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Sir William Stewart
Chairman
National Radiological Protection Board
Chilton
Didcot
Oxon
OX11 0RQ
29 January 2005
Dear Sir William
It is with great frustration and not a little anger that I feel impelled to write about the public image and face of the NRPB over the matter of phone masts and health.
I apologise in advance for the length of this letter; please bear with me.
I accept entirely the frequent assurances of how seriously this is being taken by Government, though there are serious lacunae in the current programmes of research, as a result of which there is likely to be little conclusive commentary to further existing evidence. However, since every other authority looks on the NRPB with implicit trust for matters to do with non-ionising radiation, what the NRPB says, what it implies, and the way in which it conveys its value judgements are of paramount importance.
We are surrounded by people who experience discomfort or worse from being near devices and installations that emit low-power electromagnetic fields. This is a feature that has arisen increasingly from people living or working near mobile phone masts and DECT phones etc. Clearly something is happening to them, and the correlation most obvious to them is with those things that cause the most discomfort. How can they express this discomfort, or the other symptoms now familiar to us all that we equate with ‘microwave syndrome’, some of which have come to be classed as ‘electrical hypersensitivity’? All they can do is to report what they experience and offer those most obvious indicators as some kind of potential explanation.
This they do, and in increasing numbers. Are we to treat them as abnormal? Or as some kind of genetic subgroup? Are we to patronise them, or to gently suggest it is all in the mind? And that by being calm and rational these experiences will go away? Shall we send them for such help to their doctors? Where they will be prescribed drugs at their own expense for symptomatic relief in the short term?
Just how sure are we that these symptoms (which by all means are indeed individually in themselves, and for short durations, common to all of us) have no objective cause and are, more importantly, indicative of nothing else? We all acknowledge that this technology is moving so fast that long-term effects will take a long time to determine. And yet when such studies are produced, they are dismissed as indicating only the effects of older technology, now superseded.
Thus far I have deliberately expounded only on EHS, if that is what we are to call it, because I do not know, and you do not know, and the NRPB and WHO do not know, whether there is any validity to the quite justified concern that cancers also cluster around transmission masts. Counting numbers of laboratory studies that do and do not show DNA damage, or blood effects, or neural damage, or alteration to stress proteins, or the blood-brain barrier, when they use quite different methodologies, cannot lead to any secure statement about a ‘balance of probability’ as to whether apparent clusters in actual communities are related to local EMF sources. And yet, instead of seeing comprehensive research into what is being reported, we are told that on balance nothing untoward is happening, primarily on the grounds that either the raw count of studies is ‘in favour’ of no effects, or that since no mechanism is understood, these things simply cannot be happening (somewhat the stance of WHO).
Now this is where the pronouncements of the NRPB are so important. When these people complain, when they report what seems to be happening, when they go to their GP, or go to their health and safety or occupational health representatives at work, and indeed if they write their concerns to Government ministers and departments, almost everything about the way they are listened to, responded to or told, originates from the NRPB. There simply is no alternative official perspective, such is the implicit trust in the paramount expertise and reliability of the NRPB.
In the past three weeks we have seen in the mainstream quality media, including the Evening Standard, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and BBC TV news, reports about adverse physiological reactions to mobile phone masts and TETRA. In every account the opinion of the NRPB has been reported, as the official bottom line, with all the authority that the NRPB name commands. You should make yourself familiar with the way the opinion of the NRPB has been reported, and hold your spokespeople accountable, either for what they say, or the way they allow themselves to be interpreted.
If anyone knows, the NRPB knows, and if it doesn’t know (they say) we can all rely on WHO. So why, especially in the light of IEGMP and the January NRPB report, is the NRPB being actively reported as saying that these adverse reactions are in all likelihood psychosomatic? There is explicit inference that these reports have no foundation, that the attribution to base station sources is false (though untested, which is never said), and that because they don’t happen with the same noise everywhere, they have been created by campaign groups, stirring up psychosomatic reactions through fear and anxiety.
Please, can we compare the quality of evidence that people are being affected in a physiological way, with the evidence that they really are not? There is no basis for the NRPB to say that these reports are false. Even the Kings and Essex studies cannot show this. Indeed, if they appear to validate people’s self-reports, it will be because the effects are so strong that despite the shortcomings of their methodologies, and even of their knowledge of the signals and environments they are supposedly imitating, the effects are still demonstrable.
