TETRA :: Ecologist - October 2004
By Jay Griffiths
page 2
TETRA is a new digital communication system for a national police radio network which is meant to provide secure and fast radio communications. 02 call their system "Airwave" Airwave is better than the old system for voice traffic - at least we don't get interference from Dutch cabbies anymore,
says a police source. At present police forces run their own analogue radio system and there can be a problem "interoperating" with neighbouring forces. The police cannot continue to use their old radio frequencies because the government has sold them off.
The feature considered potentially risky is that the modulated part of the signal comes in bursts with a frequency of 17.6Hz, close to the 16Hz at which the brain "loses" calcium, (calcium efflux) and the frequency is also within the frequencies used by the brain's beta waves. The first warning over this came in the influential independent "Stewart Report" on mobile phones in 2000 which stated that frequencies around 16Hz should be avoided, if possible.
Because of that caution, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) was commissioned to write a report on TETRA's possible health effects in 2001. (The AGNIR Report). Although their conclusion appeared to say All's Well
, there were worrying details in the body of the report. So the Police Federation commissioned independent research scientist Barrie Trower to write a report on the possible risks of TETRA, completed in September 2001.
The Trower report was dynamite.
Dr. Gerard Hyland, expert in low level radiation and biophysicist from the International Institute of Biophysics, and a prominent TETRA critic, states: With the TETRA roll-out, we could be seeing a pandemic of brain tumours in ten years.
Low frequency radiation, says Hyland, affects brain function and the blood/brain barrier and degrades the immune system. Children are known to absorb far more radiation than adults. Dr Hyland reported in The Lancet that Radiation is known to affect the brain rhythms and children are particularly vulnerable... The main effects are neurological, causing headaches, memory loss and sleeping disorders.
