PAUL COOPER for TIME Janine Le Calvez leads a French group campaigning for a say in where phone masts are built

Posted Sunday, July 20, 2003; 16.11BS
The furor over masts is strange. Mobile-phone users tend to be exposed to much higher levels of radiation from their handsets than they are from masts, because they are so much closer to the source. But that hasn't stopped 320 million Europeans from buying mobile phones, or dissuaded activists from organizing to prevent the installation of transmitters. In March, opponents of the technology in Tiverton, Devon, used an industrial saw to shear off bolts securing a 14-m, 2.7-ton mast to the ground. Then they tied a rope to it and used a vehicle to pull it down.

Why all the fuss? In April, the French Environmental Health and Safety Agency (AFSSE) released a report declaring that no health risks can be linked to mobile phones or base stations. But a month earlier, the Scientific Committee on Electromagnetic Fields (CSIF-CEM) published a report stating that antennas could cause sleep disturbance and headaches and weaken the immune system. Though the AFSSE report cleared mobile technology of any health risks, the independent experts who compiled it called for more research into the effect of mobile-phone radiation on children and conceded that other effects had yet to be sufficiently explored. In other words, new evidence might make the experts change their minds.

We can't wait for a final safety verdict; we need to decide now whether the convenience of a mobile phone is worth the potential hazard. And we need ways to make the risk feel acceptable. That's what is driving the popularity of earpieces that let us move the handsets away from our heads. And Blakemore argues for giving people a say over other controllable risks — like the location of masts. Blakemore was a member of Britain's Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones, a review body set up by the government in 1999 to investigate health risks from the technology. During the preparation of the report, the committee held a series of meetings for the general public. To Blakemore's surprise, practically nobody complained about mobile phones — they all complained about masts. Why? Because the benefits of mobile phones are much clearer than the benefits of masts.

"Virtually everyone capable of lifting a mobile phone to their head has got one," Blakemore says, "so presumably they must be making some kind of analysis of the cost and the benefit — and they're willing to take whatever risk they perceive. Yet when they see a mast at the end of their garden, they see no immediate benefit. The crucial differences are psychological, not physical." Marie disagrees. "My kids aren't aware of any media coverage or other kinds of reports," she says. "All they know is that they started having headaches and sleeping problems."

I'm not fighting against the masts; I'm fighting against the impunity that allows them to be placed anywhere — JANINE LE CALVEZ, head of French grassroots group PRIARTEM

Janine Le Calvez, the president of the French grassroots group PRIARTEM (For the Regulation of Mobile Telephone Base Station Implementations), objects to having no say in where the masts are placed. "These systems were installed without the least bit of study of their impact on health or the environment," says Le Calvez, 53, who uses her mobile phone sparingly. "I'm not fighting against the masts; I'm fighting against the impunity that allows them to be placed anywhere, at any power output level." PRIARTEM claims that there are many more people out there like Marie's kids, otherwise healthy folks who live around the antennas and complain of insomnia, headaches and fatigue. The AFSSE report does not dismiss these claims, but attributes them to the anxiety produced by the masts rather than the radiation they emit. That doesn't help Marie's kids sleep at night.

The Home Front
Elizabeth Salter-Green's two-story brick home in west London seems normal enough. A pair of comfortable sofas face the living room fireplace, bright yellow chairs surround the dining table, and a homey kitchen opens onto a patio garden. But the place is unusual in at least one respect: there are no super-strength cleaners in the house, no flame-retardant textiles or upholstery, no dry-cleaned clothing, no fragranced bath products, and baby Florence usually plays only with wooden toys. That's because nearly three years ago, when she was contemplating having a child, Salter-Green — the 39-year-old director of the WWF's U.K. toxics program — decided to detoxify her life.

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