Regulator on the case over mobile mast safety
Tuesday 7th February 2012, 1:00PM GMT.
JT Guernsey managing director Paul Taylor
MOBILE phone masts are checked regularly to ensure emissions do not break exposure guidelines, two of Guernsey’s operators have said.
Environment’s political board approved an application last week by Airtel-Vodafone for a mast off Landes du Marche, Vale, but on condition the company commissioned an independent survey of its emissions as soon as it was built.
It said that requirement should be enforced on all new phone masts.
Airtel-Vodafone did not wish to comment.
JT Guernsey managing director Paul Taylor said the company was considering how it would affect the development of networks.
Cable & Wireless said it undertook thorough testing on all its new masts.
- To read Guernsey Press stories in full click here for subscription details. Individual editions are now available online.
Saturday 26 May
- Laid-off staff see jobs re-advertised next day
- The Week - Roots Manuva interview
- Royal celebrations of yesteryear
- The Week - Jubilee Food
- Sport - Angus Mackay takes Gib job
Campaigns
Voice For Victims
Voice for Victims is a campaign aimed at promoting the rights of those affected by child sexual abuse.
This is Guernsey
Guernsey Press
And who will do the “independent” testing? It says that Cable & Wireless are testing themselves. In any case you can be sure that the testing is to the obsolete ICNIRP standards, that have been rubbished by numerous countries. Those standards only protect you from being cooked by the microwave radiation from the mast (hence: thermal effects).
Zero protection is given from the non-thermal effects that give you headaches, poor sleep quality, brain-fog, learning & memory impairment, ADHD in children and maybe, in 5-10 years time: cancer, if you are living within the main beam of the mast. That’s what the studies show. In march 2011 the WHO classified radiation from all wireless equipment (masts, mobiles, wifi etc.) as a class 2B carcinogen.
Report abuse
Uh oh, it seems Guernsey is caught directly in the main beam of fear-factory lobby group mast-victims.org. Studies [I won't tell you which ones, because then you'd be able to tell whether they really do show what I say they show] have shown links between mast-victims.org and a total collapse of informed, rational decision-making.
Report abuse
“Fear-factory lobby group”. That’s a new one!
Good one too. I’ll note that and have it made into a badge :-) I wish we had the same budget as the telecom lobbyists. Now that would get us somewhere – fast! – with caviar! – and politicians! Lots.
Now ChrisJ, if you won’t reveal your references to those scientific mast-victims-total-rationality-collapse-studies then I really can’t help you prove your point. I’d love to be wrong. Seriously. That would mean that the good people of Guernsey can live happily ever after. However, I have studied the scientific mobile-phone-mast-radiation-population-studies and it’s not looking that bright. So gimme your references and I’ll provide you mine, deal?
Report abuse
‘MOBILE phone masts are checked regularly to ensure emissions do not break exposure guidelines’
That is the whole point, we do not know if the exsposure guidelines are in fact safe. There has not been enough long term evidence and analysis on the entire spectrum of emissions from these units.
As a previous poster has pointed out, these mast are in affect not inert and also raises an interesting point about the standards and what is actually being measured and more importantly what is not being measured.
Report abuse
Perhaps we had better shut down in England all the transmitters and aerials beaming your television programmes to you.
Report abuse
It is hard to trust what ever you read as much can be twisted to suit the hidden sponsors, which ever direction/side you take.
I just know I detest living very close to a similar mast and question their need to be by residential units, and just maybe we have to stop wanting so many things as ultimately they do not necessarily make our lives the better for it, it is often a preceived need I must have etc.
Report abuse
Presumably they have to be by residential units because that’s where people want to be able to use their mobile phones?
Having a phone of some kind is a must-have, and why not a mobile instead of a landline? We want to phone people, not houses!
Mobile and wireless telephony and networking is a must-have for business big and small, and utilities also increasingly rely on it. It’s not a gadget any more, it is becoming the key enabling technology behind all sorts of services we take for granted.
Report abuse
I detest the bleating of the 99 per cent of anti-mast types who actually own/use mobile phones. Perhaps they would like to join forces with that equally ludicrous and hypocritical lobby – motorists against fuel stations?
Report abuse
Martino, It would be perfectly possible to have sufficient masts to ensure an adequate service without having the outrageous density that we have on this island and without putting them right next to people’s homes – yes even in crowded Guernsey.
As it happens I rarely use a mobile, but I know that we cannot go back to pre-mobile days. But maybe you can tell me why some countries manage with emissions limits 100 times lower than ours?
Report abuse
Spot on.
We are victims of our own obsession with competition and the race to (rock) bottom prices. There’s a cost, and it’s social.
Mast sharing is missing the point entirely – we just don’t need three separate networks for 65,000 people. Madness. Surely it would be cheaper for all of us if the mobile operators just agreed on having one network, and how they bundle their services is up to them.
Fewer masts, fewer antennae, and no less service.
Report abuse
There was actually a report some 7 or 8 years ago that concluded that Guernsey actually only needed 1 mast. However, that mast would have to be some 400 to 500 metres in height (like that huge tower in Jersey) and that would actually cover some 99% of the island. Mast sharing is enforced by the regulator and the mobile phone company’s.
It makes financial sense for the phone company’s to do it. If a new mast has to go up that is because service by customers cannot be attained. The company’s actually look at all the alternatives (i.e putting additional tranmitters/dish’s on existing masts, re-angling dishes etc) before putting up a new mast.
If every person who complained about new masts did not have a mobile phone then I could understand their complaints but I’m willing to bet most do and it’s the NIMBY attitude that raises the issue.
Humans are exposed to vast quatities of radition (of different kinds) each day. From the rocks around us to the biggest menace Our Sun.
Yes I have a mobile phone no I am not in the industry.
Report abuse
“of different kinds” Exactly. and doubtless “of different degrees of risk”.
And I think you will find that the Jersey transmitter to which you refer is about 270m high, not “400 to 500m”)
It is not NIMBY, it is about necessity, and there is no need to have the number of antennae we have on this tiny rock – there are dozens and dozens.
Report abuse
@Gsybloke:
True that we are exposed to natural radiation from the Sun and other sources – and that’s what we evolved in. That’s why it’s called “natural background” radiation. You can cope with direct sun exposure for a while until you get burned and some people are more sensitive, like the red-haired and fair-skinned. Humans, animals, insects etc. didn’t get massively exposed to the specific frequencies that mobile communications use until just these last 20 years or so. Before that radio and TV of course and difference to mobile masts, with regard to siting, is that they didn’t stick every radio and TV mast right in peoples backyards. But when they did, there are studies linking such transmitters to illness clusters in the vicinity. For fun: look up the Vatican radio mast. Based on scientific evidence, they were ordered by high-court to pay damages to a cluster of cancer victims living nearby. So, we have not evolved any natural defence mechanisms against this rapidly spreading man-made radiation. You might argue that signal strength is the only problem, like Industry always does, but they’re missing an important variable: does the Sun flicker on/off constantly? Radiation from mobiles and masts does. It’s called “modulation” and is how the information is imprinted into the carrier wave. No natural radiation does that constantly. Speaking of strength, the increase in radiation just since the rollout of 3G mobile is now one-million-billion times (no exaggeration) what it was for natural background. Can your biology cope with that in the long run? I sincerely hope so.
Report abuse