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Sir William Stewart
Chairman
National Radiological Protection Board
Chilton
Didcot
Oxon
OX11 0RQ
29 June 2004
Dear Sir William
I am most disappointed that you have been unable to reply to my letter of 25 May, or indeed the previous one of 21 April.
You are all too well aware of the concerns from people who report feeling unwell in a number of ways from living in the beams of mobile phone masts, but for some reason you really will not take us seriously. I read in the NRPB’s press notice of 24 June that you persist in only regarding the heating effects from pulsed microwaves as being of any conceivable consequence. Why?
Personally, I am past caring whether ICNIRP is 4,000 times greater permitted exposure than the Salzburg proposal, or 40 times greater than Italy. I can feel TETRA masts with a specifically located pain in my head from half a mile away. I do not know why this happens, you do not know why, no-one knows why. But for sure it is nothing to do with the thermal effects of static microwaves. I am not paranoid, I am not suffering psychosomatically, and it isn’t something else in the environment. My experience is specific, objective, measurable and real. And I know a number of other people who are the same.
TETRA specifically gives me sleep disruption, and that by itself is a threat to my health. I don’t know whether headaches for the rest of my life is just a nuisance, or something worse. But sleep is different. I could explain again why I am so certain, but I really do not believe you want to know. From the premise that you do not know for certain of any mechanism whereby pulsed microwaves at this level could affect the human body, you infer that therefore it cannot be happening. That, at the very least, is bad science. It is one thing to reason that the causes may be complex or unknown, but quite another to dismiss anomalies as impossible and therefore non-existent.
People’s lives are being affected here and now. People are feeling seriously unwell. Children’s education is suffering from poor well-being. Families are spending huge amounts on protective coverings. Others are being forced from their homes. Planning guidance is in disarray, with complete confusion about whether fear of endangerment to health can matter in giving or refusing consent. And like my home, thousands and thousands and thousands of other homes are being forcibly required to host mobile phone masts in close proximity without consultation, understanding or consideration, and without any follow-up. Why are schools and hospitals given special consideration in the Code of Best Practice (though precious little protection)? Is a child’s six hours in school more important than their 18 hours at home? And what is it about those six hours that might possibly be more harmful than the 18? What is that little nod towards precaution all about?
What I now experience, possibly from the combined effect of two GSM, one UMTS and one TETRA mast, all within 150 metres of my home, deserves your attention. I know the hot spots in my house now. They find me. When I compare where in the house I get a pain in the head, with readings from an AcoustiCOM detector, I find there is a hot spot. These can be quite small and focused and quite intense.
What on earth are the NRPB and the HPA for? To protect the stampede of an industry that has create dependency on mobile technology? You stand by while the ‘road widening’ scheme of the industry encourages use, to demand more masts, to encourage more use, to demand more masts and mobile technology. Or are you there for the people of this country? Have you any perception at all of your role in responding to the hundreds of thousands of reports of adverse effects from this kind of radiation? Or to the countless more who don’t understand why they have persistent headaches etc., because they have no information? I live with all those masts. My 30 minute journey to work is a chain of 22 masts of various kinds in proximity to the road, including five TETRA, and I end up in an office wired with DECT phones, two to a desk and peppered with repeaters. And all health & safety can do is quote the NRPB platitudes on ICNIRP compliance.
What have you got to say about people like me who have become electro-sensitive, and for whom there is no escape? Please don’t quote ICNIRP to me again, because this is far too serious an issue to trivialise in that way. Something serious is being missed, and no epidemiological work around masts is being done, other than one concerning childhood cancers. I also read Prof. Challis’ recommendation this week, following indications of 30 percent drop in male fertility from carrying mobile phones, that a 15 year study be done. Fifteen years without any additional precaution? All of this will be too late for me. Or do you recommend that I should move house, move job and pretend that the masts and the phones will not follow me wherever I go? How can I possibly guess where the next 12,000 UMTS masts are going, or possibly the next 3,000 TETRA masts (because Airwave doesn’t work properly)? And now NGT has bought Crown Castle, every pylon is potentially a new base station. And you appear to be doing nothing; not one precautionary word. Please tell me that in this respect I am wrong. Your lack of reply will have to be taken to mean that sadly I am right.
Yours sincerely,
Andy Davidson
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