Wi-fi? Why worry?

[Ekiqa]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6583815.stm

Wi-fi? Why worry?
Scare stories about the dangers of wireless networks lack credibility, argues Bill Thompson

Outdoor wi-fi use, BBC
Wireless working is becoming more popular

Students at Canada's Lakehead University have to be careful how they connect to the internet because wi-fi is banned on large parts of the campus.

University president Fred Gilbert, whose academic interests include wildlife management, environmental studies and natural resources science, is worried about the health impact of the 2.4Ghz radio waves used by wireless networks

Last year he decided to adopt the precautionary principle and refused to allow wi-fi in those areas that have what he calls "hard wire connectivity" until it is proved to be safe.

Mr Gilbert believes that "microwave radiation in the frequency range of wi-fi has been shown to increase permeability of the blood-brain barrier, cause behavioural changes, alter cognitive functions, activate a stress response, interfere with brain waves, cell growth, cell communication, calcium ion balance, etc., and cause single and double strand DNA breaks".

Unfortunately the science says he is wrong, and his students are suffering as a result.

Smog talk

While the heating effects of high exposures to electromagnetic radiation can be damaging, the power levels of wireless connections are much lower than the microwave ovens and mobile phones which share the frequency range, and treating them in the same way is the worst sort of scaremongering.

Yet Mr Gilbert is not alone.


Bill Thompson
While those who want to limit the use of wi-fi argue that they need evidence that is it safe, the problem with trying to prove that something is safe is that you can't.
In 2003 parents sued a primary school in Chicago because it had dared to provide children with easy access to computing resources over a wireless network.

And there are a number of pressure groups, campaigning organisations and ill-informed individuals who believe that wireless networks pose a threat to health and want to see them closed down.

Now it seems they have been joined by the editor of the UK newspaper the Independent on Sunday, which this weekend filled its front page with a call for research into the "electronic smog" that is permeating the nation's schools and damaging growing children's' brains.

An accompanying editorial with the even-handed headline "high-tech horrors" called for an official inquiry, while the article outlining the perceived dangers asked "Is the wi-fi revolution a health time bomb?"

The answer, of course, is "no".

That will not stop the newspaper stoking up a wave of opposition to one of the most liberating technologies to have come out of the hi-tech revolution, limiting children's access to networked computers at schools and even blocking plans to develop municipal wireless networks in our towns and cities.

School children using computer, BBC
Wi-fi has been removed from some UK schools
If the journalists were really concerned about the dangers of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation on the sensitive brains of the young, they should be calling for the closure of TV and radio transmission towers rather than asking us to turn off our wi-fi laptops.

The modulated frequencies that carry Radio 4 and ITV into our homes are just as powerful as the wireless networks, and a lot more pervasive.

And my wireless network is only carrying data when I'm online, while Radio 3 burbles all day long, possibly exciting electrons in my brain and causing headaches.

Then there is the danger from photons of visible light streaming down onto us as we work, since these carry more energy than microwaves and could surely do more damage.

Perhaps we should demand that our children work in the dark.

Test programme

The fuss over wi-fi is the latest manifestation of a general worry about electromagnetic radiation, one whose concerns have ranged over the years from the fields around power transmission lines to the radiation emitted by computer monitors to the microwaves put out by mobile phones.

Campaigners are often supported by those who claim to be so sensitive to electromagnetic radiation that they cannot bear to have a radio turned on in the same room because the fields affect their brains, or those who claim that using a mobile phone gives them headaches.

Test tubes, SPL
Science is about proving theories wrong, not right said Karl Popper
Unfortunately studies like that of James Rubin from the Institute of Psychiatry indicate that such people are just as likely to get a headache when they believe there is a phone signal present even if it is in fact absent, and other research into electromagnetic sensitivity is equally negative.

There is no evidence that electromagnetic radiation at radio frequencies, where the energy levels are too low to dislodge electrons and affect molecular bonding, can cause health effects except by heating tissues.

While those who want to limit the use of wi-fi argue that they need evidence that is it safe, the problem with trying to prove that something is safe is that you can't.

Karl Popper, the great philosopher of science, helped us to understand that science is about falsification, about setting up hypotheses and theories and proving them wrong, because you can never prove them right.

Any theory can be overturned by new evidence, and any claim that wireless networks are completely safe could be thrown out tomorrow if we find good evidence that it isn't.

We may come up with a hitherto unsuspected mechanism that explains a previously disregarded effect, or the evidence may be statistical and require detailed investigation.

Were that to happen we should take it seriously, but it has not happened and there is no reason to believe it will.

