An article published on The Times reports that parents and teachers are trying to get UK schools to take down their wireless networks for a health risk. You gotta be kidding me. Apparently, “low levels of microwave radiation emitted by the transmitters could be harmful, causing loss of concentration, headaches, fatigue, memory and behavioural problems and possibly cancer in the long term.”
On the off chance that anyone spoken about in that article is reading this post right now, let me put this into perspective. Your kids don’t sit right next to the access point all day. It’s high up on the ceiling or across the room at all times. The same wireless technology in those access points is used in those 2.4GHz frequency cordless phones your kids talk on after school for hours at a time – and it’s right next to their head, not across the room. Oh and here’s an even better example, cell phones. You can’t shake a stick at Wi-Fi being harmful when the radiation emitted from mobile phones is much more powerful. Mobile phones also “handshake” with cell phone towers frequently so there is radiation being emitted even when not in use. These mobile phones sit in your kids’ pockets all day.
Stowe School, the Buckinghamshire public school, also removed part of its wireless network after a teacher became ill. Michael Bevington, a classics teacher for 28 years at the school, said that he had such a violent reaction to the network that he was too ill to teach.
“I felt a steadily widening range of unpleasant effects whenever I was in the classroom,†he said. “First came a thick headache, then pains throughout the body, sudden flushes, pressure behind the eyes, sudden skin pains and burning sensations, along with bouts of nausea. Over the weekend, away from the classroom, I felt completely normal.â€
What?!? That’s more bull crap than having to wait infinitely for a check to come from a mail-in rebate. So does this mean that the next time I get sick, I can get the doctor to write a note stating the ubiquitous campus Wi-Fi caused my illness? I have to go now; I think the electromagnetic field created by my hard drive’s motor is making me sick.
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Where’s the hard evidence that wi-fi is 100% safe? I’m all for wi-fi everywhere but you have to take into account that claims of health issues are as weak as claims of wi-fi being perfectly safe. Nobody really knows, and however slim the chances may be, I can understand the motivation of a parent to not want any riscs taken when it comes to their kids.
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He’s not saying that Wi-Fi is 100%. The basis is essentially accurate: Ambient microwave radiation can be dangerous.
I believe his argument is that Cell Phones have higher levels of ambient radiation and are always broadcasting it, in use or not, so why is no one looking at that?
The fact of the matter is, they did…and found it to not be that harmful. Granted, in 30 years they’ll do another study that will say that we’ve all been cooking are brains all this time, but hey…that’s not for today’s discussion.
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I have to agree with Daniel on this, is wi-fi 100% safe? It may not be, but it must sure be safer than carrying a cell around all day in your pocket, lucky for me I lost mine, and I haven’t felt physically better since…a long time actually, my leg was always cramping……I guess, you just have to take things in moderation, is my point, too much of anything is a bad thing, so tell the boys in the computer club to join some outdoor club, that airport they got from their shiny macbooks or whatever is gonna kill them faster than the UV rays from the Sun ever will ^_^
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Your typical router has a peak power rating of around 100mW. Mobile phones are around 2W. [source] If we are going to be worried about anything, it should be mobile phones, not wireless routers and access points.
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Nothing in this world is 100% safe…. but still. I think they’re being a bit dramatic.
We’ve all survived dangers a lot worse than WiFi.
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“Oh my God! Radiation! We’re all going to die!”
Ed, not to pick on you, but did you ever think about the fact that perhaps the cell phone in your pocket was making you sit / walk funny? Or perhaps you digging around in your pocket for it caused your muscles to move in ways they weren’t meant to. I don’t believe that exposure to powerful RF causes your muscles to contract irregularly. Cellular disruption at extremely high power levels could be surmized, but I really don’t believe that RF can make your muscles move.
Also, why can’t these idiots be a bit more scientific about this? So they believe that Wi-Fi is a terrible danger to humanity and is causing all manner of illnesses? They have individuals close to them who are experiencing these effects, why not test it? Why leave the researchers to track these things down when you could do it yourself?
