For current news stories search BBC News or BBC News 'phone masts' or see Guardian Reports

Australia 1997 onwards –– Councils adopt policy of 0.2 uW/cm2 exposure limit or 300 metres minimum distance to residences. Though not law most operators comply. EMRAA Mast News

Feb.2000 - European Commission  introduces the precautionary principle.

11^th August  2000
A planning application for antennae camouflaged as a flagpole on Norwich's Roman Catholic Cathedral by the phone company One 2 One. The proposal has triggered fears about the health effects. The church authorities want to fly a flag from it.

Nov 2000 / Feb 2001 - Flogging for mobile users.
A Saudi court has sentenced one man to receive twenty lashes and an officer seventy, for using mobile phones on domestic flights.

Dec. 2000 – Harrogate Borough Council ban new masts from council land near residential areas and call on other landowners to do the same.

December 8, 2000
The Department of Health announced a £7m research programme, funded jointly by government and industry, to look more closely at evidence of biological effects linked with low level microwave radiation.
They will advise parents to discourage the use of mobile phones by children under 16, who could be more at risk. Any calls by children should be short and for essential purposes only.

Jan. 2001 - Kent County Council voted to ban the building of mobile phone masts on their land.
Keith Ferrin of Kent County Council said "It is better to be safe than sorry” and though wanting discussions with the telecom operators “generally speaking concerned people asking local phone companies for meetings have had a refusal”. He also said that “they receive an income of £3,000 to £5000 per mast” and “there was a huge financial incentive to accept masts”.

23-2-01 GSM Congress worries
Following the loss of confidence in technology companies the annual GSM World Congress Cannes ended a week often spent considering how companies could survive the financial squeeze and start attracting customers to  pay off debts. If it takes between three and 10 years to move customers to 3^rd generation Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service networks in large numbers, the chances of recouping their investment in 20 year licences is limited.

4th March 2001
FADER holds Sunday protest rally outside Knaresborough Holy Trinity Church to coincide with the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds visit, around one hundred residents took part. The bishop was handed a petition, signed by hundreds, objecting to the proposed Vodafone antennas on the spire. Pictures and details The Bishop, The Rt Revd J R Packer, told protestors that “the church was doing this as a service to the community”, this seems at odds with earlier statements about the importance of church funding.
It’s quite a coincidence, see item below, that two of the protestors lost their 5 year old grandson to leukaemia, he had lived under electricity pylons.

5th March 2001
Bruce Johnston reports in the Daily Telegraph that the Catholic Church at the Italian Bishops’ Conference has called for the removal of mobile phone arials from all bell towers. They say cannon law forbids adding anything alian to church sacredness, and branded antennas “out of keeping”. The ban has already been introduced in Florence.

6th March 2001
The National Radiological Protection Board admits there is a weak association between electricity pylons and increased risk of childhood leukaemia.
Recent evidence including a study of 3,000 children in the US, Europe and New Zealand, published late last year, suggested that extra low frequency (ELF) exposure from pylons could double the risk of childhood leukaemia. The NRPB's response to the report claims that as only 0.5% of children are exposed to strong ELF, an increased risk from 1 in 1400 to 1 in 500 involves so few children that any evidence is weak.
The NRPB previously rejected any link between childhood cancer and electromagnetic fields and still considers there is insufficient evidence to require a change in ELF exposure guidelines.

16th March 2001
Planning Minister Nick Raynsford announced important changes to improve the planning system on the siting of mobile phone masts. It will be stricter with fewer exemptions.  DTLR

12th April 2001 Phone boxes instead of new masts.
British Telecom will attempt to reduce its debts by selling space in thousands of phone boxes for low powered mobile phone transmitters. These localised transmitters would cut the number of coverage black spots without having more masts. Low power ‘pico-cell’ transmitters are presently used in busy places such as rail stations.

Friday 25 January 2002
Sir William Stewart, the Chairman of the Programme Management Committee, announced the first projects to receive funding under the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR). This is a major programme of 15 research projects designed to help resolve confusion surrounding the health effects of mobile phone radiation funded by the government and the mobile phone industry.

The mobile phone industry has contributed half of the £7.4 million earmarked for the MTHR. 

"People want to know the impact being made by mobile phones directly on the human body," says William Stewart, chairman of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme (MTHR), an independent group of mainly of British university scientists.

Universities across the UK will conduct the new studies, many involving human volunteers, looking for possible links between mobile phone use and cancers, as well as effects on brain and body functions.

It will be some time before any MTHR results are released, some studies taking several years to complete.

http://www.mthr.org.uk/

Wednesday, 6 February, 2002
The danger of mobile phones is under fresh scrutiny after a study found radiation emissions can affect the body without heating up tissue.
These findings challenge claims that the heating effect of mobile phone signals is their only potential threat to brain cells.
British scientists Nottingham have found that microwave emissions typical of mobile phones make a type of worm more fertile. This suggests that radiation from mobiles can speed up the growth of human tissue.
The effect had been seen in experiments since 1999, but their latest experiments rule out any effects due to simple heating. This research now proves, for the first time, that biological effects are possible without any warming of tissues. A possibility is that the microwaves cause localised ‘hot spots’ within cells, so triggering stress proteins without causing an overall temperature rise.

Accepting these results rubbishes the NRPB and ICNIRP safety standards that are based on preventing overall heating of tissues.