Expert report gives no health guarantee on Lija mobile phone antenna

Lija mayor Ian Castaldi Paris will be pressing on with a court case which aims at the removal of a mobile phone antenna installed by Melita on a house rented to foreign students in narrow Preziosi street,  after a court appointed expert failed to give a guarantee that the Melita antenna does not pose any health risks to residents.

Court appointed expert Prof. Joseph Anthony Agius concluded that although emissions from the antenna are way below international limits, the long term health impact of antennas on health can only be determined through monitoring conducted over a five year period  by a team of medical and technical experts. 

The report compares the long term impact of exposure to radiation from mobile phone masts to passive smoking.

“I was more than willing to drop this case had the court expert excluded any health risk to residents.  But how can I put residents’ minds at rest when the court expert himself is saying that we need five years to assess the long term impact?  What would happen if in five years time we discover that a resident’s health has been effected,” mayor Ian Castaldi Paris told MaltaToday.

Although the independent readings taken by the court expert confirms that emissions from the Melita antenna are below public exposure limits set by international bodies “long term effects” on health can only be ascertained “after a series of medical examinations carried out over a period of time.”