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To: Ross Hollister
Date: 25 March 2004
Dear Ross
I was pleased to meet you at our meeting in Bognor on Tuesday 23 March, and received your reply letter today. Whilst we discussed many issues at great length after the meeting, I would still like to reply to your letter.
My first impression is of someone incredibly loyal to their job, but who speaks like an employee, indeed like a brochure, of O2.
At Bognor you added to the reports from Worthing a face-to-face experience of many residents claiming very similar health symptoms, which began and were noted long before they knew anything about TETRA or the presence of the mast on the Reynolds building. Yet you state to me in very contradictory terms that "the health concerns of residents in Worthing are not to be dismissed" and yet that they will "begin to recognize that claims of adverse health affects attributed to TETRA are without foundation". Almost the same words as from the O2 Airwave Managing Director!
So you do indeed dismiss the reports, from all over the UK, that what people are experiencing near to TETRA masts is entirely illusory, or psychosomatic or hysterical. That is insulting in the extreme. By God, Nelson said it didn't he, when he raised his telescope to his glass eye and said "I see no ships!"
The bulk of your letter can be contained in one sentence: Airwave/TETRA works well as a radio system". We know that! Plutonium works very well as a radioactive source, and asbestos as a fire shield. Thalidomide works well, heroin works well. But because it works does not make it safe, especially as an all-embracing web over the whole of the UK!
Let's not talk about "a system that works" for now. Of course everyone is impressed by digital communication, just like we were when stereo hi-fis were invented. Do you remember? It's a wonderful effect that gizmos can have, to impress. And we will trust you at this point that the potential enhancements described by Nokia in 2001 (and still on their website under product information) about group-call encryption have been delivered, and that the bandwidth of TETRA is indeed sufficient to carry data as you hope.
Let's talk instead about what appears to be happening. As far as we can tell there is actually very little media interest so far, so I think the "fuelled by other hysterics" argument has yet to mean very much. Let's talk about what you claim and indeed provide a balanced view.
You say that more than half the forces in the country have already implemented this system. I understand that this is actually true of around only 12 forces, not "34 out of 43" as you stated on Tuesday. The rest are testing a few handsets, and lo and behold they can hear each other clearly. And missing the point.
You also say Sussex Police are "bound by a national contract". I believe that this also is untrue. You do have a choice as to whether to accept the system or not. There is no national contract with police forces, only between the Home Office and Airwave.
Your ample references to health and safety on your intranet I am sure cite the usual outdated references to base stations not pulsing, intensity levels thousands of times below recommended levels, experiments on dead chick brains and so on. I would ask you to explain why so many international scientific papers contradict the Home Office/Professor Challis views on safety, and the 16Hz frequency issue that even the Stewart report recommended strongly against and was ignored on.
Even your line on "physicists and radio experts" ignores entirely the key issue of the 17.6Hz operational burst frequency, and your "transmit inhibit" function (ie, switch it off, if in doubt) disguises the fact that heart pacemakers and medical equipment, defibrillators and even breathalyser kits, are indeed affected by TETRA handportables. For any staff carrying their handportables on their chest, I am sure this is very reassuring. Never mind the head, get the heart.
But then telling this story openly is not your job. Your job is to get this system in. Anything else and you will have failed, so it is your duty, by contract, to be the heroic Lord Nelson.
But Ross, you too are a human being, a family man, who goes to the doctor when unwell, and mutters over the Sunday papers. At some stage you must face up to the fact that we are not all hysterics, but people suffering very real adverse health effects that just happen to coincide with the location and activation of the base stations. It's time you stepped down from the O2 podium for a moment and helped us all to find out what is really going on.
Yours sincerely
Andy Davidson
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