Widow's Street

13 June, 2026

What happened when a mobile phone tower was built in a quiet suburb in Aachen, Germany?

Dr Monika Krout and several other women in her street soon became widows.

Could the radiofrequency radiation from the mobile phone tower have played a role?

To help find the answer, top scientists devised a study, comparing residents who lived close to the tower with those who lived further away, known as the ATHEM-3 project.

By analysing blood samples from both groups, they found notable differences between the blood of those living close to the tower (the relatively high exposure group) and those living further away (the relatively low exposure group).

‘The cytogenetic damage, i.e. chromosomal aberrations was significantly increased in the residents with higher exposure to RF-EMF,’ the authors said.

In other words, higher exposure was associated more chromosomal abnormalities. This is a problem because chromosomes are important for storing DNA in our cells and chromosome damage can cause disease, including cancer.

What was particularly concerning was the amount of chromosome damage the researchers found.

It was equivalent to the damage caused by exposure to a dose of ionizing radiation that is 7.6 times the legal limit for a year!

A newly released film that tells the story, ‘The Widow’s Street’, describes the chromosome damage like this.

‘The amount of damage in the ATHEM-3 project corresponds to the equivalent dose of 76.4 millisieverts (mSv).

‘The IAEA’s [International Atomic Energy Agency] recommendation is that someone from the general population should not exceed one millisievert per year.

‘Since the subjects lived thee for an average of about ten years, this value must be divided by ten to arrive at 7.64.’

Why should this amount of chromosome damage be illegal if it’s caused by ionizing radiation but be allowable if it’s caused by radiofrequency radiation?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Sachin Gulati, Wilhelm Mosgoeller, Dietrich Moldan, Pavol Kosik, Matus Durdik, Lukas Jakl, Milan Skorvaga, Eva Markova, Dominika Kochanova, Katarina Vigasova, Igor Belyaev, Evaluation of oxidative stress and genetic instability among residents near mobile phone base stations in Germany, Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Volume 279, 2024, 116486, ISSN 0147-6513, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2024.116486.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147651324005621

Both the paper and film can be downloaded from the ORSAA website here. https://www.orsaa.org/exposure-mp-tower-video.html