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Group Wants Wi-Fi Banned, Citing Allergy
54mc writes "A small group in Santa Fe, New Mexico is claiming that the city is discriminating against them by having wireless networks in public buildings. How are these buildings discriminatory? Simple. These people are allergic to Wi-Fi. And they're suing the city." I've been trying to sue people for the streetlights that I'm allergic to as well.
"double blind test."
Allergic?, yeah sure you are.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm alergic to car emissions but I can't sue every driver.
Why UNIX?
send them to live in some remote caves in the mountains. as for me, I'm allergic to idiots
I'm allergic to stupidity. Can we ban these people?
Are they allergic? Let's not let data get in the way of a good argument: No they're not.
Wow, even Wikipedia agrees.
They're spacin me out with all their "electro-waves" I wonder if they know they've been bombarded with electro-waves their whole life. Or maybe they haven't heard of the sun.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
I'm allergic to stupid. Can we sue these people right out of existence? Pretty please?
I'm desperately trying to find something meaningful to say to this issue, that would rate me insightful. So I'm gonna go ahead and ponder over the fact, that their allergic reactions are probably an effect of solar gamma-radiation than it is your local Starbucks.
It's all fun & games until someone loses the game.
They can't ban WiFi because I'm allergic to stupid.
Now how will we decide whose needs trump whose?
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Two of the 44 sensitive individuals correctly judged if it was on or off in all six tests, as did five out of 114 control participants. So, perhaps a few double blind tests are in order.
... violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Does everything have to be patriotic over there? Even your disability laws?-1 not first post
I have some designs for tin foil hats, I just could never find the proper market.
Looks like I am gonna be rich!!!!
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I'm allergic to idiots, can I have them banned too?
Fortunately the mental hospitals don't have Wi-Fi, just good old shock therapy.
Should everyone with respiratory problems sue their cities due to pollution?
Because many, many studies have been done on many variations of radio waves and their effect on humans and have all concluded there is no danger so long as the safety limits already set, are adhered too.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I say we quarantine them all in a nice Faraday Cage.
Caveat Utilitor
Everyone wants to have a mobile phone that works everywhere, broadband internet, cheap electricity in their homes and produce tons of garbage but they will go to streets with pitchforks if you want to build a cell tower, Wi-Fi access point, nuclear powerplant or waste disposal facility in their neighborhood.
People got so used to having all the modern technology available to them that they simply forgot what makes such things possible.
Allergic to Wi-Fi? Fine! I can understand that. I'll turn off my access point as soon as you get rid of your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth enabled computer, cell phone and your microwave oven.
Can't you see that WiFi signals are bad for all of us? WiFi was actually created by the Ultra-Evil lord Cheenu 100 Billion years ago to suppress the "WiTans" - the evil beings that inhabit all of us creating misery war and famine on earth. Quickly! Grab the nearest hard object and take to the streets! WiFi must end. (This is what Wiologists actually believe)
FTA: Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones. "I get chest pain and it doesn't go away right away," he said
Well then, looks like you'd better move to the middle of nowhere, rather than trying to live in a fairly large city.
Even If:
1) A physiological basis existed for having an autoimmune response to RF,
2) Only the 2.4GHz range of frequencies triggers it (since we literally live in a sea of RF, including from natural sources),
3) The 9th circuit accepts "electrosensitivity" as a valid "disability", and
4) The city backs down on this...
Well, given all that - What do you plan to do about the 50,000 nonmunicipal WAPs in your area? The FAA, NOAA, and military radar installations scattered around the country? Or for that matter, the microwave ovens found in every home and restauraunt in the country?
And even if you have a legitimate complaint - Welcome to the real world, where no one cares about your pitiful psychosomatic response to spoooooooky radio waves. Get a shrink, get used to chest pain, or move to Afghanistan.
Personally, I have all kinds of allergies to detergents, and other artificial things in the environment, and it seems unfair to me that everyone dismisses this as crazy. We don't understand all of science. Why is it unreasonable that some parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are dangerous ? X-rays are for sure. And no one knows why cancer rates have increased so much in the last few years.
I think the various stats, articles, and studies linked elsewhere in the discussion give good reason to be dismissive. Whether the jaded offensiveness is justified is another quesion.
Its just the internets ma'am. NEDM.
I used to live near some people like this. A strange and humor-impaired bunch. Like the filthy-speech movement, this IMHO is good to see, e.g. We live in a society where one can apply for redress in court for ANYTHING. OTOH it also serves to piss off the ignorant masses who will soon demand that this sort of "abuse" of the legal system be outlawed. They'll probably say it is necessary to conserve resources for the War On Terror.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Lets just glue some crystals and magnets together, hand them out, and say the block the harmful energy.
I'm going to side with them and say wifi should definitely be banned in public buildings. Not because of the allergy, but because wifi is a huge security hole if it isn't handled properly, and one shouldn't assume public institutions are capable of handling ANYTHING properly.
