BALDOYLE MAST REMOVAL
Residents of Baldoyle in Dublin 13 are celebrating a victory against a Mobile Phone Giant Hutchison 3G (H3G) who must now remove 2 masts from the roof of their local football club.
The masts were installed in October 2004 and a local campaign against their installation was mounted. Finally the masts must be taken down after a long battle that included a 24 hour blockade & vigil outside the club house.
Campaign Group ‘BALDOYLE AGAINST RADIATION’ (BAR) lodged a planning reference to Fingal County Council (FCC) claiming the the building was private and not public and therefore should not have been given exempt status under the planning regulations. FCC ruled this week that the building is in fact a private building and the telecommunications installation is an unauthorised development.
BAR Chairperson Brian Greene said “This is a win win situation for the community of Baldoyle, the mast beside a school is to be removed & the primary school’s future is secured. We have always maintained that the 2001 regulations that allow public buildings to be used as mobile
phone masts was a disgraceful gift to mobile phone companies from the then Environment Minister Noel Dempsey.”
“Now that the masts are to be removed the community of Baldoyle must support its football club. Our fight with the phone company isn’t over. We are campaigning for the sensible sighting of masts in our area. H3G still require coverage in our area, and we are seeking consultation for communities prior to mandatory planning for all masts new & existing.” said Mr. Greene
Fingal County Planners must take responsibility for their previous decisions regarding this installation, if the club house is private how was it ever selected as an exempt building? Public buildings across Dublin have been chosen to site masts inside exclusion zones close to schools and homes, Government action is required to develop the precautionary approach to all installations of phone masts.
“Our campaign of people power resulted in this removal, communities must be vigilant, Planners and Government must listen to the wishes of local residents in regard to site selection for future phone masts.”
March 29th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
As a secondary school student, I am apalled at the ongoing campaign against the wrong parts of the mobile phone system. The mobile phones themselves are the big danger.
I came up with this example recently when explaining it to a fella I know. A lightbulb gives off more light than a torchbulb, yet you will feel more heat from the 2 watt torchbulb 2 inches from your hand than from the 60 watt lightbulb 2 metres away.
Another design feature making this problem worse is that mobile phones transmit more strongly when they are further away from the masts. GSM phones transmit up to 2 watts, a normality for me in the country. This is 20 times more than a DECT cordless phone I think, or the WiFi routers for broadband.
The main steps that should be taken is to have a widespread network of LOW-POWER mobile phone masts, and to start using wired hands-free kits for your mobile phone.
Please, please stop fooling yourselves. Having masts too far away may do more harm than good in the long term. 2 Watts is a huge amount of radiation right beside your brain. Try to talk to the mobile phone companies and ask them to transmit at a very low power.
I hope this makes some difference. My email address is at effaat36wehttam-at-gmail-dot-com if anyone wants to contact me.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:38 pm
you make some excellent points. but the fact remains that a mast is
should NOT be using mobiles (William Stewart [1])
1. higher power than a phone
2. more active than your phone
3. services many people
4. with data, it pumps while you sleep
5. children (under
if you use a phone a lot its, lets say 40mins a day, to sit in a classroom
35 hours a week in the greatest beam of intensity of a umts signal is crazy
the skeletal protection to a child of 6 is 50% that of an adult
thank you for your comment.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4163003.stm
April 18th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
1))Yes a mast is higher power than a phone. However, you are further away from a mast at all times that you are from your handset
2)It is more active because obviously it takes more calls
3) Services many people yes, but an average mast antenna takes 14 calls max at any one time. An urban located antenna will take 29 calls, at any one time, and an exceptionally busy antenna will take only58 calls max at any one time. There are slight variations in this, but as a general rule these figures are a good guidelin.
4) When there are no calls on a mast, it transmits only a small beacon signal so mobiles can detect it. So typically while you sleep, the mast is not transmitting. Not sure about your point on data.
Just on Taffe’s comment re low power masts. Masts actually transmit at very low power anyway 20w is not high power (relative to other rf transmitters etc).
Reducing power further will only require a larger number of masts to provide the same coverage.
Regards,
Eamon
Just wanted to give my opinion (you will obviously have guessed, I come from a gsm background)
April 18th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
thanks eamon.
on point 1. what if you live beside a mast and own no phone, you are always nearer a mast.
on point 3. you say ‘average mast antenna’ there are up to 6 of these on each mast installation so times all your figures by 6. this is a non sharing site, what if they actually complied with regs and shared! 14 is a hideous low number. 1000’s upon 1000’s of radio communications go through these towers ever hour. constant.
point 4 may apply to a non speaking sleeping population on GSM with no txt. but UMTS is data, so podcasts and video are syncing all night long, mr NTT DOCOMO said data is endless, the arse is falling out of the ARPU voice market, DATA is key to the future of mobile telco, all night masts are a fact and a living reality we must face and DEAL with, if it makes us ill, try find an all night chemist!
20w is low but is that 20w ERP or TPO ? is that a LF or microwave frequency, its 900 1800 1900 & 2300Mhz. microwave oscillates water molecules at 2450mhz to heat food in a kitchen appliance. the leakage of such equipment is nothing compared to the RF measured on the ground 70M from a mast. cal it the greatest beam of intensity GBOI, landing in houses and schools the lenght of ireland due to rash planning.
I favour masts, I need their planning to be sensible and the greed element removed, a plan of telco’s for all the citizens not the operators customers with a ABP weighted pro mast system which we have right now.