Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

Masts, health & government misbehaviour

LE UALTAR Ó GRÉACHÁIN

Despite over 100 studies showing harm from RF/MW exposure to people and animals, the 26-County government still says masts and phones are safe

The 26-County government is about to pass a repressive law worthy of any Third World junta. In one foul swoop, they intend to do away with human rights, democracy and the last remnants of moral behaviour. This government is intent on handing the landscape and the health of the nation over to large, powerful multinational corporations to do with us what they want - with no opposition.

A law is going before Environment minister Noel Dempsey that would allow the mobile phone companies to put up microwave masts anywhere they want, without any planning regulations at all! When one appears in your back yard, there won't be any point in calling your local council because they won't be able to do anything. No more citizens' groups... no more local input into where they get sited... no more protests and no more council interference.

Sligo County Council had passed a motion requiring a 400-metre safety zone around all masts where no one cold live or work. Other councils were following their example. This was in response to health fears of the local people, who see other countries instituting safety zones such as 500 metres in Australia and New Zealand and a 2,000 metres in Russia. At a time when other countries are putting exclusion zones around masts as well requiring lower wattage outputs than our masts by 1,000 times, there must be a very good reason why, without even one scientific study proving this equipment safe, the government intend to do away with your health concerns by introducing this repressive law.

Government agencies like to say there is no 'conclusive' evidence of harm from masts or phones. However, there are a number of studies that any logical thinking person would accept as very strong proof of harm. The Moscow US embassy study is the most obvious example. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Russians fired microwaves from three antennae in a half-mile circle around the US embassy in Moscow, with the intention of causing cancer and ill health to the staff (just as their research showed it could). They were remarkably successful, as three ambassadors in a row died of tumours and a large number of the staff fell ill with cancer, headaches, sleeplessness and other complaints identical to those reported by people living close to present-day masts. Also, the children of the embassy staff had very high leukaemia rates. After getting the antennae taken down, the CIA started "Operation Pandora" to follow the health records of all the survivors and their children and grandchildren, who weren't even born at the time. Why would they check the health records of grandchildren not even born unless they believed genetic damage was possible?

We don't have to go as far as Russia to see that microwaves might cause cancer. In the Six Counties in 1997 it was reported that nine undercover RUC officers had gotten colon cancer from wearing microwave transmitters at the base of their spines next to their colons - eight died by 1998! This is consistent with highway petrolmen in the US firing microwave radar guns at cars, then putting the gun between their legs (in the ON position) while waiting for the next car. Six officers came down with testicular cancer!

Lastly, I would quote from physicist Dr. Neil Cherry's report compiled for the new Zealand government in 1997. He states in his conclusion under cancer studies:

"Long term animal studies have shown increases in benign and malignant tumours (carcinomas) at a multitude of sites, consistent which the whole body coverage of EM radiation; with skin cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, cancer of the white cells, lymphatic tumours and myeloid leukaemia, atrophy of the testes, lower birth weight, still birth, resorption, hemorrhage and stunted growth, and altered brain activity (EEG), reaction times and learning retention.

"These are consistent with the Korean War Study, the Polish Military Study, the Moscow Embassy Study, the North Sydney Study, the US Airforce Brain Cancer study, and a host of other studies liking RF/MW exposure to cancer of many kinds."

Despite over 100 studies showing harm from RF/MW exposure to people and animals, the 26-County government still says masts and phones are safe. They quote guidelines set by the National Radiological Protection Board - anything that comes under these guidelines they say is safe. What they don't tell you is that the NRPB get half their funding from the government and the other half from industry (hardly independent).

They also don't tell you that the safety guidelines are based on cooking a piece of meat. They cooked meat and at the point it started to sizzle, they backed off by a factor of ten times and declared this a safe level. The only thing these guidelines protect against is cooking. It doesn't take into account such non-thermal effects as brain tumours and leukaemia. No one can really say if there is a safe limit since pulsed microwaves never existed before and there hasn't been one individual who has lived out a 70-year life span to see what the long-term effects will be.

Noel Dempsey and his party intend to bypass democracy just as they did with incinerators in Galway. When they don't get what they want using democracy, it's time to show you that you really do live in a Banana Republic and force this untested technology on an unwilling population.

It is time for every republican to do their best to defeat the government's attempt to do away with these unjust planning laws before it's too late.