Parents may not put their kids before the mast

A new row over telecommunications masts, in Easky, Co Sligo, may seem like a rerun of similar controversies in recent months

A new row over telecommunications masts, in Easky, Co Sligo, may seem like a rerun of similar controversies in recent months. But it highlights growing mistrust about their safety which no amount of official reassurance seems able to dispel.

Parents in the west Sligo village have threatened to withdraw their children from the national school if a nearby Garda telecommunications mast is replaced with a new one, including Esat Digifone antennae.

The Garda mast overlooks the school, and the parents are worried about the impact of microwave radiation on their children, particularly as it is so near.

Esat says there is "absolutely and categorically" no question of any health risk from the equipment, which it says complies with guidelines set by the International Radiation Protection Association in 1988 and reaffirmed last year.

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"The Digifone network has been studied and tested at Forbairt's National Electronic Test Centre and it not only conforms but falls thousands of times below these internationally accepted guidelines," the company says.

The new mast will eliminate a "notorious mobile phone blackspot" in west Sligo, says Esat. It is being erected under the terms of the agreement the company reached with the Garda authorities earlier this year and does not require planning permission.

Company representatives who spoke at a public meeting in the village last week did not allay parents' concerns. According to a parents' spokeswoman, Ms Loreli Forrester, they confirmed that the company had not considered alternative locations for the mast in the area.

She says the existing location is unsuitable as it is in a hollow, and the company should move it away from the school to higher ground.

The parents' argument is straightforward. Not enough is known about the possible risks from low-level non-ionising radiation, such as that emitted by antennae serving mobile-phone users. The company should therefore adopt the "precautionary principle" and decide not to site its equipment near schools.

They point to a recent Bord Pleanala decision to refuse planning permission for a mobile phone mast in Dublin and to a welter of conflicting research to strengthen their assertion that the issue is not as clear as Esat says it is.

In late August, Bord Pleanala refused permission for the erection of Eircell antennae at the telephone exchange on Griffith Avenue. In reaching its decision, the board considered a number of issues, including the proximity of the proposed development to a house and school.

Research published at a recent conference on mobile phone safety in Brussels has increased the parents' fears. It tested the effect of radiation from mobile phones on mice and found evidence of damage to DNA in their brain cells.

The findings prompted a spokesman for the National Radiological Protection Board in Britain to say the board was now "less certain" of the effects of such radiation.

The research was published by Dr Henry Lai, a specialist in microwave radiation at Washington University.

A review of some of the many Web sites which deal with electromagnetic radiation reveals conflicting opinions about it. There does not appear to be a scientific consensus on the issue.

The Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Dr John Moulder, said the research in question had not been independently replicated.

He questioned its relevance to "real-world human exposure" as the radiation levels used were many times higher than one would normally be exposed to from a mobile phone.

According to the US agency which regulates such equipment, the Food and Drug Administration, it is not decided whether mobile phones pose any significant health threat.

In an advisory committee meeting in the spring, the FDA said it will be at least five years before research funded by the World Health Organisation shows definitive results.

In the meantime, the debate will continue in Easky and elsewhere.