How Bad Can Wi-fi Be?

An anonymous reader writes "Sunday night in the UK, the BBC broadcast an alarmist Panorama news programme that suggested wireless networking might be damaging our health. Their evidence? Well, they admitted there wasn't any, but they made liberal use of the word 'radiation', along with scary graphics of pulsating wifi base stations. They rounded-up a handful of worried scientists, but ignored the majority of those who believe wifi is perfectly harmless. Some quotes from the BBC News website companion piece: 'The radiation Wi-Fi emits is similar to that from mobile phone masts ... children's skulls are thinner and still forming and tests have shown they absorb more radiation than adults'. What's the science here? Can skulls really 'absorb' EM radiation? The wifi signal is in the same part of the EM spectrum as cellphones but it's not 'similar' to mobile phone masts, is it? Isn't a phone mast several hundred/thousand times stronger? Wasn't safety considered when they drew up the 802.11 specs?"

Comments

Won't somebody please...

[icthus13]

Think of the children!!!
Seriously, it's sad that supposed "news" programs air things like this just to get ratings. What's even sadder is that lots of people believe them, so tech-savvy people like us now have to spend time explaining to Aunt Jane that the big evil wifi will not give her cat cancer.

Re:Won't somebody please...

[CmdrGravy]

The problem with programs like this is that it's likely create the same effect the reporting on MMR Vaccinations did. In that case despite massed ranks of scientific and medical studies and scientists saying there was no danger from MMR vaccinations a large number of people chose to believe that either there was a danger or there could be well be a danger based on reports in the media.

The trouble is that it's impossible to prove absolutely that wireless emissions are 100% safe and any good scientist if pressed will agree with that. A lot of people then choose to think that this must indicate there is a real danger and believe the shrieked warnings of people who think they have some disease absolutely caused by their wireless router. Pointing out that there is no evidence of wireless emissions being harmful is a wasted excercise on these people who only seem to be able to think in black and white

"No evidence yet !" they wail "But you wont tell me it's 100% safe either ! Destroy all wireless !"

What's often missing is a sense of perspective, cars are extremely dangerous and kill hundreds of thousands people a year throughout the world but most people are perfectly happy to drive them or walk in the vicinity of them.

I think the difference might be that people can easily see the dangers posed by cars themselves whereas there is no visible evidence of MMR vaccines or phone masts killing people so people have no way of easily assesing the threat and instead have to rely on people telling them things they don't really understand.

Obviously we can't do anything about people choosing not to buy wireless routers for use in their own homes because of a fear of the perceived risks they pose but we should be able to stop these people stopping the use of these things in society in general, e.g. in schools where we should use proper standards of evidence for assessing threat levels and not allow even a majority of parents to make changes unless they can present proper evidence for their beliefs.

What crap.

[Mockylock]

All day we're around Microwaves, XRays, High voltage lines, lights, televisions and Radio signals. There are TONS, of course... but how much more is actually from outside the atmosphere?

The only thing that's frying our kid's brains are their ideas. I'm not overlooking child safety, but there are WAY more harmful waves out there than WiFi.

In the meantime, their children are outside getting burnt without sunscreen.

The BBC should know better...

[Xest]

Frankly the BBC was irresponsible in showing this episode of Panorama. I'm against censorship, but informational programs produced by a tax-payer funded media outlet should not be spouting such paranoid, biased crap as Panorama did last night.

This is arguably the worst case of the BBC scrambling for ratings I've ever witnessed. Never before have I seen them stoop so low to try and raise viewing figures. I was sat watching it waiting for the part where they offer the opposing view of the situation to allow people to make their own minds up, unfortunately however, that never came - it was one sided anti-wifi propaganda all the way through, from start to finish.

About the only attempt at offering an opposing view was the brief mention that the WHO states that there is no known risk of wifi at this time, this brief mentioning was followed by a couple of minutes of slagging off the credibility of the WHO.

I'm no expert when it comes to wifi, radiation and so forth and I'm not claiming that wifi is 100% safe - it may well pose risks. The problem with the program however seemed to be that it's entire argument is based on the premise that there is some other danger to human health from radiation other than the heating effect, and from what I've read elsewhere, there is absolutely no evidence that there is any effect other than the heating effect. I'm sure those with better scientific knowledge may be able to correct me on this if I'm wrong, but if it's true as has been reported by other news outlets (and in fact even by the BBC themselves online) then the majority of the program was fundamentally flawed in it's arguments.

