Less Radiation

I’m willing to wager that I’ve been using mobiles longer than you.

I started out with an analogue Mobira Cityman brickphone back in the early 90s. Mobile phones were pretty rare back then, maybe 1 or 2% of the population owned one. Anyone who cared could listen to my conversations on a regular radio scanner.

I also had a cordless phone at home, but you couldn’t listen into that one on a scanner because it was a Rabbit Digital Cordless unit. Do you remember them? The Rabbit was an attempt by Hutchison Telecom to launch a one way Mobile phone service. You could make calls while out in town, if you could find a phonepoint. But, they couldn’t receive calls! Ha,Ha. Seems funny now doesn’t it…

Eventually Hutchison gave up on the Rabbit idea and flogged off all these very expensive handsets cheaply, as cordless home phones. Being a gadget nut I couldn’t resist buying one. So, while everyone else could be eavesdropped on, my cordless home phone remained private. The Rabbit technology was the forerunner to the DECT mobile system. I burned through three sets of rechargeable batteries on my Rabbit before DECT came along.

Philips launched the first domestic DECT setup in the UK. I bought a three handset system, for my home office, in around 1995. As soon as they launched. I would spend maybe a couple of hours each day talking to customers on the DECT phones. You could transfer calls easily between the handsets. It was just great.

About this time I changed my Mobira brickphone for a Nokia 101 mobile and later the super small Ericsson EH237 (I think). Progressively smaller analogue mobiles. Eventually I must have switched to a digital GSM mobile, probably around 1997. This was an even smaller Ericsson, with a flip down talk panel. Fab.

About a year into this heavy DECT use, along with my new GSM phone, I get a lump growing on my neck. The funny thing is I can still remember the minute my neck started itching… I was in Kendals department store on Deansgate in Manchester… I took a call on my GSM and felt a funny sensation in my neck, like someone stabbed me with a pin, on the same side as the phone. Seven days later a lump starts to develop on my neck, the doctor says it’s a cyst caused by an in-growing hair. He says ‘ It can’t be your mobile because they don’t heat the skin’ , well 10 years on we now know that’s not the whole story. The lump gets up to the size of an egg, and as my sex life’s suffering I decide to get the non-malignant lump removed, privately. It takes two goes to get it all out. No-one likes an alien growing inside them! I put the bulk of the lump in an enemies beefburger at a BBQ.

Anyway, I use Mobiles & DECT for a little longer and eventually it feels like i’ve got a belt tied around my head, or a hat on (which I haven’t), when I use a mobile – DECT or GSM. This can’t be right and so eventually I decide to go back to using good old wired phones & answering machines. Within a month I start to feel much more like my old self – maybe it’s psychosomatic, less phone, less stress . This is the thing about this debate , it’s so easy to obfuscate facts and use smoke & mirrors to make you unsure yourself.

So, I don’t use a Mobile or DECT for another 10 years. On the odd occasion that I can’t get out of talking to a third-party on someone else’s phone, I will feel a little punch-drunk afterwards, but it passes within a few hours. This is what it feels like to be electrosensitive.

In the ten intervening years I pay close attention to the siting of mobile phone masts. I’m not generating stray RF in my own home, and I really don’t want it beamed in from outside, thanks…

In the past twelve months I’ve bought one of the Electrosmog detectors and shielded the areas my family sleep in from the various masts that live 500m from our home. That’s GSM, Tetra & most recently 3G! In the words of the Stewart Report , I’m adopting the ‘Precautionary Principle’.

I know from personal experience that it can take a long time for symptoms of electrosensitivity to present themselves. Ten years from regular use. Looking back to my youth, I remember buying a CB radio when they came out. That’s loads more RF soaked into my body. It’s impossible to say how much is bad – but when it begins to grate , you’ll know!

My personal feeling is that pulsed RF interferes with the bodies own internal signaling system – a bit like a flood of Ping requests on a PC network. Things still work, but not nearly as well.

Many eminent scientists have stated that we are currently engaged in a huge experiment into Pulsed RF & humans. No-one knows the outcome, and a precautionary approach is advisable. Especially for the people you love…