Phone masts: historical question

[Mojo]

I've just had a circular from the local branch of the party of my local MP, who is apparently campaigning against phone masts. Slap bang in the middle of the constituency is a bloody great TV transmitter which has been broadcasting to a large area since the 1930s.

This made me wonder: when radio and TV transmitter began being set up, were there the same sort of dire warnings about adverse effects that we are currently getting about phone masts?

 

[geni]

I've just had a circular from the local branch of the party of my local MP, who is apparently campaigning against phone masts. Slap bang in the middle of the constituency is a bloody great TV transmitter which has been broadcasting to a large area since the 1930s.

This made me wonder: when radio and TV transmitter began being set up, were there the same sort of dire warnings about adverse effects that we are currently getting about phone masts?

They still do:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4531247.stm

 

[Vitnir]

I was under the impression that the vatican masts were of a different strength thus producing magnetic field on a much stronger scale than a phone mast ever could. I reckoned that the vatican mast were designed to be able to broadcast around the globe while phone and TV masts have a range of kilometers.

 

[Deetee]

Some residents complained the transmissions were so strong they could hear radio broadcasts through their domestic lamps.

Intriguing. I wonder if this increased the reports of paranormal phenomena. Spooky voices spouting religious nonsense - call for an exorcist!

The judge said the level of damages payable by the defendants would be set by a civil arbitration body. It could run into many millions of euros.

How do they determine who requires compensation? How do you know whether someones cancer might have been caused by the EM emissions rather than say pollutants/toxins/diet/other factors? - after all there are hundreds of things that could contribute to cancer.

Does anyone have a link to the "two scientific studies" which have suggested this?

 

[Mojo]

Some residents complained the transmissions were so strong they could hear radio broadcasts through their domestic lamps.

I can just hear the slogan: "Vatican Radio: heard on more radios than any other appliances..."

 

[Hamradioguy]

I've just had a circular from the local branch of the party of my local MP, who is apparently campaigning against phone masts. Slap bang in the middle of the constituency is a bloody great TV transmitter which has been broadcasting to a large area since the 1930s.

This made me wonder: when radio and TV transmitter began being set up, were there the same sort of dire warnings about adverse effects that we are currently getting about phone masts?

Good question. My take is no, and I blame these current unfounded warnings on the atomic bomb and to a lesser extent microwave ovens.
Radio frequencies (RF) don't have the energy to cause ionization (which CAN cause adverse effects to the body), and for the first 50 years of human use of RF (radio and TV for example) the frequencies were too low to cause any noticable effects at all. (With the exception of diathermy which was used medically to warm parts of the body.) Plus radio and TV antennas were usually located at a distance from places of human habitation-fields, atop tall buildings or mountains.
When the atomic bomb came along people learned of the horrific effects of large doses of ionizing radiation. While RF doesn't ionize, many folks- then and now- didn't make that distinction (i.e "It's all radiation thus it must all be bad for people.") Then came microwave ovens. To the uninitiated, "microwaves cook food so microwaves could cook me too.") How often do we hear people refer to cooking something in a microwave oven as "I'll just nuke it"? Then too are those stories of various servicemen getting cataracts or becoming sterile when exposed to high power radars. While these effects are possible, actual documented cases where cause and effect has been proven are vanishingly small.
Now put it all together: Awareness of the effects of nuclear (ionizing) radiation, knowledge of microwaves used to cook food and microwaves used for cellular communications, lack of knowledge of the science behind RF (and nuclear) processes, and total lack of knowledge of concepts like the inverse square law (which shows how quickly energy falls off as distance from the source increases), and plans to put cell antennas atop churches or in someone's back yard, and you end up with irrational fears of cell towers, satellite dishes, and all kinds of modern medical procedures.
The Health Physics Society, of which I am am member, has published countless peer reviewed journal articles on these issues. For some really good questions and answers about RF, cell towers (and of couse nuclear radiation) go to their web site: http://www.hps.org and check out "Experts Answers" which provide some really good non-technical answers to questions from the general public.

 

[YoPopa]

windmills, historical question

And on a related note. I've always wondered if the neighbors of the first windmills in Holland raised a ruckus. It seems that ruckus raising is a cottage industry in most locals nowadays. How long has this been so?

ETA..Hamradioguy makes a good point about the atomic bomb & microwave ovens but I suspect that the Chicken Littles have been with us in some form or another since pointy sticks were high tech.

 

[Johnny Pixels]

You can find the location of mobile phone masts in the UK here

There's a couple within a few hundred metres of my house, but to be honest it doesn't bother me. There are also television aerials, radio aerials, satellite dishes, televisions. monitors, mobile phone handsets, my cordless house phone, my guitar amplifiers, speakers, my computer, my microwave, my household electricity supply, overhead power lines, telephone lines, cosmic radiation, the sun, the Earth and the Moon all either giving out or receiving electromagnetic radioation or creating magnetic fields.

Now what surprises me is that people aren't scared of smoke alarms, because they actually do have a source of ionising radiation in them.

 

[YoPopa]

Now what surprises me is that people aren't scared of smoke alarms, because they actually do have a source of ionising radiation in them.

You can let go of that assumption. My ex, way back around her Clamshell Alliance days, warned me about those. I convinced her that the danger was remote at best but she was sure that the poor oppressed people working in the smoke alarm factories were in imminent danger.

 

[Mongrel]

but she was sure that the poor oppressed people working in the smoke alarm factories were in imminent danger.

Or this kid

 

[tsg]

Does anyone have a link to the "two scientific studies" which have suggested this?

I remember reading one maybe a year or two ago. It showed correlation but not causation.

 

[Dcdrac]

I get tired of pointing out to people that they are being bombarded by cosmic radiation everyday which is of a higher level than anything a mobile phone mast can produce.

 

[ClusterBoy]

You can find the location of mobile phone masts in the UK here

Cheers for that, its great. I used to live in a Nor Flaanden constituency with a great big TV transmitter in it. Being right on top of the hill, and on the top floor of the block of flats there, I was fairly sure I had one about 7ft above my bed. The map confirms this (they didn't need masts cos it was so high up - good views though). I didn't see anybody complaining then, nor trying to protect me.

 

[Hamradioguy]

Now what surprises me is that people aren't scared of smoke alarms, because they actually do have a source of ionising radiation in them.

Actually, some folks ARE. From time to time someone hereabouts will refuse to have an ionizing smoke detector installed because of the radiation risk. Explaining that the risk is vanishingly small (or less), that the source is a sealed alpha only emitter, or even that the risk of death in a fire because you don't have such a smoke detector (photoelectric ones work, but are not as effective for many types of fire) is higher usually doesn't convince. Then I ask them if they sleep on the second floor (almost always "yes" in a two story house) and explain that there is a far greater risk from cosmic ray radiation on the second floor as opposed to the first floor.