Editor

Last week’s Cambrian News featured a juxtaposition illustrative of selective blindness: an article about promoting the dark skies of the Cambrian Mountains and another hailing the construction of 33 more mobile phone masts in rural Wales to increase 4Gcoverage.

The articles refer to two different types of electromagnetic pollution, one of which—artificial light at night—is now recognised as such, but the other—wireless— regrettably still isn’t.

In 2018, a paper titled ‘Planetary electromagnetic pollution:it is time to assess its impact’, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, reported that 68 per cent of 2,266 studies demonstrated“significant biological effects” from wireless pollution, while a scientific review by EU body EKLIPSE concluded that wireless communications posed “a credible threat to wildlife”.

A 2015 international scientific appeal (emfscientist.org) noted that wireless exposure “affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines” and that effects include “increased cancer risk, cellular stress, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damages, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being in humans”.

Despite its convenience, wireless technology is unsustainable and therefore incompatible with Wales’ Well-being of Future Generations Act.

While wireless pollution should concern us all, it is particularly problematic for people with electrohypersensitivity, which affects about five per cent of the population, and symptoms include insomnia, ‘brain fog’, headaches and extreme fatigue. The growing number of people with EHS in Wales urgently requires the creation of designated ‘white zones’ where they are able to recover.

It’s time the politicians of Wales took wireless pollution seriously and stood up for public health, the protection of biodiversity and the rights of people with EHS.

A good place to start would be to award areas of the Cambrian Mountains with ‘White Zone Status’ to complement their existing ‘Dark Sky Status’, something which could also bring in visitors.

Instead of eliminating such precious areas, we should be carefully preserving them.

A Fitzgerald Wiser Wireless Wales

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