Phone masts

ICBM

If you think about it the phone in your pocket is actually more dangerous - the transmitter is millimetres from your skin. I actually found an effect from that - I suffer from eczema, and I noticed I was always getting a patch on my leg right under the pocket I keep my phone in… so I swapped it to the opposite pocket, and after a few days the first patch went away and a new one appeared on the other leg :-O. Since then I've been careful to regularly change pockets and never leave it in my pocket in the house if I can put it down a couple of feet away.

I do sometimes wonder if in ten or twenty years there will be an increased incidence of cancer which proves to be connected to them. The problem is that if so, it won't show up until far too late when 90+% of the population has auto-exposed themselves to the cause...

PolarityMan

Hate to worry you but Im pretty sure Sir Axeman has one in his back garden.

Emp_Fab

I wish I had one in my back garden.  I've got to go out into the garden and stand on tiptoe to be able to make a call.  The slightest bit of rain and I get zero signal.

thomasross20

@ICBM I remember you say that about switching the phone in your pocket. Scary. I'm always on mine..

exocet

Surely we are back to the question of whether the mobile phone itself is dangerous when it is placed close to your head whilst making a call. The strength if the radiation at that distance is far greater than that received from a mast due to inverse square law? 

ICBM

exocet said:

Surely we are back to the question of whether the mobile phone itself is dangerous when it is placed close to your head whilst making a call. The strength if the radiation at that distance is far greater than that received from a mast due to inverse square law? 

Yes.

As I understand it there is a tiny amount of evidence that really constant use might be a risk, but it's still at the anecdotal/few cases level.

57Deluxe

chances are you'll get rubbish wifi and no mobi signal...

martinw

Everything in life carries a risk; going out in the sun, breathing the air, eating food, touching anything, living in a house in a radon affected area, driving a car, owning a mobile phone, using a PC etc.

You have 2 choices: listen to the science, or listen to the likes of siraxeman.

People have lived and worked in the vicinity of RF transmissions of all kinds for decades, often much stronger than the relatively weak signal from a mobile mast. Other than getting burned by RF (when you're a couple of inches from a powerful transmitter, a la microwave oven, industrial RF supply in the kW range etc) I don't think there's any evidence of harm.

thomasross20

So in conclusion, we'll probably be ok, but it's not proven, we'll probably get a rubbish phone signal, and it'll probably lower the value of the house. Great.

Nitefly

thomasross20 said:

So in conclusion, we'll probably be ok, but it's not proven, we'll probably get a rubbish phone signal, and it'll probably lower the value of the house. Great.

So get them to knock £10k off the price you're paying!

thomasross20

I don't know if that'd work? I think the price is what it is for the whole site and reflects this

TheBlueWolf

If phone masts were/are a health risk there'd be a lot more than anecdotal evidence by now so I wouldn't stress about it

menamestom

TheBlueWolf said:

If phone masts were/are a health risk there'd be a lot more than anecdotal evidence by now so I wouldn't stress about it

I've heard if masts giving people headaches and radio frequency sensitivity sicknesses. When you explain that it's not been switched on and has been awaiting power for 3 months they tend to find something else to complain about, but the serious side of that is people do stress about it and can even make themselves feel unwell for no particular reason other than worry.  

thomasross20

There's some real extreme websites out there about electrical hypersensitivity - remember Saul's brother in "Never Call Saul".... ?

menamestom

thomasross20 said:

There's some real extreme websites out there about electrical hypersensitivity - remember Saul's brother in "Never Call Saul".... ?

Yeah I was going to mention that, he plays a great part.  It's like anything nowadays, if somebody can worry about something, there will be a website to help them worry.  If people were that sensitive they'd probably be able to detect solar storms with their teeth.  

PolarityMan

thomasross20 said:

So in conclusion, we'll probably be ok, but it's not proven, we'll probably get a rubbish phone signal, and it'll probably lower the value of the house. Great.

You just need to watch out for symptoms like: 
1.) Low level latent creationism
2.) Starting to wonder if evolution is really really real
3.) Denying climate change
etc.

thomasross20

Fyi @ICBM we were at a Barrat showroom in duddingston today and right at the corner about 5 metres away from a nice house, was a gigantic pylon.... It did look very oppressive. Who builds a house under a pylon!?

Sambostar

If you have enough Amalgam fillings you'll most probably hear that Nigerian fellow from the Inland Revenue as well.

ICBM

thomasross20 said:

@ICBM we were at a Barrat showroom in duddingston today and right at the corner about 5 metres away from a nice house, was a gigantic pylon.... It did look very oppressive. Who builds a house under a pylon!?

The one I was looking at, the house was there first… must be a bummer if you were living there when the pylon went up.

richardhomer

ICBM said:

thomasross20 said:

@ICBM we were at a Barrat showroom in duddingston today and right at the corner about 5 metres away from a nice house, was a gigantic pylon.... It did look very oppressive. Who builds a house under a pylon!?

The one I was looking at, the house was there first… must be a bummer if you were living there when the pylon went up.

I do some consultancy work for a company which obtains compensation for people who have electrical apparatus on (or over) their land. There are lots of brand new properties built close to such apparatus - as much as anything because the land is available.

Clearly planners are required to consider environmental issues when assessing planning applications.