Health fears about mobile phones and masts are not based on sound science, according to a scientific expert who has studied effects of radiowaves for many years.

Professor Anthony Barker, delivering a lecture at University’s Coleraine campus, said that no robust scientific basis exists for controversies over the construction and siting of base stations (masts) or for worries that handsets may give off dangerous radiation.

People should not be concerned about having masts at the end of their road, he said, speaking about ‘Mobile Phones and Health’ in the latest of the University’s Science in Society lectures.

Sketching the technology behind mobile phone networks and questioning whether the mobile phone controversy is fuelled by scientific concern or public hysteria, Professor Barker said that there was no good data to support fears that mobile phone systems may be a ticking time-bomb health hazard.

“There is no reason to expect mobile phone signals – which are essentially low powered radio transmissions - to be bad for health.

“For over eighty years we have accepted wireless transmissions as part of our everyday life. We have big TV and broadcast radio transmitters all around us. Then, when someone proposes putting up a base station – which is also a radio transmitter – we all suddenly become concerned.”

Professor Barker is a Consultant Clinical Scientist in the Department of Medical Physics of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. He has spent the past 30 years carrying out research into the biological effects of electromagnetic fields.

Masts are frequently sited in areas of large population to service a steadily increasing demand for mobile phone capacity. Contrasting public acceptance of powerful TV transmitters with reaction to the erection of much less powerful masts, he said that it appeared people were more prepared to accept TV transmitters because they were “far away”, often in rural areas, without realising they could expose them to similar fields.

“A watt is the unit of power transmission. A big TV transmitter could emit half-a-million watts. This is 10,000 times more powerful than a typical 50 Watt base station, but because they are further away we somehow feel that they expose us to less than the nearby base station. This is often not so.”

“Handsets transmit a maximum power of one quarter of a watt,” explained Professor Barker. “But, because they are close to the head, the signals passing into the body from a handset are usually one thousand to one million times stronger than those from a base station.

“If a base station is near, the handset lowers the power it transmits to conserve battery life – it ‘shouts’ less loudly. Consequently, having a local base-station when using a handset can actually reduce the exposure a person receives.

“There are a small number of people who genuinely believe that mobile phones present a serious risk to health. If there were a health hazard then it could have a major impact because over one billion people around the world now use them.”

But Professor Barker argued that the latest scientific evidence, including that starting to emerge from the U.K. Mobile Telecommunications and Health (MTHR) programme, does not support a health risk. “There is no a priori reason to think that radio waves are bad for us. Colleagues and I have studied the literature and carried out experiments for many years. The bottom line is that there is not a single experiment which is widely accepted by scientists as showing any biological effect of low level radio signals.”

Professor Barker went on to emphasise that it is impossible for science to prove that anything is totally safe but that the trend of the latest research into the safety of mobile phones is to suggests that health effects are less, rather than more, likely.

“Whilst scientists never claim to be infallible, I don’t think there are grounds to worry about living close to base stations. If individuals are concerned about the signals from handsets they can obviously choose not to use them, or can decrease their personal exposure by using a hands-free kit. But if, as a society, we want to be able to use our mobile phones everywhere, then we can’t avoid having base stations all around us.”

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