[ RadSafe ] Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution ahealth time bomb?

Mon Apr 23 11:34:49 CDT 2007

The major health effects of Wi-Fi are the same as for cell phones: The
negative of people fiddling with them when they should be paying
attention to something else (like driving or walking) and the positive
of being to summon emergency help or get critical information almost
instantly from almost anywhere.  The first effect kills or injures
probably hundreds, maybe thousands, of people per day world wide.  The
second effect saves the lives, health, and safety of similar numbers of
people each day.  In comparison, even if the effects the opponents claim
are correct (notice that they never do the obvious experiment that would
prove their position, but only study existing data that often looks
pruned) they are vanishingly small in comparison.  

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
Behalf Of Sandy Perle
Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 8:16 AM
To: radsafe at radlab.nl; powernet at hps1.org
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution
ahealth time bomb? 

This is getting a huge amount of Press, including Cable News Network
coverage:

Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution a health time bomb? 

It's on every high street and in every coffee shop and school. But
experts have serious concerns about the effects of electronic smog from
wireless networks linking our laptops and mobiles, reports Geoffrey Lean

Published: 22 April 2007 

Being "wired-up" used to be shorthand for being at the cutting edge,
connected to all that is cool. No longer. Wireless is now the only thing
to be. 

Go into a Starbucks, a hotel bar or an airport departure lounge and you
are bound to see people tapping away at their laptops, invisibly
connected to the internet. Visit friends, and you are likely to be shown
their newly installed system.

Lecture at a university and you'll find the students in your audience
tapping away, checking your assertions on the world wide web almost as
soon as you make them. And now the technology is spreading like a Wi-Fi
wildfire throughout Britain's primary and secondary schools.

The technological explosion is even bigger than the mobile phone
explosion that preceded it. And, as with mobiles, it is being followed
by fears about its effect on health - particularly the health of
children. Recent research, which suggests that the worst fears about
mobiles are proving to be justified, only heightens concern about the
electronic soup in which we are increasingly spending our lives.

Now, as we report today, Sir William Stewart (pictured below right), the
man who has issued the most authoritative British warnings about the
hazards of mobiles, is becoming worried about the spread of Wi-Fi. The
chairman of the Health Protection Agency - and a former chief scientific
adviser to the Government - is privately pressing for an official
investigation of the risks it may pose.

Health concerns show no sign of slowing the wireless expansion. One in
five of all adult Britons now own a wireless-enabled laptop. There are
35,000 public hotspots where they can use them, usually at a price.

In the past 18 months 1.6 million Wi-Fi terminals have been sold in
Britain for use in homes, offices and a host of other buildings. By some
estimates, half of all primary schools and four fifths of all secondary
schools have installed them.

Whole cities are going wireless. First up is the genteel, almost
bucolic, burgh of Norwich, which has installed a network covering almost
the whole of its centre, spanning a 4km radius from City Hall. It takes
in key sites further away, including the University of East Anglia and a
local hospital, and will be expanded to take in rural parts of the south
of the county.

More than 200 small aerials were attached to lamp posts to create the
network, which anyone can use free for an hour. There is nothing to stop
the 1,000 people who use it each day logging off when their time is up,
and logging on again for another costless session.

"We wanted to see if something like this could be done," says Anne
Carey, the network's project manager. "People are using it and finding
it helpful.
It is, I think, currently the largest network of its kind."

Not for much longer. Brighton plans to launch a city-wide network next
year, and Manchester is planning one covering over 400 square miles,
providing free access to 2.2 million people.

So far only a few, faint warnings have been raised, mainly by people who
are so sensitised to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobiles,
their masts and Wi-Fi that they become ill in its presence. The World
Health Organisation estimates that up to three out of every hundred
people are "electrosensitive" to some extent. But scientists and doctors
- and some European governments - are adding their voices to the alarm
as it becomes clear that the almost universal use of mobile phones may
be storing up medical catastrophe for the future.

A recent authoritative Finnish study has found that people who have used
mobiles for more than ten years are 40 per cent more likely to get a
brain tumour on the same side of the head as they hold their handset;
Swedish research suggests that the risk is almost four times as great.
And further research from Sweden claims that the radiation kills off
brain cells, which could lead to today's younger generation going senile
in their forties and fifties.

Professor Lawrie Challis, who heads the Government's official mobile
safety research, this year said that the mobile could turn out to be
"the cigarette of the 21st century".

There has been less concern about masts, as they emit very much less
radiation than mobile phones. But people living - or attending schools -
near them are consistently exposed and studies reveal a worrying
incidence of symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, nausea, dizziness and
memory problems. There is also some suggestion that there may be an
increase in cancers and heart disease.

Wi-Fi systems essentially take small versions of these masts into the
home and classroom - they emit much the same kind of radiation. Though
virtually no research has been carried out, campaigners and some
scientists expect them to have similar ill-effects. They say that we are
all now living in a soup of electromagnetic radiation one billion times
stronger than the natural fields in which living cells have developed
over the last 3.8 billion years. This, they add, is bound to cause
trouble

Prof Leif Salford, of Lund University - who showed that the radiation
kills off brain cells - is also deeply worried about wi-fi's addition to
"electronic smog".

There is particular concern about children partly because they are more
vulnerable - as their skulls are thinner and their nervous systems are
still developing - and because they will be exposed to more of the
radiation during their lives.

The Austrian Medical Association is lobbying against the deployment of
Wi-Fi in schools. The authorities of the province of Salzburg has
already advised schools not to install it, and is now considering a ban.
Dr Gerd Oberfeld, Salzburg's head of environmental health and medicine,
says that the Wi-Fi is "dangerous" to sensitive people and that "the
number of people and the danger are both growing".

In Britain, Stowe School removed Wi-Fi from part of its premises after a
classics master, Michael Bevington - who had taught there for 28 years -
developed headaches and nausea as soon as it was installed.

Ian Gibson, the MP for the newly wireless city Norwich is calling for an
official inquiry into the risks of Wi-Fi. The Professional Association
of Teachers is to write to Education Secretary Alan Johnson this week to
call for one.

Philip Parkin, the general secretary of the union, says; "I am concerned
that so many wireless networks are being installed in schools and
colleges without any understanding of the possible long-term
consequences.

"The proliferation of wireless networks could be having serious
implications for the health of some staff and pupils without the cause
being recognised."

But, he added, there are huge commercial pressures" which may be why
there has not yet been "any significant action".

Guidelines that were ignored

The first Stewart Report, published in May 2000, produced a series of
sensible recommendations. They included: discouraging children from
using mobiles, and stopping the industry from promoting them to the
young; publicising the radiation levels of different handsets so that
customers could choose the lowest; making the erection of phone masts
subject to democratic control through the planning system; and stopping
the building of masts where the radiation "beam of greatest intensity"
fell on schools, unless the school and parents agreed.

The Government accepted most of these recommendations, but then, as 'The
Independent on Sunday' has repeatedly pointed out, failed to implement
them.
Probably, it has lost any chance to curb the use of mobiles by children
and teenagers. Since the first report, mobile use by the young has
doubled. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

Sandy Perle
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations Global Dosimetry Solutions,
Inc. 
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714 Extension 2306 
Tel: (949) 419-1000 Extension 2306

Fax:(949) 296-1144

Global Dosimetry Website:  <http://www.dosimetry.com/>
http://www.dosimetry.com/ 

Personal Website:  <http://sandy-travels.com/> http://sandy-travels.com/

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