’There is no evidence for this effect but lots of people report it. They are affected by something, they go a bit strange and all sorts of symptoms appear.’
What are we to make of this statement in The Guardian, 27 January? That the professional, expert opinion of the NRPB is that no number of reports would ever constitute evidence (though undoubtedly it would in a court of law)? And that even though there may be some other common cause, it is unworthy of any investigation other than in the laboratory in abstracted conditions? And are we to take it that in the professional opinion of the NRPB, and presumably now the Health Protection Agency, people with EHS symptoms are in fact mentally unbalanced?
Apart from the grossly insulting nature of statements such as these, there is no evidence that what is being reported has any psychosomatic or anxiety source to it at all. Of course I accept that in every walk of life there are those that do react psychosomatically to all sorts of things. But the consistency we are finding in unprompted reports suggests that even to propose a majority effect from anxiety would be most unwise. For goodness sake, we are very, very used to lampposts and trees, and a mast that looks like a lamppost or a tree is not likely to induce fear from its appearance. Of all the people I have met, heard from or spoken to, anxiety and stress from masts is not a feature. They are angry because they have no power to express their concerns or to refuse the location of base stations; but not full of anxieties. They are angry for the symptoms they express; but not full of anxieties that they are about to die.
So now this expert NRPB opinion reaches the readers and audience of the above mentioned media. These are not the readers of The Sun and the News of the World, but our professionals, our intellectuals, our elected councillors, our lawyers, and most importantly our doctors and medical professionals. What are they now expected to offer those who complain about a mast to be erected in their back garden or the street outside their bedroom window, or in their school yard, or office roof? Yes; they will dismiss their concerns because the NRPB says there is no evidence of harm. And when these people return because they cannot sleep properly, or have persistent headaches in their homes, or feel nauseous? Yes; they will dismiss the concerns because the NRPB says it is all in the mind. And when these people go to their GP after weeks without sleep, and can scarcely work or drive safely, or because their children have nosebleeds all of a sudden? Yes; their GPs will dismiss their concerns, call it stress and anxiety and prescribe pills, or counselling, because the NRPB says it cannot possibly have anything to do with masts. And if they have suggested masts as a cause? Well, the NRPB says this therefore proves the case: someone has raised their anxieties.
If there is any self-protective collusion (and I really am not advocating any conspiracy theory here), between the industry and government and/or NRPB people, this is also a profound disservice. It is interesting how closely the mobile operators echo the NRPB. This is their protection: there is no evidence, therefore mobile phones and base stations are safe. What liabilities will fall on this industry and on our economy, if they depend now on such insecure statements? I note a warning from a Grays Inn barrister in the Times this last week, saying that if what is known is true, the liabilities will be truly enormous, unless the operators take far greater precaution and are more open with the public about the potential dangers.
And these affected people, with adverse reactions? What becomes of them? They give up, fall silent, or into despair, or try to seek a refuge with no guarantee that a mast will not immediately be erected wherever they go. And once silent, what does the NRPB say? That because they are not complaining, nothing is wrong.
So when they complain, they are misinformed, naïve, psychosomatically inclined and made anxious by others’ promptings, because, of course, as the NRPB says, EMFs at these levels or frequencies do not cause adverse physiological reactions. And when they give up, or do not complain because they have no trust in the only people they can address, the NRPB says of course there is nothing wrong. The NRPB has placed itself in a position that cannot be contradicted.
Please will you understand the harm that the NRPB is causing by refusing to accept evidence from people that their lives are being affected by masts, not through fear, or anxiety, or even objective dislike, but for what the masts emissions seem to be doing to their bodies.
Today on BBC Weekend 24 we heard the NRPB say:
’When more is known about electro-hypersensitivity, we will try and find a suitable way to treat the symptoms.’
Who would dare to take that attitude to passive smoking, to pneumoconiosis or asbestosis, or even our dear old nut allergy? Would CJD and BSE be alright if we had a cure? The answer to this is emphatically not to run the HPA on a ‘stock-car philosophy’ of human life: crash ’em and patch ’em. If ELF EMF in the UHF/MW range is causing damage to people’s well-being, let alone life, we ignore the indicators at our peril. When your car rattles under the bonnet, what do you do? Turn the music up? In the same BBC programme EHS was associated by the NRPB with MCS, IEI and other difficult to diagnose symptom groups. The attitude, as publicly expressed by the NRPB, is therefore that the answer to expressions of potential risk from mobile masts and TETRA, is to fix the symptoms, because they must surely be unrelated to the masts.
