Topic: Does anyone live near a Phone Mast and are they effected ?

[flossy]

   I've got one, actually it's a tripple  --  just up the road from us,

   not slept well in 2yrs ?

   floss xxx

[OllieC]

We're right next to the police station & they have loads of big aerials on the roof of their building... I do worry about it, especially with the children. Not sure what they are but they look like phone ones. I sleep alright most of the time. Alcohol helps!

[hopalong]

The church down the road wants to make some money by sticking a triple mast on the bell tower. The vicar has refused to talk to local residents and there's been a huge protest. No evidence of any ill effects but lots of concern that there could be.  In the circumstances we are arguing that the "precautionary principle" should apply (i.e. even if the risk is small, best not take a risk at all).

[flossy]

  Thanks Ollie,

  Tried that , just gives me a headache,       ::)

  Seriously, have experienced problems since moving to Hatfield 6yrs ago , and

  have lived in the vicinity of the same mast for all of those years, there is a body

  of people who will do an '  analysis  '  for £ 600  ?   Will say they put me onto a site that

  gives advice for no fee  --  but honestly , I am none the wiser !

  Its about positive and negative emissions,  positives don't [ apparently harm you ]

  but the government wont acknowledge the effect that the negative emissions have

  on the people who are close to them.

  They say that metal attracts --  absorbs the emissions --  as they have observed from

  areas that have say - a high residence or lorries with metal roofs  ,   this is where

  credibility falls apart for me  --   except our home has a metal roof  !!!

  It's not a prephab,  a very spacious bungalow in an open setting with a very large

  garden  [  thats upped my profile ]    ;D

  Joking aside, there may be a real problem, or it's just me getting old !

  floss xxx

[OllieC]

Well for all the reassurances about safety, I heard surgeon who specialised in brain tumors on the radio a while back - he said he won't let his children use a mobile phone!

And hoplong, did you explain to the vicar that there's considerably more evidence to show the dangers of phone masts than there is to show the existence of god?

[asbean]

We have one at the top of our road, despite incredible protestations from residents who feared for their lives. If anyone has suffered any ill effects they have kept very quiet about it, which makes me wonder ... ...

[ACE]

I live within a couple of hundred metres, no problems here. I am also surrounded by televisions which could also fry my brain. At least that is what we were told back in the fifties, probably by the grand parents of the people who are scaremongering today about masts. I wonder what they said about crystal sets years ago. I bet the users of those were doomed.

[Mr Smith]

I live within a couple of hundred metres of an army camp so who knows what they have on the boil in there with regards to communications, its just the two hundred  bl--dy canines they have in there,  :)

[Melbourne12]

I live within a couple of hundred metres, no problems here. I am also surrounded by televisions which could also fry my brain. At least that is what we were told back in the fifties, probably by the grand parents of the people who are scaremongering today about masts. I wonder what they said about crystal sets years ago. I bet the users of those were doomed.

It's funny, isn't it, that even back in the day of the cathode ray tube, people were quite happy to sit their toddlers in front of the screen, right in the line of fire.  But of course, TV is too much fun to risk losing even for the sake of a health scare.

Much the same story for microwave ovens, although there was a half-hearted attempt in the early days to raise a scare over those.

But crystal sets?  Now they WERE dangerous.  Until the day she died, my old mum would switch the wireless off during a thunderstorm.  She was quite happy to leave the TV on, but she remembered stories of people being killed by lightning strikes on the aerials used by crystal set afficonados.  Some used 40 foot high whip aerials, and of course they never thought to put any sort of safety circuit in.  :o

Edit:  I've just remembered - for anyone concerned about death rays from mobile phones, you can protect yourself easily and cheaply by wearing a tinfoil hat. Simples!

[chriscross1966]

We've got several masts near us but as I understand physics it doesn't worry me.... what does worry me is misinformed bad science scares being perpetrated by half-witted journalists....

