Cellphone
masts damaging our brains?
February 13 2012 at
11:22am
By Sheree Bega
INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS
MONEY FOR JAM?
Cellphone companies are offering schools lucrative inducements to install
cellular equipment, such as this transmission mast, disguised as a palm tree,
at George Campbell Technical High School in Durban.
The
ultimatum from the teachers at Eldorado Park Senior Secondary School in Joburg
was clear: either the planned cellphone mast went, or they did. For Lionel
Billings, it wasn’t a hard decision to make.
“I
thought that I could rather lose the mast but not the teachers,” says Billings,
the chairman of the school’s governing body. “My kids also attend the same
school.”
The
school entered into a contract with Cell C more than two years ago and a mast
would provide a guaranteed income. “The thought of radiation was in the back of
my mind… but some of the schools in the area do have these towers and I thought
it can’t be that bad.”
But
when construction started towards the end of last year, everything changed.
“The teachers told me if the mast went up, they would leave. They had done
their research and were concerned about the dangers of cellphone masts.
“Some
of the research was very inconclusive, but the bottom line was that the word
radiation was mentioned in every article. That was enough for them to say we
don’t need this at our school. I don’t want to put our school’s 1 600 learners
and 50 teachers at any risk. We don’t even allow cellphones at the school.”
Tracey-Lee
Dorny, the chairwoman of the Electromagnetic Radiation Research Foundation of
SA, applauds the school’s move, noting that a village in Spain has just removed
a cellphone mast after 50 villagers contracted cancer or suffered from
headaches, insomnia and depression.
Too
many schools in SA allow the erection of cellphone masts on their grounds, says
Dorny, despite “burgeoning” scientific evidence about the potential health
effects of electromagnetic fields emitted by cellular base stations.
“There
are thousands of papers showing possible links to cancer, and now increasing incidents
of attention-deficit disorder, Alzheimer’s and diabetes from cellphone
radiation,” she says.
“When
I give talks to schools, the first thing I ask is who is sleeping with their
cellphones under their pillows. Almost all the hands go up. You find our
children hiding their cellphones on their bodies so that they don’t miss an SMS
while their poor little breasts are being fried.
“I
teach the children how dangerous phones are and not to put them in their bras
or panties, sleep with them under their pillows and walk with them in their
pockets.”
Like
most South Africans, Dorny, an events organiser, was using her cellphone
regularly two years ago. But when she and her family, who live in the upmarket
suburb of Craigavon, Joburg, started to fall ill, they looked at the iBurst
mast just metres from their home.
“I
was actually using iBurst,” recalls Dorny. “But I ended up starting to vomit
until I brought up blood. I had a rash from head to toe. It felt like my eyes
were melting in my head. My husband had bleeding headaches. My son would wake
up screaming in the middle of the night holding his head, which he said felt
like a rocket had gone off.”
Dorny
says the effects were so severe that the family could not live in their home
for 18 months. Eventually, iBurst dismantled the mast, which had been illegally
erected, but its former chief executive maintained it had been switched off for
weeks at a time and denied it could be the cause of similar illnesses affecting
scores of residents in the suburb.
Dorny
believes she has another battle on her hands. She says MTN’s testing of 4G LTE
(long term evolution) is “scorching” trees in her garden and the surrounding
area, and is the source of growing reports of illnesses, including tinnitus,
headaches, shooting pains, nausea and dizziness, in the suburbs where it is
being conducted.
4G
is the fourth generation of wireless communication standard for an era of
ultra-fast broadband internet access.
“People
ask me if we’ve had a fire here,” says Dorny, pointing to a cluster of some of
the 60 burnt and blistered pine trees in her garden – she has numbered each
one.
She
says 4G has higher penetration levels into buildings, and “therefore into our
bodies”. “My big concern is that we’ve got so many service providers rolling
out waves and levels of radiation… but they are actually clueless about the
damage they are causing… The only reason we have 4G is purely to now flog a
whole generation of gadgets to the public. What sort of powers and frequencies
are being transmitted to do this and what is it doing to people?”
But
Dr Walter Meyer, a senior lecturer in the physics department at the University
of Pretoria, disagrees. “In principle, electromagnetic radiation can cause
heating effects. The best example is the microwave oven, but the kind of effect
to scorch a tree would imply a serious health hazard to people.
