Mobile phone masts near Nursery

[onlytheone]

Anyone else concerned about the proximity of a mobile phone mast to their home, school or nursery? Always been at the back of mind as a worry but article in Sunday Times yesterday has triggered my anxiety again. We have one extremely close to my child's nursery school and I am feeling uneasy about this. She is settled so I don't want to pull her out on a whim! The plus is that she is not there full time.

I think that the radiation from the masts drops off quickly with distance, so not too concerned about this. However, the radiation from the handsets is supposed to be much higher as you press them to your ear. So that is where the real danger lies.
Expect someone more knowledgable will blow these theories out of the water.

i understand your worries, but the jury is still out on masts
the press like to scare us mummies with "your kids are in danger"stories, and as you say she is not there full time, so i wouldn't worry

i don't think they are a problem at all

and if they are, we are utterly buggered

everyone has a mobile these days

I think its the same frequency as used for internet wireless links, and loads of people have them and they have quite a range

so

no evidence that they are actually dangerous AFAIK, just scaremongering and attempt to sell magnets

and

if they are we're all a bit buggered

(come on mb! come on mb!)

Reading again - I didnt mean 'real danger'
I meant danger of being exposed to the radiation. I have no idea if the radiation actually causes any damage. Agree - if it does then lots of people are in trouble.

its not radiation a la chernobyl though

its on a radio frequency, isn't it? oh feck will have to wiki

oh no, i remember now, microwaves

thing is, microwaves are quite big, a metre or so at least i think. so its not like ionising radiation that gets into your cells and knocks out bits of the atoms that make them up (a la chernobyl), they are too big

come on mb, she normally manages to correct my laypersons explainations nicely

For mobile phone users living close to a radio mast gives you less of a dose of radiation than if you live far away. The further way the mast is from your phone the bigger the signal your phone has to make to connect to the mast. When the mast is close to your phone, your phone gives off a weaker signal. Our kids are bathed in electromagnetic radiation wherever they go. Radiation from mobile phones, microwaves ovens, radio masts, power lines is non ionising.

However your kids are likely to get a bigger dose of non-ionising radiation from playing in the mid day sun than from mobile phones.

Mobile phones no where near as dangerous as the radioactive fallout from Chenovel, or other dangerous activites such as having X-rays, nuclear bomb tests, or living in Cornwell.

The Health Protection Agency has a lot of information on relative risks.

Barefoot is right, it's an inverse square law. Twice as far is 1/4 the power, three times is 9, four times is 1/16, 5 times is 1/25 and so on.

A phone is typically 5cm metres from your brain, so a mast 100 metres away would have to be more than four million times as powerful to cause the same effect.
I say "more than" because buildings etc make it drop off faster than that.

Obviously it isn't quite the same frequency as for wireless computers, else they'd interfere with each other big time, but it is not that far off either.

If you want to understand why I think the arts dominated "education" system in this country is so crap, the ubiquitous misunderstanding of "radiation" is a good key.
Nearly everyone has radiators in their home. They work off radiation, the same sort as for mobile phones, and amongst the most dangerous forms of radiation from nuclear plants are electromagnetic radiation.
When I say the "same", of course some is like dropping a pea onto concrete, and some is like dropping a rock the size of Texas. The nasty EM radiation from nuclear plants is trivial to contain thankfully.
But it is the same stuff. Some radiation is more solid(ish) particles, but you don't get them from mobile phones.

Mobile phone are so common that if there were a major health effect, we'd expect to see something a lot nastier than possible clusters near masts.
The "study" in the Sunday Times is so shit, I don't know where to begin.
Arts grads fake science for headlines
We know that cancers cluster for lots of reasons, varying from genetic mix of local populations, through to the materials that homes are made from (granite is bad stuff).
Comparing just two schools is so laughably stupid that even the arts grads at the Sunday Times should be embarrassed.

Mobile phones do have proven biological effects on the brain. Entertainingly the evidence so far sort of nearly implies that the effect is good, though I don't really believe that.

