News | Sunday, 22 March 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Mobile antennae – one for every 194 inhabitants

James Debono
Malta has a high concentration of mobile phone antennae that eclipses countries such as the UK, the latter having one antenna for every 1,297 inhabitants while Malta has one for every 194.
With a population of 61 million, the UK has 47,000 mobile masts. But Malta’s population of 410,000 already has 2,114 antennae.
The proliferation of mobile phone antennae comes in the wake of a complete relaxation of planning rules for their installation.
In most cases they neither require a full planning permit or a development notification order (DNO), the fast-track procedure normally applied for minor alterations.
Back in April 2007, a legal notice allowed their installation without any planning notification, as long as this is not located in a scheduled zone.
Since 2004, MEPA has only issued 49 DNOs and 104 full development permits for antennae, and rejected just five DNOs and two notifications.
Effectively this means that most of the antennae were installed without any planning considerations.
But their proliferation in heavily populated areas has taken residents and local councils by surprise.
Lija mayor Ian Castaldi Paris has filed a judicial protest against Melita plc and the Malta Communications Authority (MCA), calling for the removal of an antenna on the roof of a house in Preziosi Street.
The antenna, which faces neighbours’ bedrooms, is so close that a resident “can nearly touch the antenna from his own bedroom window,” Castaldi Paris claims.

Safi mayor Peter Paul Busuttil has stated he can’t do anything about three mobile phone antennae that have been installed on rooftops in the locality’s quaint village square, “even if they are really ugly”.
Busuttil criticised the procedure used to approve the permits. “One can only make submissions before such permits are approved, but you only learn of such development after it is installed.”
Telecom companies manage to get such permits by finding just one person willing to install the antenna in return of the hefty annual payment. Some of the owners do not even live in houses where the antenna is installed.
For example the house in Preziosi street is rented to foreign students.
The Archdiocese of Malta has also entered into agreements with the three local mobile telephony providers to install 43 antennas on its property since 2000.
Although various medical studies suggest evidence of “cancer clusters” around base stations or antennas, the World Health Organisation so far dismisses such claims.
Still, radiation levels in Malta must conform to those set by International Commission for Non-Ionising Radiation Protection. According to this international regulator, radiation from mobile phone antennas only becomes harmful when it begins heating tissues. That happens, ICNIRP claims, when levels surpass 450 Mhz: anything below that level that is fine.
The MCA’s website contains readings of electromagnetic radiation taken from 411 antennae located in nearly every town and village. The results to date show that radiation levels in all base stations fall within the ICNIRP’s limits.
But there are a number of published reports suggesting other, non-thermal effects, resulting from low-level radiation transmitted from mobile phone base stations, which can cause damage to the DNA of living cells.
All over the world, an increasing number of patients are falling victim to electromagnetic radiation sickness, whose symptoms include sleep disturbances, dizziness, headaches and general ill-health. But some studies have suggested that the disease could also be psychosomatic, that is, physical symptoms induced by a psychological disorder.
Renowned German scientist Professor Franz Adlkofer recently called the mobile radiation and the political justifications for it an “uncontrolled and unplanned field experiment” on humans.
Adlkofer has coordinated a four-year, €3 million research project, funded by the European Union, to evaluate the risk of potential environmental hazards from low energy electromagnetic exposure. The study concludes that low frequency radiation below levels set by the INCIRP guidelines damage cells.

jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.