• A NEW planning application to install 5G antenna in the spire of Grade II-listed St Mary with All Souls Church in Abbey Road, NW6, is hard to find on Camden’s website.

Typing the address and application number draws a blank via the planning search form.

Only the more obscure BETA tool sheds light, despite the council having been alerted to this over a week ago. Also, until last week, the notice was hidden behind a roadworks sign.

The application conveniently omits to mention that the antenna is for 5G, a fact only to be discovered embedded deep within the documentation.

The consultant’s letter of application on behalf of Telefonica 02 UK Limited and Vodafone Limited, claims that: “To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use”.

This is far from the truth. Thousands of scientific studies since the 1930s, right up until this year show, significant harm to humans, animals, trees, plants and pollinators from radio frequency radiation (RFR).

Such reports include one by NASA in 1981, the Ecolog Report commissioned by T-Mobile in 2020 and the Bioinitiative report updated in 2020.

The US Toxicology Programme’s $13million report and the Ramazzini Institute study both show a clear link between RFR and cancer.

In 2011 the World Health Organisation classified RFR as a Group 2B possible carcinogen to humans.

Last year, at a Senate hearing on 5G’s future, the telecoms industry admitted to Senator Richard Blumenthal that they have not done any tests on the health risks from 5G.

For a summary of the risks see www.5gemfreview2020.com.

This small cell instalment within the spire will enable the full 5G frequency range up to 300GHz with the option to increase to 6G – transmitting at a whopping 3THz across Kilburn.

There is a primary school in the hall immediately adjacent to the church; children are particularly sensitive to RF radiation. Neither school, parents, nor ward councillors have been consulted on this application.

It is shocking that planning authorities are required by the government not to “set health safeguards different from the International Commission (ICNIRP) guidelines for public exposure…” [National Planning Policy Framework, para 116].

The ICNIRP conclude that 5G is safe on the one hand and concede on the other that: “There is insufficient information on the biological and health effects of EMF exposure of human populations and experimental animals to provide a rigorous basis for establishing safety factors over the whole frequency range…”

Camden Council also has an obligation to safeguard the health of its constituents by virtue of s 2B of the National Health Service Act 2006.

To object to this application, please either type 2020/1332/P into Camden’s Planning Search field or https://bit.ly/30IWHEC  in your browser.

Comments received until June 21 (possibly a few days longer).

JANINE SACHS
Swiss Cottage