Passing the cost of pollution back to polluters instead of letting it be carried by the commons would allow the market to solve the pollution problem. Let the invisible hand do the dirty work.
So this story comes out and people are all like "let them die, the bastards, they're stupid," but a story about fat people causing global warming comes out and everyone's like "lose some weight, fatty!" How's that work?
Actually, even IF say, 10 people were allergic to Wi-Fi, would that justify to slow down progress and lower the quality of life of more than enough other people just for them?
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
use microwave ovens? They operate on the same band of frequencies, along with many other consumer devices. The ovens are shielded pretty well, but nothing is perfect. The radiation leakage is measurable and can overload a close by WiFi receiver.
Also, the Sun puts out quite a bit of microwave radiation. People found that out in the early satellite dish days. Aiming your dish towards the sun would cause a lot of noise.
For those who have hellish hay fever, can they get flowering plants banned during the summer, or sue those who grow them? And for those who are allergic to cats and dogs, can they get furry animals banned, or sue their owners? I'm allergic to washing, but that doesn't stop people shouting at me to have a bath whenever I sit next to them on the train!
Some of my old neighbors were like these people. The (very) few who weren't obese, looked anorexic.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Also, check out, Electromagnetic Fields (EMF): The Killing Fields , it's full of lol:
Dude, why are you assuming they are humans? That's discriminatory.
This is in New Mexico, after all.
An allergen is a nonparasitic antigen capable of stimulating a type-I hypersensitivity reaction in atopic individuals. From: Allergen
2 (on/off) ^6 (tests) = 64, so 1/64 would be expected to be correct with purely random guesses. I'm sure someone who knows statistics better than I will jump in, but 2/44 or 5/114 "correct" (even though better than chance) no doubt has little significance, given the small sample size.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Maybe they are also allergic to the greatest source of radiation: THE SUN!
We should ban it like Mr Burns wanted.
Cause I'm getting hives!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
The easiest way to fix this would be for this group to start wearing tin-foil hats. And if they already are, they need thicker ones.
First they came for the bees, and I did not speak out because I was not a bee.
Then they came for the electro-sensitive, and I did not speak out because I was not electro-sensitive.
Then they came for the ethernet cables, and I did not speak out because I stopped using ethernet cables.
Then they came for me, and I enjoyed worldwide wireless coverage on my laptop. Woohoo!
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
Because many, many studies have been done on many variations of radio waves and their effect on humans and have all concluded there is no danger so long as the safety limits already set, are adhered too.
FOR EVERY EXPERT THERE IS AN IDIOT TRYING TO OUT WIT THE EXPERT -NY2DALLAS
To reiterate what an earlier poster said, there have been studies, and none have shown this to be a real issue.
Furthermore, it's not up to the people who want to disprove these people to provide the evidence, it's up to them to provide the evidence, which I guarantee they won't. They'll have some pseudo-scientist walk in there, he'll talk about the effects that these poor souls have to live through constantly, and then go home and continue writing on his webpage about how science has been stealing the future from us by suppressing the discovery of his perpetual motion machine!
And this would be fine as long as judges and juries knew how to read science and recognize its value compared to pseudo science, but most people can't. The patent office, at least as of a few years ago, patented multiple perpetual motion machines every year, either because they didn't read the application or because they didn't know that it was physically impossible. So, as long as they can put some crackpot up there who knows enough science-sounding gibberish to fool someone who doesn't know better, they actually have a chance of winning.
Is it possible that these people are actually allergic to wifi signals? Absolutely. It wouldn't even be a contender for strangest thing ever. The reason there's such a backlash against it is because there have been so many times that people have made similar allegations and ignored, lied, and suppressed actual science showing that they were wrong. Tempers are already flared over this issue, and it looks like these people are going to do the exact same thing that's been done before.
I break out in song.
*ducks*
I've had allergies all my life, ranging from skin conditions to breathing problems to third arms growing out of my back (OK, so that last one was a bit of an exaggeration - could have been handy, though).
I resent people that purport to "help everyone" because of the health problems of a few. Screw you! I can either survive in a "normal" environment or I cannot, let's see what happens. It really, really pisses me off when crusaders take it upon themselves to speak or legislate on my behalf.
I suppose it's pretty obvious that said "crusaders" almost invariably are employed by an organization whose mandate is to interfere with normal people's lives just to "help" us cripples.
Fuck off already!
running water, medicine and any food you don't grow yourself.
There have been many studies which have shown the exact opposite. What makes the study complex is the fact these cellphone towers have not been around for such a long time and brain tumors take a long time to develop - and so any study on this must take at least a decade or so.
Is there a planet or a moon to which we can send these people to be with their Luddite kind? Or has another planet already done this to us?
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
Ok, Lets talk about the science of RF and cancer rates.
What we know, without a cause being understood:
* Cancer rates are sky rocketing.
