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Dr Farhang Tahzib
Director of Public Health
Adur, Arun & Worthing Teaching Primary Care Trust
The Causeway
Goring by Sea
Worthing
BN12 6BT
7 March 2004
Dear Dr Tahzib
I wrote to you a week ago expressing my concerns about the health effects of a TETRA mast at Worthing FC, Woodside Road, and have not had a reply. At the time, I wrote expressing my personal symptoms of a certain characteristic disruption to my sleep, of headaches and itching, and asked that you implement some kind of observation, and liase with doctors’ practices to see if this was more widespread. At the same time, I expressed the hope that I was alone, and contacted my own GP to report my symptoms, seek advice, and again ask that they keep an eye out.
Last Thursday I was at a meeting of residents concerned about the installation, and when I stood to speak, excused myself for any muddled speech on grounds of tiredness, owing to the fact that since the mast was activated I had not had much sleep. A forest of hands shot up and people spontaneously started shouting out that this was happening to them: ‘waking up at 2 am’ they shouted, and being unable to sleep properly again for the remainder of the night. What they were reporting was so consistent I was quite taken aback.
What we have here is a local community reporting personal circumstances that match (we now find) those of other communities in the UK where these masts have been placed in residential areas. We are suffering, and it is most certainly not psychosomatic. We are not a militant or activist community and most of us have not met or spoken to each other before.
My concern is that I have met a number of older people who ‘don’t like to say’, or indeed complain, who are ‘hoping it will just go away’ and they will feel better. Consequently they are not even going to their doctors. As a doctor, you will already be anticipating that these people will soon suffer sleep deprivation, depressed immune systems, and the consequent illnesses. For the older people, this makes them especially vulnerable and both you and I have a social responsibility towards them.
I would organise some local research to determine the scale and scope of this problem, but I feel that this would carry no weight and be seen as less than impartial. I can serve my neighbours best by making appeal to you to investigate this situation properly.
As residents, we are acutely aware that no-one is on our side. O2 Airwave denies any responsibility for the serious TV interference the TETRA mast is causing (and again elderly people are being forced to spend upwards of £150 to have their TVs fixed). They most certainly deny that our symptoms, which began on the day the mast was activated, have anything to do with them. This is largely based on the expert witness of one person, Professor Challis (advisor to the Home Office, whose system this is), despite there being wider research available that at the very least casts doubt on that position. Their claim is that because they cannot think of a cause, our difficulties are fictitious.
Dr Tahzib, if you have an independence in your responsibilities, please intervene before residents in Worthing (as in Littlehampton and Bognor) become more seriously ill.
yours sincerely
Andy Davidson
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