This week’s Independent on Sunday had a massive banner headline – “Wi-Fi: Children at risk from ‘electronic smog’ ”
A further story was entitled “Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution a health time bomb?”
The reports go on to report that WiFi is everywhere these days including many homes, towns and schools. So is it dangerous? What’s the basis of these reports?
“Virtually no studies have been carried out into Wi-Fi’s effects on pupils,” says the Independent on Sunday’s report. So what’s the basis of a front page scaremongering story then?
WiFi broadcasts around 2.4 GHz (UHF – Ultra High Frequency) which is somewhere around where microwave ovens work as well as TV is broadcast, along with mobile phones, bluetooth, GPS, some two-way radios and many other things. WiFi is limited to around 100m maximum, whereas mobile phones broadcast for upwards of 2km. I trust that no parent is ever again let their child use a mobile phone, and nor are they going to have any switched on themselves in the home (or any other time they’re with their children).
So, as Rob Beschizza writes over at Wired, either all of these things are dangerous, or none of them.
Undoubtedly, examining whether there are health risks based around all these technologies is a worthwhile venture, but I’d really hope that The Independent on Sunday is above these feeble sensationalist headlines.
There’s an excellent piece penned by Bill Thompson over at the BBC dismantling this kind of scaremongering.
Is WiFi Dangerous?
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4 responses to “Is WiFi Dangerous?”
What about digital cordless phones too? These must be very dangerous and heaven forbid any teacher having a mobile on them during school hours. Can they get a connection? Of course they can as wireless technology is already going through the school!
A question to do with a post of yours 3 years back.
Did Alicia Witt have a lengthy nude scene in The Shape of Things?
Oh, no, they CAN’T be dangerous. Everybody knows corporations are utmostly concerned with our health and welfare. If this stuff was harmful, they’d tell us immediately.
Besides, nobody’s died so far. We’d hear about it in the news, right? No, really. Right?
We should all just, like, whistle and sing and stuff, and just go on with our lives, sneering gleefully when these tinfoil-hat idiots – ha-ha! – bring up these silly suppositions like global warming and smoking causing cancer, stuff like that.
Stupid alarmists. There should be a law against accusing perfectly harmless technologies of being hazardous.
And, oh yeah, everything is perfectly safe until it’s PROVEN harmful. It’s like, innocent until proven guilty, man. Like, you know, lions and stuff. All that about them eating you if you climb into the cage with ’em, that’s just silly. I never met a single person who got eaten. Lions are perfectly safe until somebody PROVES otherwise.
We should just hold back and wait until a few thousand kids get brain cancer. And even then, those whiny kids should have to PROVE that it was wi-fi. Otherwise … well, it’s just not fair to wi-fi.
I think that sensationalist rag should just shut up.