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Steve Phoenix
Chief Executive
Adur, Arun & Worthing Teaching Primary Care Trust
The Causeway
Goring by Sea
Worthing
BN12 6BT
26 March 2004
Dear Mr Phoenix
Thank you for your reply dated 23 March regarding TETRA masts. Let me clarify that my concerns were not with respect to siting of TETRA masts. Rather, they were, on behalf of a growing number of people in this area, to do with manifestations of ill health, which we attribute to TETRA masts.
That is a very important distinction indeed; I shall explain why.
Had I approached Dr Tahzib or yourself with an observation that many residents in a certain locality were exhibiting a consistent range of symptoms of ill health, asking that you try to locate the source, I have no doubt that greater local interest would be taken. The crucial element here is to identify the most likely source. After all, the Government tell us we are wrong to attribute these things to the TETRA mast, so maybe they, not we, are correct.
If the Government position is correct, then we are appealing to you to investigate an outbreak of ill health symptoms, initially in the Woodside Road area of Worthing, to determine the likely source. Thereafter, we shall be seeking the same, in conjunction with your colleagues in other areas, in Littlehampton and Bognor Regis. You are therefore not irrelevant in this equation, unless of course you believe that TETRA masts might well be the cause. I would genuinely be interested to learn if this is your current stance.
If the Government position is incorrect, or sufficiently in doubt, then we do indeed need a national investigation, but one based not on predictive laboratory research (such as NRPB and Home Office research in existence), but epidemiological studies on the ground, where these outbreaks have been reported. The first marker in any such study is not: How might something happen?, but: Is something happening?
Our impression of the way things go is this:
- We approach the local Borough Council environmental health department
- The environmental health department contacts the Director of Public Health
- The director of Public Health contacts the SHA Health Protection Agency
- The Health Protection Agency contacts the NRPB
- The NRPB declares there is no evidence, and that such a cause is unlikely
- and so on, back down the chain, until everyone tells us that there is no evidence.
What we are asking you is to find out what is happening here. NRPB insists there is no evidence that TETRA causes ill health, and Dr Mike Clark, Science Spokesman at NRPB, said in a public meeting only this week that such a study would be too complicated and could not be done (!). We are not out to ask complicated questions about what TETRA might do or how, the evidence for that is already established elsewhere. What we want is to know why we are getting ill.
Please Mr Phoenix, break this insidious chain and ensure that duties of Public Health are upheld.
While I look forward to being contacted by Surrey Sussex HPA, there are many people around here suffering daily, so whilst you have all the time in the world, forgive us if we do not.
Thank you for your advice to see my doctor. Of course I did go to see him straight away, and have seen him several times in the last four weeks since this mast was activated. I urge fellow residents to do the same. In fact you have already been contacted, as has Dr Tahzib, by my doctor (Dr Clarke, St Lawrence Practice, Worthing), who also feels that there is an uncanny coincidence here.
yours sincerely
Andy Davidson
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