Young Sebastian who gets sick and can “instantly” feel the school’s Wi-Fi should be set in a hallway. Five rooms should be setup. One of them will have a Wi-Fi hotspot in it that is turned off at the start of the experiment. Young Sebastian is blindfolded and led into each of the rooms. and asked to sit for fifteen minutes. A random room will be chosen, and at five minutes of Sebastian being in the room the Wi-Fi hotspot will be turned on (I think they’re silent… if they’re not, then it would have to be acoustically isolated). Does Young Sebastian suddenly get nauseous? This should be repeated a few times with other children, perhaps with a larger number of rooms and more or less hotspot to room ratio.
Even if the Young Sebastian experiment were performed /once/, it would lend some credibility to their claims. To conclude that your cell phone was causing your leg to spasm because it stopped when you lost it or that Wi-Fi hotspots are causing your kid to be sick because he got sick when they were installed is just plain silly. We all know that there’s a distinctly high correlation between the decline of pirate population and the increase in global warming. Argh Mateys!
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Nice rant Paul. Sometimes I think people watch a little too much 20/20 and the fear-mongering takes over their brains…. wifi made me sick lol, I can’t believe they bought that crap.
I have my access point sitting less than a meter away from me and I don’t suffer anything just yet. It’s been there since a year ago and I feel just as healthy. This is B.S.
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I think your point is visible enough given two of the first three comments.
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…it took some time for the marlboro-man to get cancer as well. I don’t like the increasing use of “cordless” systems. Future wifi hot spots all over the city, 3g and what not will make it impossible to get away from the radiation regardless of where you go… 24/7. I vote for the use of good ol’ cables!
GREAT! Just GREAT! I sit in a room with up to 70 WiFi networks at any moment. I work with a MIMO 11n router above or below me most of the day. Getting sick from WiFi is about as plausible as getting tan from an LCD.
LOL
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I install these Networks and have done now for a number of years. My legs ache , my head hurts , my eyes ache and thats just the beginning.
This however has very little to do with wi-fi, its all to do with the install process and the fact that I have been doing this for too many years now !!
Think twice before you use your cordless phone and the next time you decide to use your microwave at home :-)
As Jordan points out, since there are people out there who claim to be sensitive to wi-fi, an obvious experiment it to see if the really do expience anything.
However, what Jordan describes is a single blind test – the ‘gold standard’ (and therefore the only way you can ‘prove’ anything) is double-blind. This is where not just the subject but the people performing the tests don’t know who’s being exposed to wi-fi radiation (or where/when they’re being exposed), so they can’t inadvertently influence the outcome. And since wi-fi signals are pretty pervasive (my laptop finds five in my South London house), all the rooms would have to be electromagnetially screened.
This all makes it rather more troublesome, but not beyond the reach of a short university research project.
At the risk of going over to the other side, I think we shouldn’t completely rule out potential effects on humans. We are very complex electrically as well as biologically and physiologically, and there’s a lot we don’t understand about how the nervous system works.
But it would be very strange for 100mW wi-fi to have an effect when when 2W of mobile phone signal held against the head doesn’t… or is it just that all our brains have been fried anyway?
Actually, someone has done a double blind test with ’sensitive’ individuals and mobile phones, see:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/332/7546/886
The result was no real effect.
I never like the way people who don’t have a problem scoff at anyone who disagrees with them.
In spite of a WiFi transmitter’s very low power output, I have experienced headaches, eye irritation, twitches and tremoring in my nerves as a result of being in close proximity to the transmitter. I find it generally takes a minute for the symptoms to develop and increase in intensity and often, surprisingly, many hours for them to subside after turning off the transmitter. I have also had these problems from mobile phones. There is definitely a problem but it seems that not everyone is as ’sensitised’ for some reason.
