Fig.1: Our beautiful children, O Let them shine
With the prevalence of ridiculous ill-informed articles on the subject of mobile phone masts I would like to finally set the record straight in this highly misunderstood field. I also aim to include as many puns on the word ‘field’ as possible.
Here are a few shining examples:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/11_november/08/masts.shtml
“I don’t think it is acceptable… we have got charge of other people’s children – taking charge of them and meeting health and safety regulations elsewhere. But we can’t stop the airwaves coming in.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/032002/08/mast_emissions.shtml
“I really feel it must be the link that the main beam is beaming directly through our houses into the town of Crediton and unfortunately we’re in the wrong place.”“The fact of the matter is we don’t know whether there’s a link or not,” said Mr Bristow.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/westmidlands/series6/phone_masts.shtml
“Despite the lack of evidence proving any link between phone masts and ill health, the residents of Wishaw finally get what they have been fighting for.
The mast’s removal comes not from the tireless campaigning of SCRAM however, but a group of vandals who pull down the 60 foot mast under the cover of darkness.”
(Irony: The vandals probably received about 500 years’ worth of exposure by going that close to the mast)
http://www.noemr.com/whatyoucando.html
“The mobile phone signal is over-engineered by a factor of about one million”
What a piece of crap… this is like saying “The mobile phone is too square by a factor of its weight”
But I think the ill-educated public outcry is best summarised by the following:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2006/05/05/mobile_phone_mast_groundswell_feature.shtml
Kay Rose, one of the leaders of the protest group, said she was worried about the proximity of the mast to both her house and the school where her two young boys will be attending. She says, “I just don’t know what the health risks are in relation to the masts being located close to the schools and the houses, and if it is going to cause us any harm. Until we do know more, I don’t want the mast near my house or near the school. The more research I do, the more worried I become.”
Quick search of bbc.co.uk reveals this many articles for devon alone:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/032002/08/mast_emissions.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/092001/24/phone_masts.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/052001/22/masts.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/have_your_say/phone_masts.shtml
Some other amusing articles:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/talk/masts.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A2019584
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/mobilephones/index.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/shouldiworryabout/mobiles.shtml
The following diagram shows some school children enjoying a geography lesson, their mothers safe in the knowledge that the nasty phone mast is 1km away and cannot possibly hurt their children.
Fig.2: Mrs Cooper is the children’s favourite geography teacher, due in large part to her commendable tolerance and age-defying liberalism.
Fig.3: The ‘far field’
The authorities have instead placed it on a “far field”, vindicating the people’s weeks of vigourous homemaker-style protesting and uninformed indignation.
Here is little Johnny and his friend little Ronny. He is happily discussing stickers and loony-toones products on his portable telephone with a friend, Ronny. The prefix ‘little’ is a common emotive device used here to imply explicit vulnerability to electromagnetic radiation.
 Fig.4: Little Johnny |  Fig.5: Little Ronny |
Assume that if little Johnny were 10m from the nasty mobile phone mast, his phone would need to transmit 0.1mW to communicate successfully with the mast. The mast would need to send something similar back. Therefore there are two components to the amount of radiation going into Johnny’s soft soft brain tissue, one from his handset and one from the mast.
This can be proved by taking an EM photograph of a child skipping through a field of daises.
Look at his appealing childish irreverence.
Fig.6: Irradiated child number 49312
The inverse square law states that at 20m the phone needs to transmit 0.4mW, at 30m it would transmit 0.9mW and so on. At 1km a mobile needs to transmit 1W to maintain the same level of communication, which is 10,000 times more energy. A mobile phone is able to transmit up to about 2W if it needs to in order to maintain a good signal.
Extensive testing has been conducted to determine the safe levels of electromagnetic radiation entering the human head. After a few centimetres the field has died down to near-zero, suggesting that it is totally absorbed and turned into heat. It has been empirically determined that this heating should not exceed 2 W kg-1 (watts per kilogram) of body tissue.
Fig.7: Bad science
A typical mobile phone mast might transmit around 60W of energy, which could all be absorbed by a human if he were standing right next to it. Since it’s beam width is around 60 degrees wide, this means that at 1m the power as seen by a person 50cm wide would be:
At 2m he would absorb 119mW, and at 3m 53mW.
The following diagram shows the siting of a mast 1km from a school with 9 students all on the phone.
Fig.8: Looking down onto the top of the children from above.
The contribution at this distance from the mast itself is negligible. However, 9 mobiles each transmitting the required 1W means that each student is holding a 1W transmitter directly by his head. Assuming it transmits uniformly in a sphere, this is probably about 0.5W into each child’s brain.
I therefore propose the mobile phone mast be moved onto the roof of the school, aimed straight downward towards the children.
Fig.9: Optimal location of the transmitter.
Here of course the contribution from the mast is much higher than before since it is mere feet from their eager young minds.
Assuming a child has a diameter of 0.5m from above, and the mast again transmits a 60 degree beam. At 30m (the height of any good school) the power passing through the child is the ratio of his area to the flat area of the conical wave-front:
Fig.10: Don’t worry what this is if you are stupid or fat
So at 30m, a child of width 0.5m will pick up 0.013% of the energy, or 7.63mW from the mast. The difference is; each phone will need to transmit something similar to get back to the mast, (say another 7.63mW) so half of this will go into his brain, giving a total of 11.4mW.
Conclusion
I have proved it is safer to put a mobile phone mast on top of a school than anywhere else in the country, other than in the sea.
I foresee a world in which children are encouraged to use mobile phones rather than warned of the dangers of unproved technologies.
Fig.11: One of the many applications of the mobile phone
Caveat: These calculations are exceptionally spurious at best, and come from almost no knowledge or indeed study of the field.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX Fig.12: This child is clearly off his face on EM waves of the worst kind.
APPENDIX Fig.13: Nobody likes this child because of his slightly incredible appearance, but his oversized ear gives credence to the view that children are evolving to use mobile phones as their primary method of communication.