The effect that is so far beyond the artsgrad journos that may be causing cancer is ozone. Contrary to what you may have read about ozone, it is one of the nastiest chemicals known. It kills all life on contact, destroying anything remotely organic. It can be made by high voltage equipment, and is rather heavier than air, which means it theory it could "pool".
Ozone could be causing these cancers, and may explain the nearly-proven link with high voltage power lines and substations.
Or it may not.

Sorry I just read my post and its not clear.

Mobile phones are a source of non ionising radiation as well as mobile phone masts.

There is no evidence yet that radiation from mobile phones or masts harm children/ people. Although its recommened children don't use mobile phones as a precaution.

www.hpa.org.uk/radiation/default.htm

The chance of cells being damaged by non ionising radiation is low. Although its a good idea to take care when sun bathing.

Our bodies are good at repairing themselves as human being have been bombarded by background radiation since the dawn of time.

dc your anti arts grad stuff is bloody rude and patronising, it pisses the feck out of me

the problem is that people don't understand science. Quite a lot of science grads don't get science. they certainly don't get its limitations, and a bizare percentage have no real understanding of stats or experiemental design, let alone what you can and cannot prove with an experiment (causality etc)

The journos who wrote this are crap were arts grads, and having met quite a few "science and technology" correspondents I will share with you that not only do they usually have no understanding of S&T, but are very smug about their abject ignorance. They refer to anyone with any understanding as "geeks" and "weird".

If a defence correspondent wrote of the military threat posed by the Roman Empire, he'd be laughed out of his job.
But the BBC writes that do not have the ability to alter matter
Anyone here ever used a microwave oven, do you think the matter in there is not affected ?
Certainly the idjit who wrote it hasn't had his hand burned by a radio aerial.

Their confusion between the wave and particle nature of EM radiation is pathetic and in the same order as confusing a Russian with a Chinese as both being "from the East".

The BBC artsgrad misunderstanding of genetics is actually quite scary as in \link{here/Worms}. Radiation that screws with worm genetics is pretty much certain to do the same to humans. Do the arts grads at the BBC really believe that because we have bigger bodies the DNA is proportionally bigger and therefore tougher ? Looks like it to me.

It doesnt surprise me that non scientists are scared of radiation from microwaves. If you consider how hot my microwave oven makes my supper their concern is understandable.

Non ionising radiaton (or ionising radiation as well) can have a heating affect which can damage tissues. This is why you get burn if you don't use sun cream and excessive sunbathing over a prolonged period can cause cancer.

However the strength of microwave signals that mobile phones or Wi fi systems use is extremely low. I think we would have noticed by now if our mobile phones were cooking our brains.

Some of the cock ups that govenant organisations made when doing research into BSE (mad cow disease) were VERY scary. I can't blame Joe Public for not trusting any governant scientists.

Well, that is all about as clear as mud! Now I am getting worried about my radiators . Though they are off at the mo.
Can anyone reply to the OP concisely and clearly without getting into a science v arts biff-up?

Short version, outside journalism I have found no one who has actually looked at mobile phone mast radiation who has found anything bad at all.
Indeed, techie journos (they do exist) are quite scornful of the idea.

The amount of energy going through your body from one is far less then from your phone.

I'm a bit of a numbers geek, and your local roads are vastly more dangerous to your children than even the most hysterical Sunday Time article.

However, although government scientists are mostly honest, the government refuses to pay for proper research, and as BSE showed this is for political effect.

One thing the Sunday times et al have missed is that mobile phones are the direct technological descendants of death ray research. Originally it was hoped to use E/M radiation in the form of microwaves to kill people and shoot down bombers. At one point in the 1930s the government published a reward for anyone who could kill a sheep at 50 paces.
The research worked. A radar can kill at far greater range, every year a few military personnel die this way.
The US army has microwave weapons in it's armoury though they have not yet seen action (as far as we know).