I think people should concentrate on ‘real’, proven health dangers such as smoking and alcohol rather than wi-fi. Imagine a guy poisoning his lungs everyday with tobacco being worried about wi-fi radiation…
Ok people,
I think that you need to look at this more on a larger scale. Your router gives off enough power to transmit a 2.4GHz signal within your house. Meanwhile, how many radio station towers are blasting radiation that can be picked up miles away. Not to mention all the satellites transmitting 30GHz signals for your TV. As well the cellular towers that are popping up all over the place handling thousands of calls daily. Do you REALLY think that little router is going to cause you that much harm? Radio waves are harmless… Fear mongering indeed.
so nice to prevent from kids don’t sit right next to the access point all day. It’s high up on the ceiling or across the room at all times. The same wireless technology in those access points is used in those 2.4GHz frequency cordless phones your kids talk on after school for hours at a time – and it’s right next to their head, not across the room.
Cell Phone Radiation and the Increase in Brain Cancer
people appear to have an almost pathological emotional attachment to their cell phones and there is a fascinating suggestion that cell radiation pulses might actually be addictive to the human brain
for more information visit this site
Cellphoneradiation
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Hi Folks! You might also want to keep in mind that home units have scalable power usage: you can set the router and card to give out power at as little as 15%—which further greatly reduces the “danger” of the electromagnetic signal. Unless you are living in a mansion and your router is in the basement, there should be no need for your power output to be set at 100%. Try the least amount of power that will enable you to connect with no problems and it should help to set your mind at ease.
Y FRY when U can WiFi?
P’Trek; Perhaps because heat radiation is not the same as electro-magnetic radiation? Perhaps because the average American doesn’t understand that radiation is not just emitted from nuclear explosions? Perhaps because the best way to get the average American to become educated is to inform them that their TV emits radiation?
AJ, not to attack my own force – but “hertz” means “cycles per second” it is a measure of the frequency of a given wave. NOT the amplitude (or power).
Paul; Perform a scientific experiment and then we’ll listen. Until then, rational beings don’t care. You are either making it up, experiencing real effects, or experiencing imagined effects – study psychology to learn the values of a control in terms of judgmental decisions.
David; Good point. Thank you for linking to a better study than Jordan’s proposed one. Obviously though, that doesn’t help people like Paul who believe that they have a problem.
ANYWAY, sadly this appears to be getting more media attention. It’s terrible that we’re focusing on a problem with no scientific basis (THE TESTS ARE SIMPLE YOU IDIOTS) meanwhile hundreds are dying in Iraq and Fox News tells us that Mother America is winning. Yae for modern society.
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I warm my lunch using my router.
Anyone mocking the idea of electro-sensivity and the potential for wi-fi causing health problems just because they don’t have it themselves is stupid, some people are allergic to nuts, just because you aren’t doesn’t mean that no one is. And fifty years ago you people would have been making similar comments saying that smoking being bad for your health was ridiculous. And all those people were monstrously wrong. So shut up.
Your logic makes no sense Simon. You seem to think that because people were wrong about health risks in the past, that it somehow means that health risks are true. Smoking is a habit which has been linked to several long-term illnesses and health issues. Note the “long term” in that sentence. Long term means difficult to test, especially when it’s on the order of 30 years before one might show ill effects. What’s being described here is incredibly short term. If Little Timmy Chillun is supposed to be effected the second he steps in, then why hasn’t someone properly tested this instead of trying to spread panic?
Also… nobody here is saying that because they themselves don’t get “sick” from radiation put off by Wi-Fi devices that nobody else does. I think that the consensus here is, “Where’s the proof?”. Nothing points to any abnormalities in human beings being caused at this amplitude and frequency.
Furthermore… Electro-sensitivity? Let me tell you… absolutely everyone alive is sensitive to electricity. I have no qualms with agreeing that everyone is “electro-sensitive”.
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Idiocy of course is very dangerous to our health too, and in health related issues it is therefore doubly dangerous. Idiocy as demonstrated by this bloger’s comments and most in the hooray for technology camp.
