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Cell Towers Not Responsible For Illness
drewmoney notes a BBC article on a major UK study of whether cell towers (or "mobile phone masts" as they are called in the UK) cause illness. The study concluded strongly that symptoms of illness caused by mobile phone masts are all in the mind. People claiming sensitivity to radio emissions showed more symptoms in trials, according to the article, whether signals were being emitted or not. Quoting: "Dozens of people who believed the masts triggered symptoms such as anxiety, nausea and tiredness could not detect if signals were on or off in trials. However, the Environmental Health Perspectives study stressed people were nonetheless suffering 'real symptoms.' Campaign group Mast Sanity said the results were skewed as 12 people in the trials dropped out because of illness."
The obvious way to conduct such a study would be to correlate the incidence of illness with the proximity to radio sources.
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I heard that, this one time, this guy, got like cooties from a cell tower, true story.
prepare the survey weasels.
I'd be willing to bet a fair amount of the 'symptoms' people claim they are suffering from wireless signals (I've even had someone moan that my WiFi signal was giving them a headache!) are entirely psychological. I put the router where nobody could see it, the complaints stopped :)
Basically this is how you do a placebo trial. The science is telling us that these people are sick, but it is not due to radio towers, because having the radiation on or off is not making any statistically significant difference at all in their symptoms.
It is the same as when you do a dug trial with 1/2 the people getting sugar pills, and in a huge majority of *both* groups the people get better. You use statistics to find out the *true* efficacy of your medicine.
Basically - the point is the illness could be being caused by any number of other local-specific factors, but cell towers is not the cause.
then the Nokia Wifi Cloud that blankets London would be making everyone that lives there neurotic and irritable.
Oh wait...
Summation 2
I once worked for a GSM handset manufacturer that had a couple of test BTS in the building and I can tell you that after a day of work there, I was suffering of anxiety, headaches and tiredness, but almost never during weekends.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/14/11838 33843064.html?from=top5
and a video
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/id/1439921521
OR it was because his mobile phone bills were too high, and I know I can relate to that.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
While I don't think there is a strong connection between the two (I work beside a cell tower, and over the last 9 months or so I haven't had more or fewer illnesses than before), it's entirely possible that the effects of the radiation take more than a small measure of time to feel. It isn't like you see a light on or off, or hear a noise.
For example, when placed under a heat lamp, it could easily take 5 seconds before "pain" was registered, it doesn't mean that the heat wasn't hurting you 5 seconds ago, it means it takes a while for the sub-dermal layers to heat up. So it's entirely possible that prolonged exposure to the radiation is causing them problems.
However, if they claimed they feel instant pain the minute the transmitter kicks on, they're probably lying.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
A few years ago I attended one of those little village meetings that happen often in little English rural villages, which was called to protest the plans to build a mobile phone mast in the village. It was an interesting experience.
They had handouts that they have printed from websites that were expressing the dangers of living near the masts although, clearly, these were taken from a highly bias source. The guy who called the meetings was not shy about admitting that this biggest concern was the potential drop in value of his grade 2 listed cottage which was positioned quite close to the mast.
The highlight of the evening though, was a little old man they dragged out to talk about the science. Apparently he had worked on some of the early nuclear power stations in the UK and had also spent time as a science teacher, although long since retired. He gave us a speech about the effects of radiation (not really going into detail about the difference between a phone mast and a nuclear power station in terms of radiation intensity), he talked about the electric systems in the body etc. It was all pretty interesting in a 'high-school physics' kind of way.
Then, completely out of the blue, this guy starts going into a really passionate tirade about how the government are using mobile phone masts to plant instructions directly into our brains. The look of horror on the organisers face was a picture! I think he saw this old guy as his trump card until this very moment. The guy was ushered off staging mid-sentance. Containing my laughter was quite difficult. I had never actually seen a members of the tin-foil hat brigade in the flesh before!
The mast got built.
Now I come to think about it, my voting habits changed around the same kind of time too.... hmmmm
I think the Independent article that claimed that that was proven was later shown to have been based on misinterpreting the results of a scientific study. I seem to remember the original story and update were both on Slashdot.
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I am always leery of articles that do not disclose this early in the article. This article eventually says:
"The study was funded by the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme, a body which is itself funded by industry and government."
So, who exactly is the Mobile Telecommunication and Health Research programme? If this were the United States and the study had to do with health effects of nuclear power plants, and if "business and government" meant, say, the EPRI and the "government" agency were the NRC, I'd be very skeptical. On the other hand, if the government agency were the National Institutes of Health, I'd give it a lot of credence.
The Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research programme has a website,, but I can't judge from it whether this is real science or not.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Don't stop there -- you may not be aware of this, but there is an enormous fusion reactor in the sky pouring untold terawatts of electromagnetic energy down upon you every day. The existence of this "Sun" is, of course, a closely-guarded secret.
Drive to the top of Mt. Wilson above LA, there are a zillion transmitting towers. The TV towers each put out hundreds of kilowatts of rf. If the birds and squirrels up there are doing ok, then it is hard to understand how a cell tower could cause problems. A friend of mine who used to work on a radio system for taxis up there, said much of his test gear would go crazy due to all the rf. Until someone can show how rf radiation can affect DNA, there is no mechanism for rf to cause cancer.
Have gnu, will travel.