This is not the true role of the HPA or NRPB. Please listen to these rattles, because if by any stretch of the imagination they indicate a biological interference from base stations, there will be one hell of a bill to pay.
Yesterday I received a letter from the Department of Health. We sent our local TETRA survey (which you and various members of NRPB have received) to Dr Reid at the DoH, with our concerns. As you know, I have corresponded with George Hooker previously, and felt some understanding had been gained. This time, I received a standard reply from the DoH Customer Services Centre! It was back to square one. DoH is saying officially that the NRPB concludes there is no case for acknowledging the results of our survey, because AGNIR reports that the TETRA signal has no harmful components, and again, quoting directly from IEGMP 2000: ‘the balance of evidence indicates that there is no general risk to the health of people living near to base stations on the basis that exposures are expected to be small fractions of guidelines’. Nobody seems to want to understand that the guidelines say absolutely nothing about the effects we are claiming. EHS is not about ICNIRP, and ICNIRP says nothing about chronic low level exposure and non-thermal effects, because it has no dosimetric basis on which to do so.
The message of NRPB is getting through loud and clear from every Government department, the mobile operators, our supposedly protective health agencies, our local planners, our HM Planning Inspectorate and our media. Everybody relies on this single source, and in public your NRPB people are placing the onus on everyone who feels the effects, making them the cause of their own discomfort, marking them out as odd, and therefore in need of a cure. Is it not reasonable to suggest that their discomfort has a valid objective cause, and that this cause might go on to affect a sizeable minority? And that the cause should be found and adjusted, not the result?
We do not want pills or radiation fences for the rest of our lives; we want the freedom to live without feeling and suffering from mobile phone and TETRA base stations. It was the NRPB that also agreed in the media that indeed we are all ‘guinea pigs in some global multi-billion dollar commercial experiment’. WHY?
It is interesting that today’s Sunday Times reported this from Irish doctors:
‘In a study to be released this week, the doctors will say they have identified 16 people whom they believe have been adversely affected by radiation. The medical report concludes that ‘seemingly sensitive individuals’ suffer ‘devastating effects’ from exposure to electromagnetic radiation. According to the IDEA’s co-founders Philip Michael and Elizabeth Cullen, more people are reporting severe health effects linked to radiation. The survey outlines symptoms that include fatigue, confusion, tingling, temperature changes, dizziness and difficulty sleeping. It estimates that between 1% and 5% of the population could be sensitive to radiation and experience illness as a result. The IDEA says further research is necessary. It wants special screens for the 16 people in the study, to see if their conditions improve when radiation is blocked.’
Theirs is not the first call, nor the last. Freiburg? Catania? Helsinki? All calls from medical professionals for a halt. What will the NRPB answer to them be? ‘You might be professionals, but we are experts. Our guidelines for exposure have nothing to do with these effects, but nevertheless, since they are complied with, there is no evidence to support your assertion. These people’s symptoms are being mentally induced by campaigners, not by EMFs. Trust us, we are the NRPB and we know.’ I sincerely hope not. What would you like the NRPB or HPA response to be?
There has to be a positive way out of this monopoly on opinion, or as like as not it will turn on you too. Somehow together we have to recognise that truly independent research, out of the hands, money and influence of government and industry, has to go out to these people, and find out, in situ, what is actually happening. I sit as I write, with my head crawling and squeezed by the emissions from the six base stations erected behind my house. Tell me why this is happening, and show that it has nothing to do with the emissions, or do something about the emissions. Above all do not let the NRPB persist in this public fantasy that nothing is happening except in my mind. If I am sensitive to these masts, it is these masts that are making me sensitive, and we need to know why. Because a ‘cure’ for the symptoms might simply hide the real danger.
If there is any way in which I, or colleagues in the most objective campaigns of concern, can help, we are simply waiting to do so. The current pace of national response is quite inadequate, and the current public message from NRPB is quite unacceptable. Something must change.
best regards
Andy Davidson
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