Some guy went as far as to say that is someone poisons(sic) their lungs smoking then they shouldn’t be really worrying about the minor risk of wi-fi technology. According to this argument if someone is exposing themselves to a serious health risk such as smoking they should then go ahead and expose themselves to other health risks as well, and go all the way into recklessness. Of course this argument is first and foremost irrelevant as was the blogger’s comments on cell phones and how parents should be worrying about these instead of wi-fi. Such statements have got me thinking that besides math and grammar argumentative logic should be mandatory in schools and in universities, as it seems even people getting degrees are not smart enough to figure out a simple nonsensical argument. (But then again a lot of people in universities at the moment shouldn’t have been there to begin with…). Of course the blogger’s grasp of the issue didn’t go as far as wondering whether the same parents were indeed concerned about cell phone health hazards AS WELL. Or, like I said before, simply considering that two wrongs don’t make a right, or because there’s a bigger evil we should not be worrying about the lesser one.
Of course it’s a relief to read a lot of comments too that do make sense. The bottom line here, as mentioned by others too, is that a lot of technological input in our societies is very dubious, to say the least, when it comes to safety and health, and more awareness is required as well as more of THEIR (the manufacturers’) dollars or euros not going into their pockets or the usual bribes to authorities to turn a blind eye, but more into research for the technology they are putting out on the market.
I would wager that 95% of the technology that comes out is superfluous and most of it proliferates based on a marketing system of false needs and status anxiety, the least they can do (and we can urge them to) is get some serious research into the safety of this technology.
Same goes for wi-fi. As another reader said cables could easily do the trick in most cases, but somehow we got to open up another market for appliances so we have wi-fi flooding in, while the fact of the matter is that there is no real, concrete and unilateral evidence of it being harmless.
For sure, the worst type of attitude wrt these issues it the attitude this blogger took that of sneer and contempt for the people’s fears and concerns over their health and safety. That shows arrogance of the worst sort, because it’s not even justifiable by his ludicrous (non) arguments or his (non) expertise.
… and I’m all for not turning a blind eye. I love science, study and research. Most of the people in the “Wi-Fi is evil” camp turned a blind eye of acceptance a long time ago deeming it a lesser evil among two, like JackieD here, without even first considering and testing whether or not it is evil. I think that more of the “sneer” and “contempt” demonstrated by the “Wi-Fi is not evil” camp is directed at the attitudes and belief-acceptance-systems more than the beliefs themselves.
For sure, the best attitude is between that of the skeptic and the acceptor. With total skepticism comes the inability to accept anything in this world, and a complete standstill while everything is tested. However, with the total acceptor comes a complete lack of progress as we stand still thinking that the entire world is falling on our heads.
Wrt forcing manufacturers to fund studies… ouch. Can we say “stand still while China beats us into a bloody pulp”? Like I’ve mentioned, this is a dirt simple thing to test. The poor dying chillun in these stories all demonstrate immediate sickness and poor health. Immediate sickness and immediate health. You don’t need “billions” of dollars to run a double-blind study of something this simple and fast acting. We can stop all development and become a total nanny-state or concerned citizens can get off their asses and test these things. It’s not difficult.
Now, if you’re concerned about this matter and know someone with this affliction – gather some friends and conduct a decently-documented double-blind study! If you don’t want to, or don’t want to take the five minutes to design such a study, then you’re not concerned. Take these findings and publish them, if your study is up to snuff then you’ll get noticed and the scientific community would be more than happy to hop on and take a look.
If you’re concerned about this matter and don’t know anyone with this affliction – then take a few minutes and think about what could cause it. I mean, seriously. Right around 2Ghz is microwave communication and radar in addition to this terrible-danger that is Wi-Fi. What makes Wi-Fi communications so different from these other forms of much higher powered devices that it causes little Timmy to get sick? On what level does it cause damage?
