Reports from meetings and seminars

Conferences and seminars

 International WHO-Seminar on EMF Hypersensitivity in Prague (Czech Republic, October 25-27th)

Visit the WHO website for their report. Note the way that this was written up predisposes the view that the conference agreed that EHS does not exist and should be renamed IEI with strong suspicion that it all originates in the psyche. This not how others remember the conference.

Visit the Swedish Association for the ElectroSensitive for their representation at Prague. There is a very important document attached here relating the experiences of people who suffer from telecomms masts among those who suffer from other EMF sources. It also reflects on the validity of ‘provocation studies’ (expose people to mobile phone signals in a lab and see what happens). See also our own paper on this.

Visit Safer World’s commentary on EHS and WHO: a very interesting page.

 Telecom Masts: Dealing with Public Concern. National Society of Clean Air Conference 8 June 2004

This conference, chaired by Professor Richard Macrory, President, NSCA, heard presentations from Prof. Lawrie Challis (MTHR), Dr Grahame Blackwell, Mike Donlan (Executive Director, Mobile Operators Association), Richard Buxton (Solicitor), Katy Collins (ODPM), Kumar Singarajah (Mast Sanity), Dr Julie Barnett (Psychology Dept, University of Surrey), and John Walker, Planning Officer, Westminster.

Event programme

‘Myth and Fact’, presented to delegates.

Synopsis of Grahame Blackwell’s presentation

It’s good to know people are still talking, but will we ever get beyond disagreeing that TETRA transmits in TDMA pulses?!

 The Trouble with Tetra 25 May 2004

On 25 May 2004, there was a ‘summit’ entitled The Trouble with TETRA held at BMA headquarters in London. Presentations included several from the NRPB, who remain determined to demonstrate that TETRA masts do not pulse, against all evidence, and to declare that TETRA is ‘unlikely to cause adverse health effects in the general population’. (What a shame some of us appear not to belong to the general population!)

Other presentations did include more comprehensive reporting of what we call ‘a surprising degree of electrical sensitivity coincident with the activation of TETRA masts’. Presenters included Dr David Hagen of Surrey and Sussex Health Protection Agency and the King’s College researchers, and delegates included health representatives from around the UK.

See the write-up.

Reactions seemed to range from being convinced by the NRPB that all is well (but more research is needed), to the feeling that if the NRPB won’t respond, there is nothing else that can be done. Please note that The NRPB comprised much of the argument here, and that Simon Wessely presented an apparent consensus from inapproprite research that this is ‘all in the mind’. Simon Wessely has been implicated in convenient absolution of blame on Gulf War Syndrome, (and here), the validity of ME, and again here (and other places), and organo-phosphates, (and again here).

Whilst some believe that adverse effects from phones and masts are being taken very seriously, it does seem odd that no-one is jumping to it on at least correlation studies among the communities suffering from masts. (Correlation means that, for example, headaches go along with the arrival of masts, not that they are a direct or sole cause. We do not know what the mix of EMR does, for example, between TETRA and 3G, and whether that is worse than TETRA alone.) No-one seems to be trying to find out why TETRA causes ‘abrupt waking’ either.
 

top of page