Governant scientists are honest and most of them are hardworking. (There is the odd weirdo... but then you get weird people everywhere.) I used to work in the scientific civil service before I gave up work to look after my son. Admitally I have never done any research on mobile phones.

Quite a bit of money has been spent researching the affects of mobile phones. There was the stewart enquiry about 6 years ago. At the time quite a bit of money was used to research the affects of mobile phones.

www.iegmp.org.uk/

I met two of the people involved with the research and they were hard working and intelligent people. I am sure that their research was comprehensive. I am confident that their findings are right.

Oh bugger is Wifi bad?

Oh fuckit

Dominiconnor...I think if you were one of the people in the cancer cluster around the nursery and had direct evidence that nearly every one of your neighbours had cancer too you may take that as all the evidence you needed and not be so flippant about the fact that the article may have been written up by an 'arts grad'. The article was worrying, it seems to be fact that there are cancer clusters around those masts, so it is obvious that people will take this kind of evidence into account when trying to assess for themselves whether masts may pose a risk to their families, particularly when you bear in mind that much of the scientific research into these things is sponsored by the mobile phone companies and so really there is only ever going to be one outcome from that research.

think dc is kind of right but rude

and there are clusters but as far as i undestand it they are not actually statistically significant. so, using the data that they have avalible (probably kids developing childhood leukaemia) , kids did not actually seem more likely to develop cancer when living near the masts

i also think these studies don't tend to be properly adjusted for eg poverty etc. poverty is MASSIVELY correlated to ill health, advice agencies like the CAB get mahoosive funding (well, some) around this.

don't see the relevance of the wave/particle thing. its true we don't know if light or indeed anything else on the electromagnetic spectrum is a wave or a particle, actually strictly its a wavicle since it sometimes behaves as one, sometimes the other. we have a piss poor knowlege of what happens at that level, hence, bascially, all of quantum physics. All we can do is look at the effect which, to be fair, is what we are doing when we look to see if cancer is on the up near phone masts.

but hey, i'm an artsgrad, and my god i occasionally watch the bbc, wtf do i know?

Breathe deep Filly. Ignore DC as his usual science v arts bollocks is just an excuse which gets in the way of discussing the actual subject. Occasionally he says something interesting but pisses on his own chips by pursuing this at every opportunity.

Have just watched a Newsnight piece about wifi, etc which you can probably watch again on the net.

Have also seen a few reports on the TV recently about a protest going on about a planned mast near a London school and playground. Their website has some interesting stuff and links - www.nomast.org

3G masts and tetra masts are supposedly of more concern than normal masts and there has been some good stuff on this in The Ecologist including health complaints from police using this technology.

The government's own guidelines suggest masts are sited using the "precautionary principle" and not close to kids, but this gets ignored all the time.

There may not be much conclusive evidence yet, but is is still early years in terms of evidence. You also have to ask yourself who in the UK would be interested in funding independent studies to check out the safety of phone masts - virtually no-one as there is too much at stake! Other countries however have produced some interesting results.

sorry will try and do a proper link

nophonemast

I'm an artsgrad, and i understand - and knew about - everything discussed in this thread.

But, honestly, onlytheone - are you prepared to stop using your mobile, and if not, where, or who, do you think the mast should be near?

Ellaroo, it wasn't "nearly every", it was a bit of correlation. Do I have to patronise you with a long and tedious list of all the things that are known to cause cancer and can vary over a short distance ?

The biggest most obvious one is that we know that many public buildings have been constructed with dodgy materials, so if one school had a much higher rate of illness I'd look at that first.

I have been scrupulous in not saying that I personally don't believe that radio masts can't cause cancer, since I can think of a couple of ways they could, but not for the reasons cited, and not because of the laughably poor evidence.
It is the poverty of thought that pisses me off.
By focusing on crap like this, a real health problem like asbestos in the school, dodgy paint, or contaimination in the water supply will be overlooked.
Thast is the price of taking your health advice from people who don't understand statistics, and regard numbers as "geeky".