Radiation on the Roof

From time to time on this Blog I have made light of our proximity to two mobile phone masts, speculating that we could do away with our microwave oven.

Since the mast on Settle Conservative club was switched to a powerful 4G signal a week or so ago the TV in our kitchen (yes, yes, I know how sad that is) has been breaking up - especially in the remoter corners of Freeview.   A very helpful Facebook entry from Settle flagged up a free service called at800 which would send an engineer to correct the problem.

Good as their word the engineer was here just two days after my call to at800* - all the way from North Wales incidentally.   The very pleasant young man did all his tests at the main TV in the lounge and found that we were indeed suffering from 4G interference.   He fitted gizmos to the masthead aerial, the system amplifier and the main TV before doing similar things at the other five TVs in the house.

As we went round it was apparent that the interference levels varied quite a lot.   The TVs that were shielded from the new mast by the massively thick stone walls of the tower were subject to low levels of 4G and so on until we got to the TV in the roof room, with its glass walls and in line of sight of both masts.   There his meter shot up alarmingly, so much so that he double checked.   The 4G signal up there was coming through into to room at 64 dB - by far the highest reading he had ever found, he said.   That was without connecting to the TV aerial.   It was simply being picked up by the fly lead of his meter.

Picture shows the roof room right in the middle of two 4G masts whose antennae are almost level with the room - ignore the flag poles.  Click to enlarge.

Googling the situation it appears you get more radiation from your mobile phone pressed to your ear than from these masts so there may be nothing to worry about.   But I have e-mailed the Health & Safety Executive just in case.   I shall report back further** if I survive the 18 days during which they promise to reply.

* at800 can be contacted on 0808 13 13 800

**  The HSE , after several cut and paste paragraphs have replied:

Turning to your situation, in general on these types of masts the signal strengths fall off rapidly as you move away from the antennas and I would not expect compliance to be a problem; however, if you remain concerned  I suggest you contact the mobile phone network operators directly and ask them to confirm that the ICNIRP public exposure guidelines are indeed complied with in the area where your property is located.

So, take it up with the people who own the masts. . . . .