* Natural systems are failing (Bees)
* RF energy at certain levels does cause soft-tissue damage
* We are in a sea of RF energy:
* RF energy is naturally occurring and is partly responsible for mutations (evolution)
* Man made RF is at an all-time high.
* It is not well understood how combinations of RF can cause damage.
Italian electromagnetic fields three times other areas and Vatican Cardinals jailed:
http://www.epicentro.iss.it/ben/precedenti/ottobre/1_en.htm
Ok, so we have _some_ evidence that RF causes real damage. Its documented.
We have some people who claim sensitivity to RF energy (Do you _like) florescent lights?, Those transformers are noisy!! Both audible range and RF wise)
What I hear most people saying on Slashdot is that people who suffer from real RF exposure should just suck it up! So what if you never smoked and you get cancer! Too bad! We still get to enjoy all that high speed porn.
What is it about Slashdot that it becomes an empathy free zone. What happened to Science? We have someone stating that they have an observed phenomenon, we have weak epidemiological evidence that long-term exposure to RF causes real problems. Talk about your junk science!!
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
I seriously bet $1,000 that the group is like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: Funded by telecom corporates.
Dig deeper into this group by "recommending" they be sent to a psychiatric ward in Gitmo, and you will see the truth spilling out.
God, i wish the Gestapo were around today. They would so get the truth out of these jokers and they don't even break your teeth.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I'm concerned about the fact that children aren't mentioned once in this article. You would think that these grownups who are allergic to wi-fi would also mention that their children complain about the effects of wi-fi. Perhaps the wi-fi has already killed off all of the children?
If I think something is funny, I will probably mod it +1 Insightful. "It's funny because it's true."
The patent office no longer reads for content. They get so many patent applications per year that they just grant them all and let the courts work it out.
Actually there is a risk - if you're very near (one meter or so - under two meters anyway) for long time periods every day.
Of course there's no health risk for having wifi routers around unless you're very near of them all the time.
But you shall not be fooled. It can be dangerous if you spend a lot of time very near the router. Remember that if they can't prove if it's dangerous or not, they always say it isn't. So the real truth usually is in between...
I for one know a few people who get massive headaches from 2.4GHz RF. They can without a doubt detect when something is on or off. I have tested this myself with my PocketPC wireless radios, the wifi is the worst and the bluetooth somewhat. Has Slashdot really turned into a bunch of people posting garbage? There is no serious discussion going on here anymore, just a bunch of mindless comments and fear mongering with a bit of baseless trashing thrown in for good measure. Time to find a new place where serious discussion can take place.
While the scientist in me finds it hard to imagine a mechanism, I happen to know these folks, some are productive PHD physicists, and I have to take it seriously. They clearly are ill and they clearly do get better when removed from electrical environments.
I don't know what to say, Maybe they are the canaries in the coal mine even if I can't figure out why.
Doesn't their health insurance cover a faraday cage?
I'm allergic to sunlight. I should sue the US government for not blocking all sunlight. Clearly they're discriminating against me and don't want me to be able to lead a normal life.
hahahahahahahhaha, i've seen some ass-in-nine things in my life but this surely takes the cake.
Well, I'm "allergic" to "radiation" known as "loud music," and so is everyone given enough of it.
Bastard neighbors upstairs in millions of apartments still live there without eviction. This is a social / political problem. Wifi is invisible. It only produces interference is a MUCH smaller subset of neighbors (well, their radio hardware... I don't believe in EMF sensitivity) than plain noise.
It is on 24/7, but I hear of nobody creating lawsuits because they are getting interference and dropped calls. We have all been affected once or twice. Hell, where are all the fools suing our 30 year old omnipresent cellphone meshes?
Who can I sue about being allergic to idiots (aka "other people")?
:)
Local government and courtrooms seem to have the highest concentration, so I guess I'll start there
I have spoken'eth.
There are people who really do have allergies and food sensitivities and such. Those people need to be careful about what they eat and expose themselves to. But when crackpots like this enter the fray, they make trouble for us, because they makes us all look like crackpots. It's no different from over-diagnosing ADHD. There are people who really have it (although I understand, interestingly enough, that some cases are helped by dietary adjustments). But then there are the countless more who just have discipline problems; they need a smack in the butt, not Ritalin.
That all being said, there are some hypotheses that humans can be affected by EM radiation. And maybe it's not good for us. I mean, being exposed to high levels of microwaves can cook you, so I'm sure low-levels aren't entirely risk free. Then there are the proposed links between power lines and leucemia. It's all worth investigating... with a critical scientific eye. But calling it an ALLERGY is just stupid and betrays a total lack of understanding what an allergic reaction is (an immune reaction to a foreign protein).
He was referring to reproducible studies.
who do I sue?
John Soward...University of Kentucky
Like with other disabilities, they should adapt to the world instead of expecting the world to adapt to them.
