UK NEWS
MOBILE PHONE MASTS 'HIDDEN FROM PUBLIC'
A mobile phone mast disguised as a tree in Surrey
By Sara Dixon
MOBILE phone companies were accused yesterday of seeking to “hide” the sites of new masts.
They are going to increasing lengths to disguise the masts, some being made to look like trees in fields and woodlands.
It is being viewed by critics as an attempt to make the masts “disappear” into the surrounding areas.
A Vodafone mast which went up in March on the edge of Ascot racecourse is disguised as an evergreen conifer in a
forest of deciduous trees.
It can just be spotted poking above the tops of real trees,
its fake branches – individually attached to the huge post – covering a circle of transmitters.
Just outside York another phone mast has been less successfully blended into the countryside, as the “monkey puzzle” type of “tree” towers above a large native one.
Square clusters of leaves are stuck on the sparsely interspersed artificial branches which jut out from a huge
concrete post.
Orange have erected a 25-metre mast in Essex which is made to look like a Scots pine and stands twice as high as the existing tree line.
The company said they were trying to minimise the impact of masts on the surrounding area. It was constructed “to blend in with its environment”. Vodafone was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Phone masts cannot be put up without planning consent from local authorities but a website designed to help people find out where they are has hit problems.
The mobile phone companies have allegedly stopped helping to update the website which is aimed at telling people where the masts are going up. The 2000 Stewart Report on the potential health hazards posed by the microwave-transmitting phone masts made recommendations.
The industry voluntarily set up an internet site listing where they were putting masts but not revealing which company owned them.
An online map at www.sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk – maintained by industry regulator Ofcom from information given by the UK’s five mobile phone operators – is supposed to help people check exactly how many phone masts are in their area.
But a few months ago, following a Freedom of Information request on exactly how many masts each operator has and where they were located, the industry stopped providing Ofcom with data.
Now Ofcom wants to block the request because of worries that mobile companies will stop providing them with information on new masts for good – rendering Sitefinder obsolete.
Ofcom said: “The mobile phone network operators have decided not to provide any further information to us
about sites.
If we disclosed the data asked for, they will cease to supply us with any data at all. That will mean Sitefinder will get out of date.” Alasdair Philips, director of Powerwatch, an information service on electro-magnetic fields and microwave radiation, is outraged at the phone companies’ behaviour.
He said: “It beggars belief that the companies should stop putting up the limited information they have provided in the past. It looks like a fit of pique.”
Sir William Stewart, who reported on mobile phone technology, is calling for an investigation into the potential hazards of wi-fi technology which is regularly used by people to connect to the Internet remotely.
His report found there was no conclusive evidence to dismiss mobile phone technology as harmless and urged a cautionary approach.
Video 
MOBILE PHONE MASTS HIDDEN FROM PUBLIC
30.05.07, 8:08am
Last weeks Panorama TV programme finally exposed the myth of the aleged safety of this technology. It also exposed the government's appalling attitude to public health. The Panorama interviewer went to great pains to express incredulity that HM Government was ignoring its own principle scientific adviser and Chairman of the Health Protection Agency, Sir William Stewart. It is the part played by Sir William that is the centre point of the debate. It is what the Chairman of the HPA has to say, and the decision by HM Government to ignore him, that matters - and this is what is an absolute disgrace when our health is being deliberately compromised.
Over 1000 independent studies, linking phone mast electro magnetic radiation with serious ill health including cancer, confirm that masts should not be sited within 350 metres of schools or housing. Phone operators dismiss such research, alleging that their own studies suggests no health risk. However last month the national press revealed that T-Mobile covered up the damaging results of their own research. The Ecolog Institute, a research organisation which examins the health effects of mobile phones, was commissioned by T-Mobile to investigate the possible health risks of mobile phone masts. The 2003 Ecolog report confirmed:
'Given the results of the present epidemiological studies, it can be concluded that electromagnetic fields with frequencies in the mobile telecommunications range do play a role in the development of cancer. This is particularly notable for tumours of the central nervous system.'
T-Mobile’s controversial cover up has been blasted by activists and MPs. They said the company’s handling of the report was typical as the under-fire industry strived to keep discussion of the health threat off the agenda.
The idea that unelected bodies (the mobile phone companies) have a right to expose people to these risks, amounts to enrolling the population in a giant biological experiment without their consent. Considering that children, the most vulnerable of all, are included in this experiment, it is shameful that their interests are disregarded so cynically in the pursuit of profit. (Please see MastSanity website for further details).
• Posted by: Radiation • Report Comment
LETS PAINT THEM ALL BRIGHT ORANGE!
28.05.07, 3:02pm
"Your damned if you do you are damned if you don't"
Paint them all flourescent orange and put up massive billboards to direct peoples attention in case they are colour blind and miss them!
Over fifty percent of the population use mobiles without a doubt they have saved many lives by summoning help more rapidly than was ever possible before.
However try and make the masts unobtrusive and you are hiding them, make them obvious and they will be an eyesore.
Maybe we can strap them onto traffic wardens helmets and use the second lowest form of life after the Labour party in the UK to test their safety!
• Posted by: The_Way_I_See_It • Report Comment
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