Mobile phone masts in E.D

[tommy]

Ofcom have created a website so you can see where the nearest masts to your house are

http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/

Anyone concerned about these things, or is it more useful to see which provider will offer the best coverage down your street ?

[PeckhamRose]

Can you find the link to the research that shows the proof that these masts are dangerous for people's health? Oh - and what research I have done, shows that if your mobile is stretching it's signal to a mast far away, it's giving off more energy trying to do so, and thus giving off more radiation... hey I ain't a scientist. However, if there are more masts around the mobiles don't have to work so hard for their connection, so are less harmful. Cracks me up, we all (nearly all?) use mobile phones and yet there are many, many, many things adults and kids do which are far more dangerous to people's health like smoking, crossing the street, eating junk, wasting resources.

At the north end of Peckham Rye Park in the middle of the park side of the road at East Dulwich Road, is a tree with no leaves, no branches, and I was wondering if that's a mobile phone mast? I know in the sussex countryside there are several such camouflaged mobile phone masts and I'm a-thinking, what a brilliant disguise!

[nutty]

Masts can be seen in http://www.ononemap.com also....

[snorky]

the NIMBYS will have a field day here - even though they only have mobile phones "in case of emergency".

I think the biblical quote about sin/cast/stone is fairly relevant

[OutOfFocus]

tommy Wrote:

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Ofcom have created a website so you can see where

the nearest masts to your house are

http://www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk/

is this related to the following - 1000 EDF readers jumping to Sitefinder

We are currently experiencing high volumes of visitors to the Sitefinder website.

[mockney piers]

EDF version of the /. effect?

More likely that the beeb have just done a story about it, but nice thought :)

[hoipolloi]

Hi

Just to say, the information you find on Sitefinder at the moment may well not be up to date or accurate as a number of the mobile phone networks have stopped providing the info to Ofcom following a ruling by the Information Tribunal that Ofcom had to hand over all the underlying data to someone who requested it under the Freedom of Information Act.

Hurrah, my sad lawyering may actually have come in handy!

HP

[hoipolloi]

Doh I should have said the info was requested under the Environmental Information Regs, not the FOIA - just in case anyone interested (unlikely I know)

[SeanMacGabhann]

Was reading this recently and thought it pertient to this thread:

Ben Goldacre

The Guardian,

Saturday June 28, 2008

It?s the big stories I enjoy the most. ?Suicides linked to phone masts? roared the Sunday Express front-page headline this week. ?The spate of deaths among young people in Britain?s suicide capital could be linked to radio waves from dozens of mobile phone transmitter masts near the victims? homes.?

Who is raising these concerns? ?Dr Roger Coghill, who sits on a government advisory committee on mobile radiation, has discovered that all 22 youngsters who have killed themselves in Bridgend, South Wales, over the past 18 months lived far closer than average to a mast ? Masts are placed on average 800 metres away from each home across the country. In Bridgend the victims lived on average only 356 metres away.?

These are extremely serious issues. There is reasonable evidence of a possible link between power lines and childhood leukaemia, being generous, and we may not yet know the long-term physical risks posed by phones to those who use them, since mobiles haven?t been around too long (do send me a better reference than this for the ?latent period? in epidemiology if you have one).

I contacted Dr Coghill, since his work is now a matter of great public concern, and it is vital his evidence can be properly assessed. He was unable to give me the data. No paper has been published. He himself would not describe the work as a ?study?. There are no statistics presented on it, and I cannot see the raw figures. In fact Dr Coghill tells me he has lost the figures. Despite its potentially massive public health importance, Dr Coghill is sadly unable to make his material assessable.

This - if he truly believes his results - is a bit off.

It also leads to obvious problems with interpretation: details are important, after all, like ?what is your control group? or ?which averages are you using?? Perhaps the average distance from a mast in any urban area is less than the average distance for the whole country, because masts tend to be clustered in urban areas, where the people are. Maybe densely populated poor areas with less political influence have more masts foisted upon them by planning committees, and maybe these poor areas also have more suicides. Or maybe he is on to something? Clusters on maps have been the beginning of several interesting stories in epidemiology, including the Broad Street Pump. I asked Dr Coghill which ?averages? he meant, but he did not tell me.

Who is Dr Coghill? He says he doesn?t have a doctorate and that the Express made a mistake. Does he ?sit on a government advisory committee on mobile radiation?? Sort of. Mr Coghill participates in something called Sage, a ?stakeholder? group which discusses power cables (not mobile phones) and is run at the request of the Department of Health by RK Partnerships Ltd, who specialise in mediation, facilitation, and conflict resolution. People who campaign on stuff are rightly invited on to consultation panels run by the government, so that their concerns can be heard. Sadly, such participants seem to be misrepresented as government advisers with remarkable frequency.

As an example of the kind of discussion you might find at SAGE, here is Mr Coghill?s contribution to their last document [pdf], in the section where people who disagree with the group can state their own views. ?Whilst this first interim assessment is a welcome step, it contains three important omissions? the powerfully electro-protective effect of exogenous melatonin supplementation, particularly among the UK?s 20 million elderly population, and the adverse effects of EMFs on melatonin synthesis within the body have not been addressed.? Mr Coghill recently received ?125,000 of angel investment for his business selling Asphalia melatonin pills.

