By Ogova Ondego
Published July 27, 2016
How does placing a Base Transceiver Station (BTS) within an estate and the Electromagnetic Field (EMF) affect your health and safety?
Is the nausea, loss of libido, headache, fatigue, anxiety or depression you feel at times caused by exposure to EMF from that mobile phone base station near that open air market at the street corner?
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Are you concerned about the location of mobile phone BTS or transmission booster masts in your neighbourhood? Could EMF from BTS harm you and your loved ones? Or are you, like many of us, unaware of what’s going on and couldn’t care less, even if you did?
“Exposure to electromagnetic fields is not a new phenomenon,” the World Health Organisation of the United Nations says on its website. “However, during the 20th century, environmental exposure to man-made electromagnetic fields has been steadily increasing as growing electricity demand, ever-advancing technologies and changes in social behaviour have created more and more artificial sources.”
Well, ignorance doesn’t have to remain bliss any more as a public forum to tackle the myths, half truths and emerging facts related to the operation of mobile networks, risk communication, EMF safety, and mobile network base stations is coming to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, on August 19, 2016.
Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations (KARA)in collaboration with National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) and Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has organised the meeting it says shall look at the various opinions related to the impact of EMF and BTS on human health and safety.
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Among those to address the gathering shall be experts drawn from NEMA, CA, Ministry of Environment & Natural Resources. KARA says Marnus van Wyk, an EMF expert from South Africa, shall be the main speaker.
WHO says “numerous electromagnetic field sources have become the focus of health concerns, including power lines, microwave ovens, computer and TV screens, security devices, radars and most recently mobile phones and their base stations.”
International EMF Project, a multidisciplinary research effort created by WHO in 1996, concluded that “current evidence does not confirm the existence of any health consequences from exposure to low level electromagnetic fields. However, some gaps in knowledge about biological effects exist and need further research.”
