Camdcen New Journal - Letters: Phone fears unfounded

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published:14 June 2007

Phone fears are unfounded

• YOUR article ‘Not in my back yard – it’s full’(June 7) raised the issue of public concerns regarding the perceived health effects caused by mobile phone masts. This can be a highly emotive subject causing real distress to people living near base stations. In fact, the established science on this subject is extremely reassuring.
More than 30 authoritative expert scientific reviews undertaken both in the UK and around the world, including the World Health Organisation, during the past six years have not found adverse health effects caused by mobile phone base stations operating within the international health and safety guidelines used in the UK since they were recommended by the Stewart Report in 2000.
In the UK the science has been reviewed four times since the Stewart Report was published – by the British Medical Association (BMA), the independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (AGNIR) in 2003, and the BMA in an update and the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) (now part of the Health Protection Agency) in 2005.
The advice from the NRPB report in January 2005 is consistent with the earlier conclusion reached in 2003 by AGNIR when it found that the weight of scientific evidence available does not suggest that mobile technologies operating within international health and safety exposure guidelines cause illness.
The NRPB concluded: “Within the UK, there is a lack of hard information showing that mobile phone systems are damaging to health. It is important to emphasise this crucial point.”
In fact, the latest in this series of expert reports was published as recently as March 2007 by the Irish Government.
It concluded: “From all the evidence accumulated so far, no adverse short or long term health effects have been shown to occur from exposure to the signals produced by mobile phones and base station transmitters.”
We now have more than 65 million mobile phones in use in the UK and they need a network of base stations (or masts) to allow them to operate.
In framing its planning rules for telecommunications networks, the government has relied on the expert scientific advice provided to it by the Health Protection Agency chaired by Sir William Stewart.
MICHAEL DOLAN
Executive Director
Mobile Operators Association

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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