TETRA :: Ecologist - October 2004
By Jay Griffiths
page 5
A death you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy
The TETRA handsets for the police are considered far more potentially dangerous than the masts because the handset is a brief but intense source of radiation close to your head. When the technology was first used in Lancashire, 177 police officers (out of 246 respondees to a questionnaire) reported symptoms including migraine, nausea, sleeplessness and lack of concentration. Norfolk Police have confirmed that six people including a chief inspector at North Walsham police station have become ill, with dizziness and headaches, since a mast on top of the station went live in late February/early March this year. Twenty five people living near the mast have reported similar illness.(10)
The late Professor Ross Adey, at the University of California, who studied the effects of pulsed low frequency and microwave radiation on people for several decades, and whose work was funded by NASA and the American military, has commented: I would be very concerned about a four-watt TETRA hand-held radio against my head day after day.
(11) While researching this article, I heard of officers "terrified" (their word) of using TETRA but also pressured not to speak openly about it.
One brave Lancashire police officer wrote to the Police Federation Magazine in March 2002 saying I personally know of new cases of skin problems, sleeplessness, migraines, depression, difficulty in concentrating and headaches
. He has been moved to another section. One police source said to me that the system was a done deal the first day we heard of it.
They felt they had no choice in the matter. It was something we couldn't stop.
Speaking only in confidence, a senior police source told me I've got to be guarded. There's an awful lot of political pressure regarding this issue.
He was not allowed to speak to other officers about the risks of TETRA, and felt that his career was on the line if he objected publicly. He spoke of his feelings of being kept ignorant and isolated. He asked for information and he asked for help any help; legal help or campaign help. I was moved: it isn't often that someone so powerful sounds so helpless.
I spoke to Steve Pierce, Chair of Devon and Cornwall Police Federation. We need 21st century technology,
he said. And in that sense we welcome TETRA. But if you ask me am I easy about TETRA, the answer is no. How can I be?
In October 2002, at a Police Federation meeting on TETRA, Pierce spoke to Dr. Mirielle Levy, the Home Office Health and Safety Officer in charge of TETRA. Levy remarked that, Nothing will stop TETRA and if the Officers don't like it, they can resign...
Heads swivelled. Conversations stopped, said Pierce. An officer asked her who would be responsible if he contracted leukaemia. No one is,
she replied.
Tell that to Dr. Ian Dring. His brother Neil, a police officer from the Leicester constabulary, died in agony of oesophageal cancer this summer. Neil, he said, was convinced that it was TETRA which caused his death. If people want to know how it feels to have your brother die in your arms, fighting for 48 hours for every breath, then I'll tell them. It was a death you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
Dr. Dring, himself a scientist, has spent much of his working life in Health and Safety and monitored his brother's condition. As soon as he started using TETRA, he got severe headaches. And the site of the tumour was where he mounted the handset.
Neil had none of the preconditions for oesophageal cancer; he was only 38, younger than the age group associated with it, he was a non-smoking, light-drinking triathlete with no stomach problems and whose diet was good. To us,
said Dr. Dring, that's suspicious. And then another officer of similar age and equally healthy has been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in the Leicester force and in the same place.
Dring quotes the U.S. Cancer Society as saying that for a man under forty without preconditions, the incidence rate would be one in 100,000 and, they added, the chances of two people getting that kind of cancer simultaneously would be millions to one.
Stan Sexton, health and safety adviser for Leicestershire police has said that the second officer rarely used TETRA for radio calls. Dr. Grahame Blackwell, who formerly led a team researching and developing third generation mobile communications, says that's not the issue. Even infrequent use could initiate cell disorders that are then accelerated by radiation
(from masts, often sited at police stations) which inhibits the body's own immune response.
In other words: radiation from handsets could trigger problems which are then worsened by constant exposure to radiation from masts. I spoke to Professor Challis about these two officers. Sadly people die of cancer every day,
he said, and dismissed the case of two identical and rare cancers as chance.
