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'I'M LAYING AWAKE AT NIGHT WORRYING ABOUT IT'
ANXIETY and fear are causing sleepless nights for people whose homes are within 150 metres of a second proposed 20m-high Orange phone mast.
Celia and Richard Vince and Stephen and Mary Elston believe their health is being sacrificed in the name of progress and better mobile phone reception.
"I hate the thought of a mast being there spitting out radiation until we get ill," said Celia, whose home off Sugar Lane in Horsted Keynes is next to the proposed site in Keysford Lane.
"I am really worried about it and I'm lying awake at night thinking about it. The risk is not proven but many people think it exists and scientist friends I have spoken to say we all have to avoid getting any more radiation from the environment."
Mrs Vince said histories of cancer and heart disease in her and her husband's families made them more susceptible to any dangers.
The Vince's home is within the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty as is the Elston's at Tyhurst Farm.
Mr Elston said: "We moved here 21 years ago because it is a beautiful area; we have deer coming through the fields, buzzards and owls around and horses in the fields and a mast up there on the hill is going to spoil the amenity of this area."
Mr and Mrs Elson face having the mast beaming down just 160m away and have tried unsuccessfully to buy the field Orange plans to site it in, in order to stop it going ahead.
Mobile phone companies and the Government maintain there is no proof of ill health associated with masts, but public fears continue to prevail.
However, electronics engineer Robert Philpot, of Sugar Lane, Horsted Keynes, says the installation of more mobile phone masts is making phones themselves safer to use.
He lives two fields away from the proposed site of yet another Orange mast on land adjacent to Keysford Lane. Mr Philpot said: "If people are going to use mobile phones then there have to be transmitters to service them," he said.
"That being so, it is better for users that they are as near as possible to a mobile base station as this means that their phone - which they are holding next to their ear, and thereby their brain – will be transmitting at the least power possible to complete their call."
Objectors have until March 31 to write to Mid Sussex District Council.
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Weather for Haywards Heath
Thursday 09 February 2012
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