Friday 29 December 2006

Easy Money or Fools Gold?

Before landlords rush to cash in on the idea of placing a Mast or Mobile Phone Antenna on the top of their block of flats, as Bernard Slade in Wimbledon Park intends to do, they might like to consider a few points.

Firstly, more and more evidence of negative health effects and cancer clusters are being linked to Mobile Telephone Masts in residential areas. If, or more likely, when these health effects are proven to be directly linked to the masts in court, compensation will be forthcoming from land owners, since Telecommunications operators are unlikely to fully indemnify land owners against legal action. In the recent TV drama Judge John Deed, (an episode entitled “Silent Killer”), the landlord of a Block of Flats was taken to court by a sick resident who lived below a Mast – albeit a TETRA/Airwave (Police) antenna rather than a similar 3G Mobile Telephone Mast. This may be fiction at the moment, but in the near future many such cases are no doubt inevitable.

Secondly, once the initial contract period is up, you may not be able to have the mast removed, since the Operator can claim the right to stay – even if the owner may wish to sell or redevelop the site. The text below recently arrived at mast Sanity from the owner of a Water Tower, who wanted to terminate his contract with T-Mobile:-

I have given 12 months notice to T Mobile under the terms of the original 10 year lease I have with them requiring them to remove the aerials from the top of my house in order that we can sell it in 12 months time without the aerials on top. They have responded under the Telecomms Act serving a “Code Notice” saying basically they are a utility provider and are entitled to stay. In a without prejudice side letter they have said they do not want to inhibit the sale of the house but will need to find an alternative site. This will be very difficult in the area where I live. In discussions they have said they recognise that they will be liable to pay compensation if they stay beyond the end of the notice period.

Question: “Does anyone have any help or advice to help us bring pressure to bear to ensure they vacate the site at the end of the notice period?

The Reply: “Presumably you have taken fairly profitable payments from them in the past to have their antennas on your building. Nothing comes for free. Now comes the payback time.

Maybe you will have to accept that it has discounted the current value of your building and sell it for less than you had hoped - just like many of your neighbours may have lost value on their houses and found them harder to sell because you had the antennas on your house.

You could try asking around to see if any of your neighbours would be prepared to take them. I suspect you will be in for a long hard fight with T-Mobile - they became much harder to deal reasonably with after they had been bought by Deutsch Telecom.

Thirdly, Is it morally right for the Owners of Blocks of Flats to take money in exchange for putting residents' lives and health at risk, purely for financial gain? Don't they have a “Duty of Care” toward their residents? If we were discussing the storage of Toxic waste or the installation of Asbestos sheeting on the roof nobody would rush to take the companys' cash – the only difference is the Official and Corporate mis-information and ignorance which surround Mobile Telephone Masts i.e. the very real and serious health effects from the microwaves emitted from them, incidentally including the residents living directly below the antennae. Surely it is completely wrong for anyone to impose such risks on people living within their care, when those people will have no choice about being bombarded with microwave radiation from those masts, purely to satisfy the landlord's desire for ever more money.

So, to recap, with the moral dilemma and the future serious problems that any Flat Owner may have with agreeing to host a Mast, is it sensible to take the Operator's money, or is it really Fools' Gold?

Read Easy Money or Fools Gold?

Saturday 23 December 2006

Cancer Clusters & Mobile Telephone Masts – The Time for Action is Now

  • Various UK towns and cities, town in Spain (new Saville), Naila (Germany)

  • Long term effects:

    - Start off as sleep disturbance, migrains, heat rashes, high blood pressure

    - Progress to depression (whose incidence has greatly increased over last 10-15 years)

    - Progressing to pre-cancer conditions and cancers

In UK studies, Dr. John Walker, Physicist ex-of Dunlop said, “I know of no mast that has been erected for more than 8-10 years where we haven't seen cancer clusters of more than the expected incidence – in adjacent properties, all where the emissions from the mast is reaching its maximum – and corresponding fall in symptoms as the emissions drop off”.

We need a moratorium on the erection of masts, and for system such as 3G and TETRA to be turned off until such time as they are proven to be safe. Although the evidence I have seen points to such masts not being safe. Some people have suggested dropping the output from masts to the levels agreed a few years ago in Salzburg – some 1/900 - 1/9000th of the current UK values. Phones will still work outside, but not inside (where people can use normal phones instead).

We also need epidemiological studies to fully examine medical data against actual mast emission plots in very localised locations – not averaged over 3 digit postcode sized areas where all useful data is lost. If such none-specific statistics had been done in the days of the Cholera outbreaks in London in Victorian times, the contaminated wells would never have been identified.

Medical data wouldn't need to be identified to specific individuals, so confidentiality wouldn't be breached. However, such studies would need to be independently run and overseen – not funded by the Telecoms Industry as we have seen with the recent Danish study into Mobile Phone use.

This is a growing problem, and with the increasing number of masts and transmitters erected for 3G and Wi-fi, as well as domestic use of digital cordless (DECT) phones and Wi-fi, our exposure to damaging radiation steadily increases.

With an estimated 3% of the population electrosensitive (and I have met some) the current situation has meant hell on earth for many individuals – many who are not aware of why they are suffering.

The effect of microwave radiation from masts and wireless equipment from studies appears 3-fold.

Firstly sleep patterns are disrupted and melatonin production is affected. Consequently people do not sleep so well, so their bodies can not re-generate and fix what problems they have.

Secondly, DNA breaks in cells is increased way above natural levels and the body struggles to repair the breaks. Any breaks which are not repaired are the start of cancer.

Thirdly, the blood-brain barrier is weakened, allowing damaging chemicals from our environment to enter – so in towns and cities, especially industrial ones, toxic chemicals get into the brain and cause symptoms like ME (which used to be known as Yuppy Flu), etc.

When you add all of the 3 effects together, the body's immune system is being worn down in coping, so ill health, cancers and ultimately death become foregone conclusions.

Also, many researchers are starting to believe that once people's bodies become so saturated with microwave radiation, that previously non-electrosensitive people can become electrosensitive.

All of these effects are happening NOW in the UK and the developed world. These effects occur at levels much below those permitted by the ICNIRP Guidelines adopted in the UK which only take into account thermal effects. The time for action is NOW – not when thousands of people have been made very ill or died as a result.

See Mast Sanity for more info!