“You
actually start heating people up, cooking them. It’s certainly possible… but
the power output of such a transmitter would be much higher than that which is
used for cellphone communication. I doubt whether this scorching is due to
cellphone radiation. To have those kinds of thermal effects you should in
principle feel the heat.”
Ivan
Booth, a former Vodacom spokesman, lashed out at Dorny’s “pseudo-science”.
“I’m
willing to put a R1 million bounty out there to anyone who can prove that
cellular base stations scorch pine trees,” he wrote.
But
Dorny says several studies point to the deterioration of trees around masts.
“I’m not an alarmist. I wish I could shout louder. What’s happening now with
the mass of towers and all the different layers of technology on top of each
other is you’re being exposed to electromagnetic radiation 24/7. You’re not
having a choice of ‘I don’t want this coming into my home, it’s making me ill’.
You can’t switch it off like you can your cellphone.”
SA
is guided by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the exposure guidelines
published by the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection
(ICNIRP). SA authorities say that there is no risk to the health of the general
public from exposure to the microwave emissions of cellular base stations, for
example.
Barrie
Trower, a military scientist from the UK, on a visit to King Kgafela II of the
Bakgatla tribe in Botswana, notes how there are at least 11 international
committees that “vehemently” oppose both the WHO’s and ICNIRP’s safety levels.
“This
is mostly due to the former’s safety levels being based… on thermal levels,
whereas other international studies recognise responses to electrochemical
interactions between microwaves and cellular biochemistry and set safety levels
according to lower rates.”
The
king had invited Trower to speak because he blamed the death of his father from
a brain tumour on a cellphone mast erected near the royal residence.
Last
May, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the WHO reclassified
radio frequency electromagnetic fields as a Class 2B carcinogen – possibly
carcinogenic to humans – because of links to some types of brain cancer.
“But
this has been ignored by the industry,” says Dorny. “They will keep quoting the
ICNIRP. But those guidelines have been declared obsolete by several
governments, because it’s only based on six minutes of thermal heating on an
adult male… not one organisation has yet declared what they feel is a safe
level for children… We’re sitting in 2012 with masses of new technology and
huge cellphone use.”
Late
last year, a Danish study, billed as the largest of its kind, found that there
were no increased risks of brain cancer from cellphone use after tracking 350
000 users for 18 years.
SA,
says Dorny, should err on the side of caution and follow the example of Sweden,
Canada, France and Switzerland, which have adopted safer radiation limits for
their citizens and even prevented wireless fidelity (wi-fi) in schools.
She
accuses government departments of passing the buck and leaving SA’s cellphone
industry “unregulated” and uncontrolled.
The
departments of Health, Environmental Affairs and Communications and the
Independent Communications Authority of SA failed to respond to the IOS’s
queries.
Last
year, Olle Johansson, an associate professor at the department of neuroscience
at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and a scientific adviser to Dorny’s
foundation, wrote an impassioned plea to the SA government. He said several
studies had demonstrated “cellular DNA damage, disruptions and alterations”
because of exposure to electromagnetic fields.
The
ICNIRP/WHO public safety limits were inadequate and obsolete with respect to
prolonged, low-intensity exposures, he said, and the precautionary principle
should be in force in the implementation of this new technology, especially
when it came to the exposure of children.
Dorny
says her exposure to the iBurst mast made her electrosensitive, which means she
becomes ill when exposed to electromagnetic radiation. She wears specially made
nets to shield her from radiation at home and when she travels. According to
her foundation, 3 percent of the world’s citizens are electrosensitive, and the
number is surging.
Dorny
is not averse to the use of technology but says that a properly planned
fibre-optic network, “from backbone to final source”, is safer if broadband is
to be expanded.
She
even owns a cellphone. “It’s an ancient thing but I only use it for
emergencies. It’s never on. I used to use my phone quite avidly. But I don’t
feel well when I do use one. If I have to pick up a smartphone, it actually
burns my hand.”
She
adds: “Anything… that is going to make you sick is of concern. If it’s going to
give you rashes, make you vomit, give you blurry vision, memory loss… that
either happens till the signal goes down or you take yourself away.” - Saturday
Star
http://www.iol.co.za/scitech/technology/telecoms/cellphone-masts-damaging-our-brains-1.1232924