My eyesight was impaired along with several of my friends, one of whom is profoundly deaf, and a kid from the next school over died from the last nasty measles outbreak in theis country just before the MMR vaccine came in.... A decently virulent strain of measles will kill 5-10% of children and leave another 20-25% damaged in some way.... and people are failing to get their kids immunised because of a disproven paper linking it to autism...... I'm also autistic and believe me being short-sighted is a far bigger bane than the occasional social faux-pas caused because I don't really "get" people....

[/rant]

chrisc

[OllieC]

I understand physics...

Me too, studied it at uni! But it's the biology that always does for you, not the physics!

[flossy]

   Bit confused here Ace, T.V -  grand parents - masts ! ??           ! ::)

   Not scaremongering here at all ! ?

   Just a simple question !   

   floss xxx

   

[flossy]

  My Grandparents didn't have TV in the 50's    ---    come to that,

   nor did I, !           ::)

   floss

[flossy]

   chriscross ,   Physics, Biology Chemistry ---   don't they all combine  ? 

   Didn't you do  ' combined chemistry ' at school ?

    Perhaps I am in a ' time warp ' here !

    floss,

[ACE]

   Bit confused here Ace, T.V -  grand parents - masts ! ??           ! ::)

   Not scaremongering here at all ! ?

   Just a simple question !   

   floss xxx


What makes you jump at every answer without  thinking it out? There are newspapers like the daily mail and jumped up scientists who have theories that do enough scaremongering for everyone.

Also yours was not quite a simple question, you infered that you haven't had a decent nights sleep for two years and there is a mast up the road.

Perhaps if you faced up to your rightful birthplace, your conscience would let you sleep more peacefully ;D

  My Grandparents didn't have TV in the 50's    ---    come to that,

   nor did I, !           ::)

   floss

Don't tell me your neighbours from the crescent nicked it :o

   

[flossy]

   Ace , if you haven't got somethin acceptable, intelligent and constructive to say !

    - then bye, bye ,        ;D
   
     Please,   are you having a laugh at my expence ?

    floss

[chriscross1966]

The important thing to remember about a phone mast is that it is only using a signal a bit more powerful than your phone..... and it's at worst ten metres away from you and the phone is next to your ear, 1000 times closer, 1000000 times more effect per watt transmitted.... Your phone is probably transmitting about a watt, the basestation about a hundred (that is close to a physicist btw, it's only a couple of orders of magnitude), so the effect of your phone is about 10000 times more than the mast.... The balance point occurs when you stand 10 centimetres away from the mast with the phone 1cm away......... inverse square law for teh w1n!..... The frequencies used are the same BTW.....

I have to deal with radiation returns everyday in the form of reflected illumination.... a 50w light bulb up close will turn your skin into a third-degree burn wheras you can wander around under that incandescent thermonuclear reactor of a sun of ours and barely notice it most of the time..... any time you deal with radiation, distance matters more than orders of magnitude of power.

chrisc

[OllieC]

Chris, 2 orders of magnitude wasn't not close for a Physicist when I studied. Perhaps they had a different syllabus at your university? I was at Manchester 1993 to 1997. Where were you?

Also, the point I made earlier, it's the biology that's the problem here, not the Physics. As you know, microwaves cause the water molecules in our cells to resonate & also (possibly as a result) to cause permanent changes to our DNA. We do not know enough about the processes or long term implications of these changes to declare them safe...

[flossy]

  Thanks chrisc,

  Understood and appreciated your input, thanks again.

  floss xxx

[hopalong]

And hoplong, did you explain to the vicar that there's considerably more evidence to show the dangers of phone masts than there is to show the existence of god?

I'm afraid I didn't get the chance Ollie (even if I'd wanted to, being a believer myself, of the doubting and questioning kind). He refuses to talk to local people at all, which enrages them even more.  Not very Christian of him.

I'm very interested in what you say about the biology. Not heard that argument before.  The Stewart Inquiry a couple of years ago dismissed all the worries about health risks as baloney, I thought? My own view is that there is enough evidence, however slight, to exercise great caution about where to site the masts.