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University Bans wi-fi as Health Concern
BaltikaTroika writes "A Canadian university has banned wi-fi, since the university President sees a possible link between electric and magnetic fields and brain tumors. According to the head of the university, "the jury's out on this one, I'm not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students." Is anybody outside of this university's administration concerned about this?"
WTF?
Better ban cordless phones, too, and everything else that uses 2.4 Ghz.
Legalize recreational marijuana. Seriously.
Carcinogenic inks in the paper
Alcohol
Cigarettes
Vending Machines
Money
Pesticides on the grass
Asphalt roads
Air Conditioning
Natural Gas heating
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Gee, where have we all been hearing THAT phrase lately?
Fact: Nobody has ever demonstrated in a repeatable, peer-reviewed, properly-controlled study that low-level RF radiation at nonionizing wavelengths has any biological effect whatsoever. For every study that shows correlated effects, two more show none at all.
Fact: WiFi adapters, even the gray-market 100 mW jobs you buy on eBay, transmit 1/10 to 1/100 the power of a cell phone.
Fact: Your microwave oven leaks more 2.4-GHz energy than your WiFi card emits intentionally. For best results, cut a 1" slit in package wrapper and rotate dish after 2 minutes on HIGH.
Fact: DNA damage from 2.4 GHz radiation at athermal levels would require a form of matter-energy interaction that is currently unknown to physics. There's a guaranteed Nobel Prize for anyone who can document such an interaction, because as far as anyone knows, we pretty have all the fundamental interactions covered at this point. Get cracking!
(Probable) fact: This joker has some sort of financial interest in a local commercial ISP whose business would be threatened by a campus-wide network. Nobody that stupid runs a university... but conflicts of interest aren't exactly unheard-of in that line of work, are they?
that the earth is one giant magnetic field
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I don't remember seeing that.
And, of course, inspect all staff for magic magnetic bracelets and fire those wearing them. Except those working in the school's Department of Magick.
"... president Fred Gilbert won't allow it until he's satisfied EMF (electric and magnetic fields) exposure doesn't pose a health risk, particularly to young people."
The article makes it obvious he was trying to be a big hero at a town hall meeting. In actuality, he knows nothing about electromagnetism, but is not afraid to pretend that he does. We see a lot of that in recent years, as people pretend to know more about computers than they do.
Anyone worried about radio waves causing cancer can try to make that theory work. There is a huge barrier, however, in the form of a very very small number: Planck's Constant. Planck's constant = 6.626068 × 10-34 m2 kg/S. It's that 10**-34 that makes it difficult for low-energy electromagetism like wireless transmissions to interact with chemical reactions. Thirty-four zeros is a LOT of zeros after the decimal point.
Off topic: I've linked to the Encyclopedia Britannica above because the article about Planck's constant is very short. The article in Wikipedia is long. I've frequently seen the Encyclopedia Britannica be misleading because of the severe limitation placed on size of the articles due to paper costs. Wikipedia does not have that problem.
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Cheney: Killing small animals and Iraqis for fun and profit.