Low masts pose the biggest health risks because they beam straight into people’s houses.
Cellphone companies are already legally entitled to hack down trees that interfere with signals from masts – and in future they may not even have to bother consulting residents before erecting masts in their suburbs.
Karl Muller of the Electromagnetic Action Group said new draft regulations by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism could do away with environmental impact assessments for cellphone masts under 15 metres high.
“It means they could bang them up wherever they want and I’m told it’s because (environmental minister) Marthinus van Schalkwyk is tired of objections holding up the process,” Muller said.
Van Schalkwyk’s spokesman Riaan Aucamp said he did not know all the details but confirmed that there were new draft regulations.
Muller, a former physics lecturer, said his Johannesburg-based group had major worries about the apparent lack of concern by the government for the potential health implications of cellphone masts, which number in the thousands and are to increase.
“We have documented cases of clusters of diseases around these masts and the low masts actually pose the biggest health risks because they beam straight into people’s houses.”
He said one case involved a family in Westdene, Johannesburg, who had turned blue while living 50m from a mast.
“We went to measure the radiation and found strange hot spots. Only when the family moved did their colour start coming back.”
Muller said there were thousands of international studies linking mobile communications technology to a range of serious diseases such as cancer, heart rhythm disorders, brain tumours, chronic fatigue, suppressed immunity and even brain damage.
In a document called the Freiburger Appeal, a group of European physicians highlighted the increase of these diseases and disorders they claimed were often misdiagnosed as psychosomatic such as headaches, migraine, sleeplessness, tinnitus and susceptibility to infection.
They write: “We can see a clear temporal and spatial correlation between the appearance of disease and exposure to pulsed high-frequency microwave radiation such as:
- Installation of a cellphone sending station in the near vicinity;
- Intensive cellphone use; and
- Installation of a digital cordless telephone at home or in the neighbourhood.Muller said it was also worrying that so many masts were put up on or near school grounds with the cell companies often paying schools to allow them to do so.”I’m not sure how much but I’ve heard schools get a couple of thousand rands a month which is nothing for the cell companies, who make millions of rands a month from the masts.”
But according to the World Health Organisation website, “current scientific evidence indicates that exposure to radio frequency fields, such as those emitted by mobile phones and their base stations, is unlikely to induce or promote cancers”.
The organisation says three recent epidemiological studies have found no convincing evidence of increase in risk of cancer or any other disease with use of cellphones.
With regard to the reported changes in brain activity, reaction times, and sleep patterns, the organisation says the effects are small and have no apparent health significance.
It acknowledges however, that there are “gaps in knowledge” that have been identified for further research to assess health risks better.
“It will take about three to four years for the required RF (radio frequency) research to be completed, evaluated and to publish the final results of any health risks,” it says.