City-Provided Wi-Fi Rejected Over "Health Concerns"

exphose writes "A small, hippie-friendly town in northern California, Sebastopol, had made an agreement with Sonic.net to provide free Wi-Fi across the downtown area. However, not everyone in town was pleased with the arrangement. According to Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin, citizens had voiced concerns that 'create enough suspicion that there may be a health hazard' and so they canceled their contract with Sonic.net. Some more details are at the blog of Sonic.net's CEO."

Comments

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

[AlecC]

There have been som studies funded by the UK Department of Health which showed no convincing results from cellphones. Now, they migh, of course, be in the pocket of the cellphome manufacturers, like they might be in the pocket of the drug manufacturers. But with a socialised health service, they are the people who are going to end up payiong the first level, purely medical, costs of any ill effects that there may be. Whcih suggests to me that, if they were going to err, they would be likely to err in the direction of overcaution rather than recklessness.

All the accusations against cellphones have been generally anecdotal i.e. a number of people have been found who were both heavy cellphone users and got brain tumours. But when large scale statistical studues are done, these "clusters" disappear. If you ask averybody with a tumour whether they were a heavy cellphone user, some will say yes. Probably more than really are, becasue moderate users will tend to judge themselves heavier in order to have something to blame for their tragedy - randomness seems much more frightening that a technological accident.