Health fears at school with four phone masts

03 March 2005

FOUR teachers at a school with mobile phone masts on the roof have contracted cancer over the last few years, according to a staff member who fears the technology may not be safe.

Teacher at Coopers Technology College in Chislehurst, Virginia Campbell, spoke out last week as a fifth mobile mast is due to be installed on the roof of the school.

The mother-of-two, of Westhurst Drive, Chislehurst, has just had a tumour removed from her spine and claims around four of her colleagues have been diagnosed with cancer over the past two or three years.

She said: "This is starting to get a high statistic. But there is nothing you can complain about as long as it [the mast] doesn't look unsightly.

"Once they are there you can't do anything about it. It's something that is a growing concern. In the future we will pay for it."

Mrs Campbell claims many parents and teachers are unaware the masts are there and has written to the board of governors demanding they are informed.

"The governors should make it their duty to make parents aware they are there.

"Then they have the choice if they want their children to sit under those rays."

A teacher at the school for five years, both her children are among the 2,000 pupils enrolled at the school. They are due to leave in the summer.

"The whole argument with young people is that their skulls are thinner and their bones are still growing so who knows what kind of damage that is doing to them?

"In America they are not allowed to install them within 200 metres of where anyone lives or works. Here we have not got the space and they are on schools and hospitals.

"I would like to see them taken off but the school is making money from them and schools have to make money like everybody else.

"My main argument is that people should be aware that they are there."

However, member of the Board of Governors John Norris said emission levels at the school are well below those recommended in the 2001 Stewart report - in the worst case about 300 times below.

He added: "We looked at the available evidence at the time and there was no evidence to suggest the waves emitted by the aerials were harmful.

"The beams of greatest intensity all fall outside the school apart from one which falls in the corner of the field which is a wooded area where nobody goes.

"There is more risk from using a mobile phone close to the head that there will ever be from beams that hit the ground.

"I have four children who have been at the school and I wouldn't take risks."

Mr Norris stated that parents had been informed about the masts when they originally went up through a school bulletin and there had been a public meeting with people living nearby.

He continued: "We don't see it as an issue.

"We don't publicise it because we don't see it as a risk. There is much more risk from children using mobile phones."

He did not have information on the number of teachers who have been diagnosed with cancer.

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