Readers worried by the front page story on Mr Coghill?s inaccessible research may have visited his website for more information. There they could buy his electromagnetic field protection equipment at competitive prices, and a ?149 device called the Acousticom for ?finding out if your home is being exposed to microwaves from e.g. cellphone masts?, as well as several other interesting products, including a magnet that makes wine taste nicer, and the ?Mood Maker? treatment for impotence at just ?22.32 including VAT (?the small unit discreetly attaches to your underwear? the Mood Maker will gently and gradually increase circulation in the pelvic area?). You might also enjoy his books, including Electrohealing, ?using electric and magnetic fields for alleviative and curative ends?, and of course Atlantis: ?a new look at the Plato legend with a grim conclusion re global warming and ozone depletion?.

It gets better.

Regular readers will know that someone?s ability to police their own enthusiasm can often be assessed using something called ?the Aids test?. Here is the Express?s front page expert Mr Coghill on Aids: ?The idea that Aids is caused by a virus is a well-protected fiction.? Is there another cause? ?The possibility that immune deficits ? can be acquired through over-exposure to non-ionising electromagnetic fields is, however, real, and proven in the laboratory.?

Because, remarkably, suicide is not the first problem Mr Coghill has attributed to electromagnetic waves, and he built his earlier hypothesis on the same evidence as his current one: ?Aids cases seemed to correspond closely to the numbers of RF, VHF, and UHF station densities.? Mr Coghill discovered 11 of the 12 cities in America with the highest incidence of Aids also had the highest level of electromagnetic activity. A disease of dense urban areas, perhaps? He even had some exciting ideas about treatment. ?One first step might be to demagnetise the haem in an attempt to improve the signal to noise ratio of the immune signal ??

We should be glad that there are individuals out there with such esoteric views. We should respect and admire their tenacity and self-belief, if not their ability to provide us with actual data. But from the front page of a national newspaper, we might be able to expect something a little more robust.

[Sue]

If mobile phones are not harmful, how come I have bad earache on the side I have used the phone (which continues for days afterwards) whenever I use one for any length of time?

And yes I try not to .... but had to at work recently, and couldn't have it on the loudspeaker which is what I would do at home.

Mobiles have not been around long enough yet for any long-term effects to become apparent. The Guardian last Friday had another article saying "The head of a leading cancer research institute has reignited the controversy over the health risks of using mobile phones by sending a warning to staff that they shuld limit the use of the devices because of the risk of cancer."

This was Dr Ronal Heberman, of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

It's far too early to become complacent just because there's no evidence yet.

:-S

[*Bob*]

Sue Wrote:

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> If mobile phones are not harmful, how come I have

> bad earache on the side I have used the phone

> (which continues for days afterwards) whenever I

> use one for any length of time?

You're pressing it too hard on the side of your head, Sue.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Exactly right Sue - I remain cautious about where I keep mine even when I'm not using it - never in my breast pocket for example.

But as we crawl towards finding any kind of answer, eejits like Coghill, and scaremongering in general should be treated with suspicion

[shoshntosh]

is there a difference between a mast and a "mobile phone base station"?

[SeanMacGabhann]

shosh

This should answer

Mobile Mast FAQ

[Sue]

*Bob* Wrote:

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> > You're pressing it too hard on the side of your

> head, Sue.

xxxxxxxxx

:))

Funny you should say that, I did recently have an awful headache in one particular bit of my head, and subsequently discovered it was the button on my quick-hair-dry towel thing pressing on it, duh :))

[EDOldie]

Just looking at those maps of masts. It looks like there are no masts in SE21. Thats the posh bit of Dulwich for those of you who don't know. If this is the case it must be the only postcode in London without any masts. Do they know something we don't?

[Sue]

I used to live on an organic farm in Herefordshire. The farmers were offered a great deal of money to have a mobile mast on the farm, and they refused because of the potential health risks, plus they were very anti-mobiles anyway.

However as the farm next door accepted the dosh, they still ended up with a mast very near their farmhouse (and my hut).

:-S

PS It was one of those that looked like a tree - quite sweet really - at least you could admire it whilst it was frying your brain :))

[karter]

Hey edoldie, could it be because the dulwich estate objected to it?

[EDOldie]

Might be, perhaps the mobile phone companies were not offering them enough money. I mean, the Dulwich Estate wouldn't want anyone to think they were a charity. Oh, they are! No I wondered if it was local pressure from residents or schools, the reception in some places, particulerly Sydenham Hill is rubbish and I don't think it's the Estate particularly I believe they have agreed to let one go up on a playing field somewhere remote. But there are a lot of schools in SE21 and I wondered if this made a difference, harmfulness proven or unproven, does anyone know?

[macker]

EDOldie Wrote:

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> Just looking at those maps of masts. It looks like

> there are no masts in SE21.

When someone wishes to call one in SE21, one's butler comes and tells one. Hence no need for reception on a pocket telecommunications device.