Tormented by Tetra.....

The Pork Bolter
No 60, April 2004


 http://www.eco-action.org/porkbolter/apr04.html

LIFE has become a nightmare for dozens of Worthing families, thanks to a sinister new police communications mast put up at Worthing Football Club’s ground in Woodside Road. The Tetra (Terrestial Trunked Radio) system uses low frequency radiation, of the kind developed during the Cold War as a crowd-control type weapon! Headaches, sleep deprivation and various illnesses have affected people living in the area ever since the Tetra mast started transmitting at the end of February. Said one resident, Andy Davidson: "I have not slept since the Worthing mast was switched on. I can sleep for 2 hours but wake up as if it is the start of the day. I never get any value sleep from the REM phase. I am so very, very tired." But despite a series of high-profile meetings, protests and media reports, there is no sign that anything is actually going to be done to halt this microwave menace.
Worthing is not an isolated instance. A wave of grassroots protest at the controversial Tetra system has been sweeping across the South of England over the last few months. Local groups have been springing up all over the place, with pressure mounting on councils to deny the masts planning permission. In some instances, O2 Airwave has been found to have put up masts without permission, or by exploiting legal loopholes, in its rush to pick up the £3 billion it’s getting from the government contract. In Rogate, West Sussex, residents staged a vigil to stop a Tetra mast being turned on.

And here in Worthing residents have demonstrated outside the Town Hall and picketed the town centre shop run by 02 - formerly BT Cellnet - calling on the public to boycott its products. Said a campaigner: "There is real concern and anger, particularly among the people unfortunate enough to live right next to the Tetra mast, which is in the middle of a high-density residential area. "They know the mast has been switched on and is beaming something into their homes, because their TV reception went the day the mast was turned on and things like baby monitors aren’t working any more. And people are wondering what those signals are doing to their bodies. At a meeting on March 4 several residents revealed they had been having identical health problems -
sleep disturbances, headaches, itchiness and children suffering nosebleeds." Researchers from the Protect Sussex From Tetra campaign have pointed out the Tetra signal operates using a signal component at 17.6Hz, very close to ‘beta’ brainwaves at around 16Hz. The beta waves are those used by the brain during its waking phase, thus probably explaining the sleep disturbance.

Needless to say, O2 Airwave is taking the usual responsible corporate line of denying anything is wrong with its system at all. It claims people are imagining their illnesses and tells people complaining of TV interference that they should buy more up-to-date sets - even though some of those affected have brand-new equipment. Meanwhile, official bodies like OFCOM and local police authorities are also unsympathetic - but then that’s hardly surprising when it was the government that engineered the whole deal, cashing in by selling the current police frequencies to the mobile phone industry. Once again,
big profits for big players come before little people and their insignificant little lives.

www.tetrawatch.net

www.worthingnotetra.org.uk
www.protectsussexfromtetra.org.uk
www.no2tetra.org
www.mastsanity.org.uk
www.powerwatch.co.uk