So instead of trying to get all wireless communications to stop, they should work to develop clothing that blocks such waves so that they are not effected, or effected less. (Faraday Cage based shirts maybe)
Asking the public to go without Wireless communication just because a minority of the population gets discomfort would be like...
Little people requiring all public places to have little people accessible areas. Hotels would be required to have several rooms that are designed for their shorter stature... Public restrooms would have to have special stalls and lower sinks... Grocery stores would be required to have all products 4 foot or below... You get the idea.
And if they whine about how their special clothing is expensive, than they can kiss by ass! My wife has to use a power wheelchair. The costs over $10,000 USD!! (More than my van!) I also had to purchase a folding ramp to load and unload her wheelchair from my ramp... To the tune of $450.00. If I wanted to have a power lift installed... That would be another few thousand.
So they can get themselves clothing that blocks these signals! And if a single one of them owns a cell phone, 2.4 ghz cordless phone, uses anything BlueTooth, or has a WiFi router (WiFi on) should be tattooed on the forehead with "I am a publicity whore".
This loon with the chest pain doesn't seem to be bothered by lightning. Rather odd he doesn't drop down dead considering the severity of a lightning strike on the surounding electromagnetic signals. It is widely known to disrupt just about every form of radio communication in the given area where it takes place.
So what does this person and the other 'cult of the wave' members do during an electrical storm? I would wonder at why this cult is not self limiting through sudden and unexplained death. Perhaps for this group, the Tinfoil hat would not be as appropriate as first thought.
Please send your research dollars to my offshore account and I will put a highly trained team of specialists on this right away (my dog certainly qualifies as she hides under the bed as a storm approches making her an expert in this feild of study. Also she works for kibble).
The article makes so much more sense when you read Firstenberg's account with a Mort Goldman voice.
... you can sue your local Starbucks ... you can't sue the Sun ... although, I would not be surprised if someone tried ...
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
This is obviously a baseless claim since cordless phones also operate on the same frequency (2.4GHZ).
These same people are exposed to all sorts of radiation from cell phones, radio waves, TV, etc; likely they're allergic to something else or lying.
The human genome is incredibly complex - like any piece of code, there's bound to be bugs somewhere. The only real difference between a thorough security audit and doctors discovering a new type of cancer is that the silicon's much easier to reboot or patch than a tumor is to excise.
If I want to get pinned to the seat like a bug to a sheet of cardboard by having a solid steering column rammed through my chest, its my right.
Who are these Safety Nazis to tell me that I have to pay them good money for something I don't wanna buy anyway?
Let Darwinism run its course.
(Sorry Johnny, we've decided to coat the kiddie slide with broken glass and have it empty into a pool full of piranha. Its the new accelerated "Swimming for Tots" playground program.)
Brilliant.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
If there is a judge without the cajones to just summarily throw them out of court. This sort of BS costs the taxpayers money.
Cast them into a solid aluminum ingot.
That would take care of everybody's problems.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
To all ya have been joking about tin foil hats:
Watch the video in TFA. One of the people who's suing actually has special siding on his house and car to protective from the evil elctro-wavez!!!
http://www.lessemf.com/personal.html
You know, Philadelphia? One of the largest cities in the US that could fit all of Santa Fe inside it at least twice over? That's almost completely covered by a (failed) wifi network?
Yeah, no allergy reports up here. Mind you, it isn't like the network, you know, actually works well or anything.
It's interesting to note that the "allergic" people aren't trying to get Wi-Fi out of city hall yet; they're starting with the library system.
I'm sorry, but that is intrinsically counter-intuitive to what a library is; a place to freely access information. Naturally, the internet should be included in this information.
No, Jeremy, I am not comfortable judging others, it causes a constant struggle of will. I am not a doctor, nor do I claim to have seen a true cross-section of the "Environmentally Sensitive" population. What I personally observed in my 20 years living in the vortex of the Bezerkeley alternative universe is nothing more than my own perceptions. I can think of at least a dozen environmentally disabled people that I personally met while living there, and their body type and complexion differences were not my criteria for "judging" them. My decades of cultural bias led me to believe that their Far-out wackiness and hysterical hypochondria differed somewhat from my self-selected ideal. And their self-prescribed treatments with- yes, crystals and pyramids, differed somewhat with my "conventional theory" of scientific reality.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Point well taken.
I guess it would be very international of us to pass the "Citizens of All Nations with All Disabilities Act" but enforcement would be much more difficult. Unless you'd like us to plan out a few more invasions, involving street crews to lower the curbs at crosswalks.
that the results show that BOTH groups are about equally sensitive, but that doesn't answer what the study claims - "the range of symptoms and physiological response does not appear to be related to the presence of either GSM or 3G signals."
Indeed, if the results were statistically significant (and it is my contention they are NOT, due to the small sample size of only 6 "tests"), then it would seem to show that all people (even those not claiming sensitivity) are indeed sensitive to the RF fields in the test.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Keep in mind that it isn't up to the patent office to judge whether or not your idea is scientifically sound.