What bothers me most is that we've gone from one lazy teacher looking for an excuse to get time off work claiming that wifi gives him headaches to a national wifi scandal. The worst part is that most reports that refer to the teacher in question who sparked this row ignore the fact that in scientific tests the teacher could neither a) tell whether wifi was on or off and b) now claims he gets these headaches wherever he is, even when not around wifi!

If Wifi does indeed pose a threat then I agree we need to do something, but thus far this seems equivalent to the whole terrorism/think of the children/drugs/computer games make people kill FUD.

Re:Eek!

[CastrTroy]

I see lots of complaints of this. People who are extra sensitive to electronics and such. I would like to submit these people to a double blind study so that we can prove (or disprove) the effects are real, and not people who just have something else wrong with them that makes them feel more tired, or have headaches, or unable to concentrate, or whatever other symptoms they have. It seems to me like there's a lot of anecdotal evidence, but that there isn't any real studies being done.

Re:FUD

[VeriTea]

Output power doesn't tell the whole story, proximity is much more important. Electromagnetic power density dissipates at the inverse square of the distance from the emitter.

All you have to do is consider the receive power. It is typical to receive a wifi signal at -65dBm, while a cell signal indoors is seldom stronger then -80dBm. Even if you consider multiple channels and multiple carriers on each cell tower, you would seldom get a composite power level greater then -70dBm indoors. -65dBm is approximately 3 times stronger then -70dBm. Of course these are typical levels, but when you consider how many wifi networks you usually pick up in your own home (esp. apartment), you will almost always receive a far greater exposure to electromagnetic radiation from wifi then from cell phone towers.

Full disclosure: I perform power density theoretical studies and measurement levels for the wireless industry, and also design in-building wireless repeater systems so I have a fair bit of experience here.

Re:What's the Science in This?

[nomadic]

admitting in the brief write-up that there isn't any science behind this?

Maybe they read the article, which points out various scientists who argue that there IS evidence about it.

I've got to say, the ridiculously emotional backlash I see on /. against ANY suggestion that wifi or cell phone signals MAY cause some adverse health effects is sloppy, anti-science thinking.

I personally don't believe cell phone signals or wifi signals are strong enough to cause health problems. But I'm certainly not going to be arrogant enough to proclaim that there absolutely are no health problems and we shouldn't even look at the problem.

I thought /. != FUD.

Please, half of /. is FUD. /. is only anti-FUD in regards to its pet causes.

Re:FUD

[paeanblack]

he scientific method is:

      1. Observe.
      2. Hypothesise.
      3. Test.
      4. Repeat.

Presumably this scientist was on phase 3; attempting to test his hypothesis. When they testing indicated that the hypothesis was false, he altered it to conform to the newer observations.

Unfortunately life is not Star Trek. The pragmatic method is:

      1. Hypothesise.
      2. Beg.
      3. "Prove".
      4. Publish.

Science costs money. Money comes from benefactors. Benefactors don't like surprises. You publish the results you were paid to discover, or you don't get more money. Welcome to the real world. Wear a helmet.

Re:What's the Science in This?

[kestasjk]

Well I don't think programs that only exist to scare you are worthwhile. I've never seen a Panorama program that wasn't a scare-fest. When you watch one on a topic you know nothing about the scientists seem well informed and the threats seem genuine. It's only when you watch a Panorama program on a topic you're remotely familiar with that you realize what nonsense it is.

One of them was about the dangers of black holes. They'll boil the oceans, suck the life right off the planet, there's a super massive one at the center of our galaxy, they feed and then they stay silent, drifting through space until WHAM. Lots of sound bytes of scientists saying "it's only a matter of time", "you can't see them, but we know they're there", "we have no idea how many there are", etc. In only 5 billion years our galaxy will collide with another one, and we might drift right into that galaxy's super massive black hole, etc, etc.

It's that sort of programming, and if they convince laypeople that more money needs to be spent on researching this than is really necessary it only does damage.

Re:Sounds familiar

[mattpalmer1086]

FYI, I know perfectly well how science operates. I was not making any personal judgement on whether global warming is real, caused by human activity, or by the flying spaghetti monster.

I was attacking the position (hopefully with a little humour) that global warming is all FUD. That position seems untenable; that a large majority of the world's scientists would all conspire to promote falsehood. They may be entirely wrong, but the majority are in broad agreement.

Given that the consequences of not acting on this information may be disastrous, the precautionary principle suggests that we listen to them. Taken to its logical extreme, you would be advocating never acting on any scientific advice, as it *might* be wrong.