T-Mobile Accused of Burying Mobile Masts Health Report

T-Mobile has been accused of burying an unfavourable report into any health impacts from mobile phone masts. In 2000, the German Ecolog Institute was commissioned by T-Mobile to study all the available published reports into mobile phone masts and health issues, but when the report was apparently not to the company's liking - they commissioned more reports which came to different conclusions.

T-Mobile however says that it always planned to commission multiple studies into the issue. T-Mobile told the newspaper that "It was the aim of T-Mobile to engage four different institutes with the same questions to guarantee an independent and objective discussion. All the institutes and people involved are well known and respected experts."

Dr Peter Neitzke, one of the authors of the report, told The Sunday Times newspaper that T-Mobile had diluted the findings by commissioning other studies from which it knew "no critical results or recommendations were to be expected".

The Ecolog study has only recently been published in Germany, and was picked up by the Human Ecological Social Economic project (HESE), which examines the effect of electromagnetic fields on health. The HESE says that the review of over 220 peer-reviewed and published papers found strong indications for the cancer-initiating and cancer-promoting effects of high frequency electromagnetic fields used by mobile telephone technology.

The Ecolog report called for an immediate downward regulation of the power flux density that should be allowed by the guidelines, by a factor of 1,000.

A copy of the Ecolog report is being hosted by the HESE website (pdf file - 86 pages)."

Posted to the site on 23rd April 2007