To my knowledge all they do is check to ensure the idea is unique, has features that can identify or differentiate it from similar ideas, and that you have filled out the paperwork and paid your money.
If the patent office could refuse patents to things they didn't think were possible, a lot of real science would have been discounted, and people's very real patented ideas stolen, before they were ever able to build a working version.
They are an agency for the protection of unique and individual ideas, not a judge, jury, or scientific body.
I don't want the patent office deciding what is scientifically valid. I do want them taking money from idiots who want to patent their perpetual motion machines.
Can I get my city to ban them as well?
*Note: I do not live in, around, or anywhere near Santa Fe
"Preservatives might just be preserving you I think that's something you missed Ya you missed it..." - Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
tin foil hats have been found to be a government conspiracy, don't you? They have exactly the opposite effect you desire.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Hey! I'm allergic to taxes. And war. Can I sue?
Im glad to see that people here (on /.) when presented with a problem, instead of dismissing it outright. Most people like to 'prove' it using a simple experiment, these people are also highly biased against finding anything supporting these individual claims, but it gives me pleasure to note that adding more evidence to the already overwhelming pile against them, is in the best interest of science. Because you never know someone might have screwed up.
Do hemlock, ricin, nightshade, and cyanide ring a bell?
Some poisonous mushrooms are so toxic that a single bite will destroy your liver, requiring a transplant if you want to live, and are lucky enough to get to medical help in the first place. Said mushrooms are virtually indistinguishable from the common button mushrooms in every grocery store and on every pizza.
Nature has PLENTY of toxins which we are not at all equipped to deal with. The above are just some well-known examples off the top of my head, and I haven't even mentioned a single venomous animal there.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
Your boyfriend doesn't want to stand in the beer line when the home team is at bat!
There are people who are light-sensitive, peanut-sensitive, heat-sensitive, cold-senstive, and pollen-sensitive.
All of them will have problems in public building which:
* are illuminated
* sell peanuts in the vending machines or cafeteria
* are too hot
* are too cold
* don't have cleanroom-level filtered air
The proper remedy for the city is to
* require the plaintiffs to prove their claim, using double-blind tests
* require the plaintiffs to prove that honoring their request will give sufficient relief to make the buildings usable, i.e. that other EM sources don't by themselves make the building unusable to the plaintiffs
* Go with the cheapest means possible to make sure that the plaintiffs have access to city services. This may mean they get free document delivery services, a wifi-free hallway, or a free tinfoil hat, for example.
If the claim is bogus or if turning off WiFi in the building won't help the plaintiffs, then the plaintiffs have no claim and are entitled to no remedy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I suppose I can sue the cordless phone manufacturers who also produce phones using the 2.4GHz range for this then, right? Since they use the same frequency and power as a WiFi network? Or cell-phone companies, or pager companies, and the radio communications companies who provide service to the police, taxis, fire dept, etc? How about TV stations for the radiation their towers cause? Radio stations for the same? People like this are why our country is a laughingstock. Please go back to Uzbekistan or wherever the hell you came from, and return to your 'dead king inheritance' scam emails instead of trying to wipe out a useful technological institution like public WiFi.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I've heard rumors for a number of years of people who were sensitive to electric fields in the most extreme cases people would convert their entire homes into a faraday cage to keep from getting rashes all over their body from stray EM radiation. Apparently the condition for some get worse and worse over time.
I call bullshit to the whole thing until someone can prove otherwise. This whole situation is especially suspect as fair tests with peer reviewed positive results should be **exceedingly** easy to come by.
Its more likely some group of people have an irrational fear of electricity or have mental issues such as being liars and attention seekers where fair tests would have a tendancy to call them out.
Why don't we sue these clowns for being idiots? Gawd knows I'm allergic to idiots. cattywhumpus
What's the maximum energy Wi-Fi can even produce?
Looking at the power adapter on my wireless router, it says it outputs 500 milliamps at 12 volts. That's 6 watts. Since the device isn't 100% efficient, there's a plethora of other stuff it has to provide with power, and the antennae are omnidirectional: I'd say you'd be lucky to absorb half of a single watt standing just a metre away from it. And the energy falls off with the square of the distance!
Isn't an histamine response required to consider something an allergy?
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
You can't bind an electromagnetic-wave to a cell receptor (Immunoglobine in most classes of Allergy). You just can't have an Allergy to an electromagnetic wave. YOU. JUST. CAN'T.
(Disclamer: IAAMD)
If it is something, it's definitely not allergy (nor lupus
In addition the symptom they are describing (chest pain during "exposure" to Wifi-enabled public buildings) seems much more typical for an episode of Anxiety than what Wifi is usually accused to provoke (cancers, disorienting bees, etc.). And Anxiety is definitely something I would expect from hippies exposed to some modern technology. (Whereas, as pointed by some other
Last but not least, microwave pollution is linked to technology which is important and useful, Wifi has also obvious benefits.