What we’re also talking about here is not long term illness caused by Wi-Fi. We’re talking about the little Timmys of the world who get sick the instant that they walk into a ~2.4Ghz@0.1W electromagnetic field. If you’re interested in watching how this doesn’t often occur, walk through the campus of your nearest university. Chances are that it is entirely blanketed in Wi-Fi… do you see many people falling ill the instant they cross some particular boundary? Do you see any people doing this? Walk by McDonald’s… walk by Starbucks… go into an apartment building…
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“. Most of the people in the “Wi-Fi is evil†camp turned a blind eye of acceptance a long time ago deeming it a lesser evil among two, like JackieD here, without even first considering and testing whether or not it is evil.”
I think you might have misunderstood what I am saying.
“Wrt forcing manufacturers to fund studies… ouch. Can we say “stand still while China beats us into a bloody pulpâ€? ”
China is already beating us to the pulp, because in a modest estimate 80% of what comes out (even the big brand names), comes out of Chinese factories that might still be under western (incl. taiwan, and japanese) control but sooner rather than later when China make a case for themselves and become economically robust, they are going to demand better terms, and that means they are still going to have the facilities to themselves. That said I appreciate what you are saying, about the need for fluidity in the economy, but I still think that should not compromise safety. The chinese have the highest number (a staggering number) of fatal factory accidents because they are super “fluid” and underregulated. Should we become like that too? And who’s going to benefit? Because so far the only ones that are benefiting are the big sharks in the game, the public’s benefits are marginally or none at all. Should we cut down on the safety procedures in the pharmaceutical industry too, because India is producing worse generic drugs faster?
“Now, if you’re concerned about this matter and know someone with this affliction – gather some friends and conduct a decently-documented double-blind study”
It’s really much more complicated than that unfortunately.
A simple double-blind pseudo-scientific study is not really that complicated. Two researchers, one wi-fi hot spot with a really long extension cord hooked into a power strip in the next room, and little Timmy. Researcher 1 leads Timmy into room where Researcher 2 has randomly turned on or off the device. Researcher 1 requests status of Little Timmy (who gets sick immediately and can thus respond appropriately upon entering). This is a repeated a few times and then Researchers 1 and 2 compare notes and map out correlation. I’m not saying that it’s proof, but it provides a decent basis for further study instead of simply saying “little Timmy got sick and I heard the school installed Wi-Fi hotspots so Timmy is allergic to radiation k?”.
With the China thing… I was kind of off-base with that one. I was just trying to illustrate how government control might look good on the face of it, but ends up limiting industries in the long run. The amount of government regulation (you will thoroughly test every aspect of your device even if your hot coffee containment device is clearly not designed for inverted vertical containment while over a person’s genitals) itself needs to be limited and considered carefully before removing market controls from the equation. Remember, whatever you give the government will rarely be given back to you.
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Fair points, but the safety test should burden the manufacturer not the consumer. That said no one is justified of going around making unverified claims and spreading panic and fear over a technology before doing some very basic testing themselves. Of course the various techonologies that have proven to be very detrimental after very limited research into their safety and reassuring views from their proponents have said a bad precedent and people’s fears are well justified.
I am against the myth of unregulated markets somehow self regulating, but I can appreciate how government can be a hindrance.
I was relieved to see a few people writing about exactly the same experiences I have been having — headaches, nausea, discomfort — every time I am near a wifi system. It’s exactly the same feelings I get when I talk on my cell phone for a few minutes and even on my cordless phone. By the way, I’m not saying that it means that these things are dangerous — that requires scientific studies to see if they cause damage, cancer, etc.
BUT I don’t need to wait for any results to know for a FACT that I feel bad in a place that has wifi, and I feel fine and normal when I am far away.
How strange that so many people feel the need to slam those who are suffering, just because they don’t feel it. Not everyone suffers from allergies, but for some it’s very real; not everyone reacts the same way to all medications, etc. What interest does it serve to disparage decent, intelligent people who are talking about how they are suffering?
lol i have 6 wireless networks around my house and a cell phone tower not far away and i am still alive and also 6 other wifi networks from other peoples houses so that adds up to 12 wifi networks plus i have a cordless phone @ 2.4GHz