Risk from mobile masts was hidden (Extracts)

by Sarah Ryle (Observer, 14 May 2000)

VITAL EVIDENCE of harmful effects on children from transmitter masts was kept from the expert group which last week reported on mobile phone safety. (That’s the Stewart Committee)

The independent panel asked the government agency acting as its secretariat, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB), for copies of a study on schoolchildren living near a radio mast in Latvia. They were told that the research was unpublished and unobtainable, which they recorded in their final report.

But The Observer has learnt that the research, published in an international scientific journal in 1996, was peer reviewed by other scientists and has been easily obtained by ordinary members of the public who gave evidence during the expert group's investigation.

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The research, which studied nearly 1,000 children aged 9 to 18, found that 'memory and attention were significantly impaired in all children living in front of the Skrunda station'.

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Two of the expert group broke ranks this weekend to condemn the NRPB's failure to advise Ministers or the public properly. The panel glossed over its views on the agency last week. But the two lay panel members, John Fellows, outgoing president of Edinburgh University Students' Union, and Marie-Noelle Barton, national manager of Women into Science and Engineering Campaign, brought in to represent ordinary people, say NRPB heads were sly and insensitive. 'It became quite clear that if the NRPB had been doing its job properly there would have been no need for our committee,' said Fellows.