It's not the same situation as with cigarettes (whereas the main purpose of smoking is relieving the withdrawal symptoms of the smoker... Ok, I'm exaggerating, but you saw the point)
Banning Wifi completely would be the same as directly and completely banning all form of fuel-based motorised propulsion, on the ground that it contributes to pollution and causes cancers and allergy (well, technically, the substance cause increased probability of allergy arising in those with predisposition). You should try to diminish the pollution over the years, but you can't just ban cars overnight except maybe in a couple of European cities with decent public transportation.
The same with Wifi, cellphone and microwave ovens : they increase the microwave pollution, but on the other hand are pretty damn useful and made themselves almost irreplaceable. You may try finding way to decrease pollution either with small changes (bluetooth 1.x -> bluetooth 2.x) shift of usage (cellphone -> VoIP over Wifi or Blueooth) or newer technology causing less pollution.
But you have to weight the dangers and the benefits before trying to massively ban useful technology overnight.
And last but not lest correlation doesn't imply causation. Not until we have definitely more data (dose/effect relation, add/remove suspect and see impact on effect, all experiments done using a realistic signal, not just an antenna blasting a constant sinewave at full power next to the mice's cage, an explanation for the biological mechanism, etc.).
See Koch's postulate to get an idea of how to build a proof beyond the simplistic "we found them both at the same place".
Until then it good to be prudent (and avoid too much exposure when reasonably avoidable - i.e. at home keep the cell phone's cradle near the window, not near your bed's head. Use a hands free, either a wired one or one which use a lower power wireless standard, turn off Wifi when unused (saves electricity too) etc. )
but it's over reacting to completely ban a technology before a viable replacement is there.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
My sister in-law gets headaches from 802.11b/g, I can turn it on without telling her and within the hour she will have a bad headache and she will feel better almost immediately when it is turned off. One time I was at her house and turned it on quick to check something, but I accidentally left it on until I came back later in the week. She had a headache the entire time and couldn't figure out why...
There is definitely a problem with your pattern matching. Last I checked, the Sacramento Kings were a basketball team.
in a large city where you can pick up large amounts of pollution, much of which will contain metal, it should come as no surprise that the human body would become a big antenna.
... but if i'm correct, i think actually that such people should worry more about the toxic metals in their bloodstream and fat deposits than they should about the 2.4ghz radiation.
so, being "allergic" to 2.4ghz (12.5cm) radiation isn't such a surprise.
You know, I have an aunt who insists that the TV tells her to wear certain clothes and perform certain acts that, shall we say, fall outside the range of normal and acceptable human behavior. Would the prudent thing in this case be to accept that it is possible the TV is doing this to her, or to assume there's something wrong with her mind due to the fact that no one she's informed of this experiences the same effects?
did any of these studies also take into account the amount of toxic metals in the subject's bloodstream and fat deposits?
It's sort of interesting to explore the psychology of people who make claims like this. A ubiquitous trait in those who adhere to some Complementary and Alternative (i.e., not evidence based) medicine modality is that they are absolutely fixated on having some ailment. But more to the point, they also steadfastly believe that their preferred modality has the cure for whatever ails them. It's essentially just a mechanism for people to feel like they have some control in their lives.
Since when do teams score runs in basketball?
Exactly. Cell phone radiation is non-ionizing. No matter how much power you pump into it the only effect you will cause is heating. You could have the world's most powerful radio emitter at those frequencies and never knock a single electron off a molecule of your DNA. So it's only the heating that could be causing the cancer. Yet no one says that fevers cause cancer.
Not a sentence!
Well, for starters, allergy refers specifically to a hypersensitivity of the immune system to a chemical irritant. you can't be allergic to radio waves, sorry.
i would hazzard a guess that the amount of people affected by this are statistically negligable. there is also the possibility it's a load of bollocks!
let's be honest here, america is quite a litigious society where many people are on the mnake through litigation. this could quite possibly be another case of that.
As the first post suggested a double blind test would soon sort this out.
I bet they are allergic to dihydrogen monoxide as well, someone should warn these people about its dangers.
I propose removing all electronic devices from their houses first though, for their own protection of course.
**TODO** [X] Steal someone elses sig.
...and cool. Its time we stopped giving pseudoscience the 'benefit of the doubt'. If its moronic, call it out as such.
Presumably these people grew up on cathode tube television, the HT circuit of which blasted out X-rays, the dangers of Wi-Fi being minuscule in comparison.
I recall reading somewhere, that they did a test on people who clamed to be susceptible to electric fields and found they still got symptoms even when it was switched off.
davecb5620@gmail.com
it depends on the statistical significance.
You are making the unreasonable assumption that either everyone is sensitive, or no one is. It is much more realistic for some fraction of the population to be sensitive (as is the case with "real" allergies, like pollen).
