puts it in a different league from GSM. You have been told, as everyone is told, and as everyone tells everyone else, that TETRA base stations do not have the characteristic 17.65Hz pulsed signal that the rest of the TETRA system depends on. Actually, mmO2 who are installing the system disagree, and describe the pulse, albeit belittling it! The denial of the pulse frequency is a (perhaps understandable) misinterpretation of the measurable signal structure in the original NRPB document to which you all refer. However, this frequency is easily discernible in all the many measurements made of these base stations by others. This is the frequency that the Stewart Report advised "should be avoided". And I fail to see how this reassures users of mobile units and handsets, or those in their vicinity.
Secondly, you say: "In conclusion, the scientific evidence and measurement results indicate that signals from TETRA bases stations are comparatively low and should not present a risk to health of the general public."
This, apart from being a statement of uncertainty, is quite inadequate. The guidelines on safe intensity of emissions are not based on their characteristics. The analogy is that whether I shout "answer my letter" or whisper "answer my letter", you respond the same. It is the content, the significance, that matters. When you transmit meaning by radio frequency, the receiver recognises what is encoded. 17.65Hz means something to the delicately electrically balanced human brain, because it is a key frequency for cellular biological functions. TETRA pulses might sound like a foreign language, but it sounds like language. This is quite a distinct concept from the argument about how loud TETRA masts shout. Thus the intensity guidelines completely exclude this element, and simply refer to the thermal effects of non-ionising radiation. We are not afraid that we are going to be cooked by microwave frequencies. We do know we are being affected by something else, and the effects are very, very real.
So whilst I am glad that you responded, my original question remains:
"Why is no-one in any position of responsibility for the nation's health investigating the reported instances of ill health around TETRA masts?"
TETRA is not GSM, and predictions about how safe something is, do not explain what is happening. Remember prions? And when Challenger blew up, what if the NASA engineers had replied, "well, all our calculations predicted that this could not happen, so therefore it can't really have blown up"?
My question has not even begun to be answered, and a public health issue all over the UK remains with you. We need your active response, not a reiteration of old advice from before TETRA began operating.
Yours sincerely,
Andy Davidson
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