The precautionary principle, of avoiding exposure to unnecessary risk, does not apply here because there is no known mechanism by which wireless networks could cause damage.

We have a sound model of the interaction between electromagnetic radiation and organic matter that gives us little reason to believe that there will be any dangers.

For William Stewart, chairman of the Health Protection Agency and a former chief scientific adviser to the Government, to argue for an investigation on the basis of no real evidence that there is an effect, and in the absence of any plausible physical mechanism, is indefensible.

Cellphones heat the brain and could cause problems. Wi-fi doesn't, and it is safe. My daughter is sitting here as I write, her new wireless laptop beside her, and I'm a lot more worried about the damage she would do if she dropped it on her foot than I am about the impact of the low power radio waves it emits.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Banning Wi-Fi? Most of the Toronto downtown core is a solid wi-fi zone.

[General Zod]

Health concerns? Seriously what the fuck? With all the legitimate reasons to be concerned about wifi that even really aren't all that legitimate with proper encryption, these whackaloons are worried about health concerns?

[NoXion]

Aren't most populated areas saturated with various radio frequencies? One would think that if there any health issues associated with such radiation, they would have come to light by now...

[PeZook]

There's an episode of anti-transmitter hysteria here almost every month, with people organizing rallies to prevent transmitter towers from being erected near homes, etc.

It looks like some scam artists have found a new target with wi-fi...

[Sarevok]

There's an episode of anti-transmitter hysteria here almost every month, with people organizing rallies to prevent transmitter towers from being erected near homes, etc.

It looks like some scam artists have found a new target with wi-fi...

It is a conspiracy.

To sell tin foil hats.

[CmdrWilkens]

As the article poitned out the same thing has come, and not yet gone, with pwoer lines, microwave ovens, sitting too close to the TV, really just about anything. Just as most folks are scarred by the idea of the slightest amount of nuclear radiation others are deathly afraid of electromagnetic radiation and damn science if it doesn't support their wacky fears.

[NoXion]

As the article poitned out the same thing has come, and not yet gone, with pwoer lines, microwave ovens, sitting too close to the TV, really just about anything. Just as most folks are scarred by the idea of the slightest amount of nuclear radiation others are deathly afraid of electromagnetic radiation and damn science if it doesn't support their wacky fears.

Bugger science, it seems to me to be worse than that - they don't even take collective human experience into account.

[Admiral Valdemar]

None of these radio waves are ionising. They're orders of magnitude below the energy requirements to sever or disrupt any molecular bond in the body, and they don't approach thermal limits either since I'm not cooking to death from watching TV or using my Wi-Fi router now.

People who fear wireless were strangely absent in convincing force when radio took off after Marconi et al. I wonder why.

[PeZook]

I spent my entire childhood living in a suburban town which is literally standing in the shadow of a huge national broadcasting tower, I'm not dead and the town isn't dying of cancer. I guess I'm just superman

[Admiral Valdemar]

I spent the first 24 years of my life under the shadow of this. Bathing me in fine programming from across the world. And my second head agrees.

[FSTargetDrone]

Heh, When I saw the subject, I thought it was going to be something about the security of Wi-Fi.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Heh, When I saw the subject, I thought it was going to be something about the security of Wi-Fi.

Which, according to The Reg, has more holes now.

[Sea Skimmer]

We had some people fear mongering about this in my town when they wanted to put up a new cell phone tower. So they hired a Professor on electromagnetic waves (actually I think he volunteered his time) from a local collage to do an actual study of the emitted power of another similar tower. The results? At any location around the tower the emissions were much less intensive then those of a cell phone held beside ones head. In fact when you got closest to the tower, the emissions dropped off almost completely because the antennas aren’t aimed at the ground. If wifi can hurt us, cell phones would be dropping people dead. The tower BTW still didn’t get built, but this was because of its effect on property values, and some triumphed up claims that it was somehow going to ‘damage wetlands’ in the form of a tiny little creek filled with oil from street runoff.

[Xon]

Heh, When I saw the subject, I thought it was going to be something about the security of Wi-Fi.

Given the crazy security holes, and the tendance to have your life ruined if someone else uses your connection to download music or anything else for that matter is terrifying.

[FSTargetDrone]

Heh, When I saw the subject, I thought it was going to be something about the security of Wi-Fi.

Which, according to The Reg, has more holes now.

It's quite tragic that these people who are needlessly worried about the effects of this kinds of emissions probably couldn't be even bothered to, say, sign a petition calling for more stringent security measures for Wi-Fi.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Or have no qualms giving young kids mobiles to possibly affect their brain's development. Not only do they ignore their own scaremongering when it suits them, they seen to think there devices work without having the tower transceivers about.