If, after a million trials (instead of 6), the results showed that there was a correlation twice what pure chance predicted, then that would indicate that there IS a portion of the population which is sensitive.
Please refrain from further posting. I don't know much formal statistics, but I know enough to recognize that you're completely off base.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If they win the case then it's just a matter of time until someone sues the local power station as he's allergic to electromagnetic radiation at 50-60Hz!
What he said.
There are idiots, and there are fucking idiots. And these people belong to the third group for which I lack words.
Please, please have someone in the city subject them to a double-blind test before even listening to them. That should quickly show that the only thing they are allergic to is their own fucked up imagination.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In the comments I've already made and the ones I've read (far from all), I failed to mention or read the big, obvious problem with the claims: it isn't an allergy. The body produces allergic responses to proteins. This is why some of us who have have an issue with milk are called lactose intolerant, not allergic to milk. While some are allergic to milk (a protein therein), what I and others suffer from is a sensitivity to the lactose sugar due to a lack or insufficient amount of the lactase enzyme.
The principle is the same here. IF this proves to be true (and I've noted my doubts), then this would be classified as a sensitivity, not an allergy. (Yes, before someone dumps on me about it, an allergy is classified as a type of hypersensitivity, but the defining aspect of the imuno-response to a protein is what makes the difference for the subject at hand.)
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
In addition the symptom they are describing (chest pain during "exposure" to Wifi-enabled public buildings) seems much more typical for an episode of Anxiety than what Wifi is usually accused to provoke (cancers, disorienting bees, etc.).
As someone who is on Lexapro to subdue repeated anxiety attacks, I have to say that this was exactly my first thoughts when I read it. It sounds like they're having an anxiety attack and that avoidance and false correlations have caused "suspicion of wifi/electromagnetism" to be a trigger. My guess is that anti-anxiety medication and cognitive behavior counseling might cure their "allergy" fairly effectively. Unfortunately, they appear to have gotten themselves into a situation where they're unlikely to be able to pay for their cure, making it harder to get-- counseling can be hard enough to get covered when you DO have a job and good insurance.
E pluribus unum
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This wouldn't bug me, as long as the application was accompanied by a fully operational example :)
More generally, it's not up to the patent office to determine what is or isn't officially possible, as long as there's a physical device producing the correct results for the appropriate inputs. And if a device/effect is impossible, what's the harm in issuing a patent for it anyway? If it's ever challenged by someone who says that their Perpetuatron works while Professor Frink's Watts Up device doesn't, *and* the originally patented device has not been put into production, then the two claims can be tested against each other in an independent lab to see if the patent should be transferred.
Get a grip, people. This world isn't perfect and we can't afford to ban everything that upsets anybody. I can't restore an amputated limb to make things fair again, and I don't think a few of you hypochondriacs should be allowed to stop useful technologies for everybody else. Get yourself some RF shielded clothing and quit trying to tell the vast majority of the rest of us that we have to accommodate you no matter what the cost.
Give you this and the next thing you'll be complaining about is your neighbor's home router.
Your complaints that cell phones and WiFi both cause your symptoms appear bogus due to the widely different frequencies in use there. Furthermore, by your logic, all cell phone towers must be shut down since they continuously broadcast even more strongly than cell phones.
I don't buy it. Your town is already known for crazies, and you seem to fit the mold.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
My allergy isn't made up, I'm allergic to rape seed. Does this mean I can sue all the local farmers and force them to quite growing it while making a profit? Where do I sign up?
I bet Lions would be far better for you then farmed Beef. The Lions are 100% Organically fed, steroid free and free range!
Mind you I'd rather be in a cow field then a Lion field!
I saw this Peta add that said "Try Vegetarian" and I thought, great Idea from now on I will only eat vegetarians.
but ahem, back on track here, yes those wifi people are teh ideeots!
But, you claim, a second study, using exactly the same data, but which also includes a separate look at a self-selected "sensitive" group, would determine there is no causal relationship.
No, you can't have it both ways.
Change the self selected group to "people who think they'll get hit by a car next March" and the control to a random selection. When next March comes along, come back and tell us all how because the same percentage of each group got hit by a car, no one did.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
An idiot moderator (namely me) accidentally moderated this as overrated rather then underrated. Please will some kind moderator who looks before they click on a moderation please rectify the situation?
And to psychodelicacy: apologies for the slight damage to your karma.
!WHAT!
The US patnet office hasn't entertained the concept of a perpetual motion machine in decades. They would technically still allow the patent application, but without a working prototype it would be denied.
PS, because I don't know everything, just in case you do know of these multiple perpetual motion machine patents, could you please post some details so that I can find them?
ABIL
Most of the perpetual motion machines that actually get a patent are because it's not submitted as "perpetual motion machine", it's some crazy complicated device that turns out to be a perpetual motion machine at its core, but that particular claim is buried among several hundred, or whatever.
