WiFi Witch Hunt

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Wi-fi worry

Yes folks - the luddites are at it again! Health concerns over the electromagnetic radiation of WiFi is causing a big switch-off in schools. The reported symptoms of this dangerous radiation are headaches and skin rashes.

The funny thing is that I had both of those as a teenager too, as did most of the people I know. But hang on - that was 20 years ago!

What really worries me is that engineers are acting spooked over this kind of thing:

Engineer Anthony Wood, a father with two young children
from Bristol, refuses to install a wi-fi network to link his family’s
three home computers.

“I don’t like the idea of transmitting a microwave into
your brain. The frequency is important, not just the power. The higher
the frequency, the more energy there is in the waves. I think wi-fi
waves are close to microwaves, yet they’re on all the time.

Just take a walk along the street. I guarantee that within
minutes you’ll see someone with a mobile (cell) phone clamped to the
side of their head. These things pump out enough power to reliably
transmit to base stations that are literally miles away. Yet very few
people even stop to consider that this might be bad for them. When you
weigh up the [potential and totally unproven] risks and benefits, a
cellphone comes down on the Good Thing side of the balance.

So get a grip people. Electromagnetic power decreases with the square of your distance from the source (twice as far away means 1/2*1/2 = 1/4 of the power). So mobile phone base-stations are no-where near as dangerous as people think.

And WiFi is so far off the bottom of the scale that you’d struggle to even notice it.

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