[FSTargetDrone]

Or have no qualms giving young kids mobiles to possibly effect their brain's development. Not only do they ignore their own scaremongering when it suits them, they seen to think there devices work without having the tower transceivers about.

And of somewhat more immediate concern, kids using handhelds and cell phones while driving.

[Winston Blake]

I'm not incredulous regarding these fears. I don't support them, I haven't done enough research into the topic, but I'm not incredulous. I read the book The Body Electric many years ago and the author describes numerous experiments where nonthermal, non-ionising EM radiation had clear physiological effects. I seriously doubt that any of the the anti-wireless folks involved in this case actually believe that wi-fi signals are thermal or ionising health risks.

It's about bioelectromagnetics and magnetobiology. For example, the author above describes his discovery of weak electric fields surrounding the breaks in healing bones, and how he applied similar fields to patches of healthy bones and caused aberrant growth there. Other tissues respond to weak alternating fields i.e. non-thermal, non-ionising EM radiation. He goes into detail explaining experiments which IIRC, showed how such weak fields provided an orienting mechanism to growing cells (nerve cells in one case, IIRC) to let them know which direction is 'up' and 'front' and thus where to grow properly.

Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that, while I believe most of the anti-EM hysteria is just that, I think it can be traced back to genuine research that really does show that some configurations of alternating electric fields can mess up the body's subtle mechanisms for managing cell growth. I specifically recall claims that fields caused by certain common 50Hz (American) power signals caused certain health effects, whereas the same signals at 60Hz (much of the world) did not. That book got a bit kooky on speculation toward the end, but the parts where he was actually describing the science were entirely plausible to me. AFAIK, these fields of study are still poorly understood.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Fields for cell orientation? They already get what they need via chemotaxis with its variety of cytokines, feedback mechanisms and whatever else you care to look at in regards to hormonal related chemical messengers. I've yet to hear anything regarding such EM fields at all outside navigation for birds and alignment for magneto-bacteria. Is this guy published in any journals? Even if if isn't, how does he explain the total lack of physiological effects from decades of exposure to such radiation from far more powerful transmitters?

Sorry, but it's bullshit until that is answered.

[Darth Wong]

Funny how the effects of electromagnetic fields on human physiological processes are less than the effects of simple heat, but nobody worries about simple heating.

[Redleader34]

In Ironic news, I was watching C-Span last night, and they were talking about cell phones and children. This one group of doctors brought evidence that seemed to suggest that in youths, cell phones seem to have a greater spread of energy into the brain than older youths. However, the doctors were forced to admit the link was "tenuous" if I could remember correctly.

[Winston Blake]

Is this guy published in any journals?

A little googling brings up this page, which if you scroll past the woo-woo stuff lists 91 papers he's published since 1960.

Even if if isn't, how does he explain the total lack of physiological effects from decades of exposure to such radiation from far more powerful transmitters?

Sorry, but it's bullshit until that is answered.

As I said I read it perhaps 6 years ago, but IIRC his claim was that the frequencies and exposure patterns were the key characteristics, not the raw amplitude. Like a radio that only picks up a few channels.

[JCady]

Is this guy published in any journals?

A little googling brings up this page, which if you scroll past the woo-woo stuff lists 91 papers he's published since 1960.

Pfeh, that's nothing more than an infodump off of PubMed. Most of those papers are in relatively obscure journals, and focus on specific biomeical applications of pulsed EM fields, not on their general dangerousness. At best, it's an unproven and unlikely assumption which has been pounced on by woo-woo conspiracy theorists.

[Molyneux]

There's an episode of anti-transmitter hysteria here almost every month, with people organizing rallies to prevent transmitter towers from being erected near homes, etc.

It looks like some scam artists have found a new target with wi-fi...

It is a conspiracy.

To sell tin foil hats.

Oddly enough, that is actually something of a possibility.
Read up on the "white space" debate, and you have broadcasters fighting tooth and nail against opening them up because...well...no-one really knows. They haven't given a single reason that's backed up by any evidence.

If it's people acting stupid, I suspect stupidity.
If it's a corporation acting stupidly, I suspect malice.

[Winston Blake]

At best, it's an unproven and unlikely assumption which has been pounced on by woo-woo conspiracy theorists.

That's precisely the point I'm making. I'm not taking up arms in favour of this hysteria. I'm saying it's not just a matter of 'LOL thermal/ionising' - there's some gray science behind it.