To investigate further if there is actually a "sensitivity" then you would bring back all those that got 100 percent and run the test again.. I liked to see THOSE numbers.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
I didn't see the grandparent post when I wrote that, and it said almost the exact same thing. Mod him up and me down, please.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Easy solution: When all of them are in court, and their crackpot scientist just finished his 3 hour testimony, the defense counsel gets up, crosses the guy for a few minutes, and then pulls out an active WAP from under the table, and shows the jury it has been active for several hours. Case dismissed.
The test might not have had 2^6 different possible combinations. If instead it was a random arrangement of 3 on and 3 off, there would only be 20 combinations. This would make the expected percentage getting it right by random chance is 5%. This is a lot closer to the measured values so I think this is what happened.
I like how the article adds the bit about two of the "sensitive" people getting it right 6 times. I REALLY hope the next line (not having clicked the link) was about how that's bang on what you get by random guessing, but I suspect it probably wasn't.
Move 'em to Taos - they can enjoy the hum, instead.
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/hum/hum.html
Cellphones and cellphone towers have been common for 20 years now. And back then with analog phones the radiated power was MUCH higher than it is now. The reason early cellphones struggled to get a day out of a battery charge wasn't just because the batteries were crap...
With the number of people who are exposed to cellphones and cellphone towers every day if there was a significant risk it would be a piece of cake to prove it.
I prefer unnatural selection... bring on the zombie apocalypse! All of that bullshit about natural selection goes out the window when you're competing and/or reproducing with the undead!
The three things most in demand after a zombie apocalypse are, in order:
1. Sledgehammers (Fuckin' A!)
2. Social skills (An armed society is a polite society. And an unarmed society in the age of zombies has the lifespan of a mayfly.)
3. Shotguns (More valuable than ammo, you can't club a zombie to undeath with a shotgun shell)
4. Ammunition (Preferably edible.)
And for all of you jackholes saying that wasn't three things; math is not in demand after a zombie apocalypse. The last thing we need is another l33t m4th d00d comparing the relative quantities of ammo and zombies.
I rest my case.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
Yeah this guy is totally homeless I guess, since he probably forgot about cosmic radiation and the Earth's own magnetic fields.
I guess that's the solution, for people who believe this hogwash to leave Earth.
Well, as people don't like fevers and no one wants them, I doubt there would be much outcry if someone actually came out and said that.
Now, sweatpants, OTOH...
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Right, and then the manufacturer can claim it's patented and thus must work like how they described, despite the fact that, as has been pointed out, something like 50% of all patented processes do not actually function the way they should, as that is not a criteria for patenting something. This is why they stopped patenting such machines. But unless it's absurdly stupid, like a patent for turning lead to gold with a magical incantation, or something that is explicitly listed as a perpetual motion machine, it can be patented, no matter how non-working it is.
This, incidentally, includes 'zero point energy' machines, which are the new perpetual motion machines, but are allowed under patent rules without a working model because they aren't actually perpetual motion...they claim to extract energy from the vacuum difference between this universe's vacuum and true vacuum, which is maybe possible in theory, but quite obviously none of them actually can do that.(1) There is no theoretical process, even assuming the theories of vacuum energy are true, that can create a 'true vacuum' or even a 'lower vacuum', except the Casimir effect, and using that to create power is like trying to create power by letting two magnets come together and then pulling them apart.
1) It is worth mentioning that, if it was indeed possible to punch a hole to a stable region with a lower vacuum energy and send our 'vacuum' into it, (to create energy as it went by), this would actually be incredibly dangerous and could 'pop' the universe like a balloon to the lower vacuum state.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I've sworn off all artificial heat and now operate entirely at 3 degree Kelvin. (Did you know that the sun's heat is nuclear? Yet they're allowed to claim it's 'natural'? Don't fall for it.)
I am currently suing the creator of the universe for the background radiation.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Move to a place where earth quakes are a certainty of life and then bitch about how they can't get affordable insurance from a reliable provider on their overpriced home sitting on the fault line?
Go to resturants and look at the menus so they can catalogue the ingrediants available in the kitchen and then order food, not on the menu made of ingredients they're guaranteed not to have?
Bitch about the environment being in such poor repair and bitch about gas prices but go out and buy his and hers hummers?
Take jobs and buy houses that specifically require them to sit for 2 hours in traffic each way and then bitch about how the government is screwing them by making it hard for them to get to work?
People who bitch all day and night about illegal immigrants costing them a fortune, while they sit outside by the pool because Maria and Rosa are busy inside vaccuuming the living room?
And of course, worst of all... people who think that chicken or pineapple are in fact pizza toppings!
Tests show that people who claim to be allergic to EMFs such as Wi Fi, are not able to sense them in a conroled setting, Maybe more tests are needed. But while they're at it, maybe I should sue the city to turn off the street lights and ban bright lighting in public buildings, I am prone to migraines and that is a real medical condition