Mobile Phone Towers causing brain tumors?

Building Top Floors Closed
After Brain Tumor Alert
By Lisa Macnamara
The Australian - UK
05-13-2006
 
The top floors of a Melbourne office building were closed down [May 12 2006] and 100 people evacuated after a seventh worker in as many years was diagnosed with a brain tumour.

But Telstra insisted the mobile phone towers on the roof of the 17-storey RMIT University building were not linked to the cancer cluster.

Five academics - who worked on the top floor - and two general staff have suffered brain tumours since 1999. Six of the seven staff had worked at the Bourke Street premises for more than a decade. Two of the cases were malignant.
"We have briefed the staff and suspect further cases will be brought to our attention," RMIT vice-president of resources Steve Somogyi said yesterday.

The academics' union has demanded that RMIT pay for medical examinations of all staff working in the building after learning of a number of suspected new cases late yesterday.

"We're starting to get anecdotal reports of one or two other people who have passed away who have worked in the building," said Matthew McGowan, Victorian branch president of the National Tertiary Education Union.
RMIT recently called in a Melbourne doctor to assess information from the staff diagnosed with the tumours but he found no obvious link with "any specific environmental hazard", a university statement said.

Telstra, which along with Optus reportedly has mobile phone equipment on top of the building, said yesterday it would co-operate with the university's investigation. "This equipment complies with strict health and safety standards, and is regularly tested to ensure ongoing compliance," the phone company said.
While staff were "anxious and concerned", the university was initially reluctant to close the top floors, Mr McGowan said. "They were reluctant at first because they didn't want to create a panic."

The university has started notifying students at the building, many of whom are from overseas.
However, serious concerns were not held for the students.

RMIT investigated radio frequency and air quality after the first two cases emerged in 1999 and 2001, but all the results were well below the recommended Australian standards, a university spokeswoman said.
"It was thoroughly tested," she said.

Yesterday's action was prompted after a third case was reported by the institution's occupational health and safety unit a month ago, when it emerged that other academics had also fallen ill.

"We're looking at everything around the area," the spokeswoman said.

But Mr McGowan said the university must be accountable for health and safety checks "across the board" after the initial testing in 2001 was not followed up.

"These cases have only coincidentally come to people's attention rather than through some systematic monitoring process," he said.

The results of the RMIT investigation are expected in two weeks.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20
867,19108088 -23289,00.html

Comment by PSRAST

Of course the connection is denied by the mobile company. Denial is a standard procedure of the industry. For example, it is well known that the cigarette industry denied that smoking caused cancer for decades after the connection had been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, and hired top scientists to support their position.

The statement of the mobile operator Telstra that the "This equipment complies with strict health and safety standards" means only that the radiation is not strong enough to heat the brain. But as said in other pages at this site, this standard is outdated, as it has been repeatedly proven by numerous studies that far lower irradiation doses can damage the cells.

It is unscientific and demonstrates a remarkable negligence of important and extensive scientific observations, to state that this remarkable concentration of brain tumors right under a mobile phone tower is just a coincidence. It would be scientific to state that, considering the repeatedly demonstrated connection with brain tumors, and considering that the irradiation is strong enough to damage the DNA in the people in the upper floors, it cannot be ruled out that the radiation may have caused the tumors.

The principle of precaution is designed for just this kind of situations. It states that when observations indicate that there may be a harmful effect, especially when experimental observations support it, the exposure to the suspicious harmful influence should be stopped until it has been well established that there is no causal connection. The burden of proof must lie on the industry and not on the victims.

PSRAST finds it irresponsible by the industry and the governments not to systematically apply this principle to mobile phone irradiation. It is an obvious case of irresponsible application of technology.