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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.
Should everyone with respiratory problems sue their cities due to pollution?
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!
Also, check out, Electromagnetic Fields (EMF): The Killing Fields , it's full of lol:
you can certainly sue your local municipality for not cleaning up its air.
Who is this "they" person? from the US National Cancer Institute:
The press release goes on to talk about possible reasons for various cancers. It actually gets pretty complicated when you try to make sweeping generalizations. It likely means very little biologically (the sweeping generalization statement).
The thesis that EMF from cell phones increases brain cancers has been researched exhaustively. The fact that no clear trend has emerged from numerous, large studies indicates that any effect, if any effect indeed exists, is tiny and inconsequential.
These folks are loons.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And it's probably not only that they're getting better at detecting it, but also that average life expectancy is increasing. Living longer allows a larger window for getting cancer.
I think it'd be extremely difficult to back up a statement like "Cancer rates have increased in the last few years" with any kind of certainty.
Testing is important. For years, my parents thought I was allergic to shellfish, merely because a certain crab dinner produced anaphylaxis. This was an unfortunate assumption, as it kept me from enjoying crustaceans.
However, after the dinner, I had been shelling Brazil Nuts. I had stabbed a finger with the nut pick, and it was from this site that the swelling emanated.
Some time later, I encountered brazil nuts again, and the same severe allergic reaction occurred. Had the diagnosis been correct in the first place, I could have continued to enjoy lobster, shrimp and crab, while avoiding brazil nuts. (It some ways, a shellfish allergy is less maddening-- it tends to be advertised, while brazil "nuts" receive less mention on packaging. It's a good reason to develop cooking and baking skills.)
A battery of tests could rule out Wi-Fi as the cause of the chest pains and other symptoms, while identifying the real source of the symptoms, if it's not psychosomatic.
My opinion is TFA misses the larger point of what Santa Fe represents. It is referred to as "The City Different" as has people who for mayoral candidates that run on the platform that they will channel the long dead popular mayor and act on his advice. Actually, that's not the surprising part. That the person did not finish last in the race is to me more surprising. So in the greater scheme of things, an allergy to Wi-Fi seems perfectly reasonable.
So, a couple of things:
1) It really sucks when you feel crappy and everybody says it's all in your head. I'm sorry.
2) The only known influence that radiowaves and related phenomena can have on human tissue is heat, and that's only in specific circumstances (think microwave ovens). Otherwise, human being are not known to be able to detect radiation in that part of the spectrum .
3) However -- and this is interesting -- many electrical devices can generate a high pitched whine or squeal, caused when some object begins rapidly vibrating in response to a high frequency electric current. (You may have heard this sort of thing with a television set; usually it's the yoke or similar component vibrating that causes the TV to "shriek" after it warms up). A tone outside the range of human hearing of sufficient decibel level and duration *can* cause remarkably unpleasant effects in humans, including headaches, depression, itching, etc. I would hypothesize that anybody genuinely feeling such effects in response to EMF transmission is actually hypersensitive to high frequency sound waves....
I was allergic to perfumes, cigar and pipe smoke until I gave up caffeine. I also now have greatly enhanced resistance to heat and cold and don't sunburn any more all because I no longer consume caffeine. Some reactions can be composites of multiple things.
Exactly.
My own bout with cancer was in the early-mid '90s. Just twenty years before that, it would not have been diagnosed as such. I would have just had some mysterious disease, would have gone untreated, and died. My diagnosis was made possible by medical imaging techniques that were invented in the '70s... made possible by the microchip becoming ubiquitous. Before CT and MRI scans, MAYBE a particularly ballsy doctor would have had a 1 in 100 chance of making the cancer diagnosis by engaging in exploratory surgery. *shudder*
But before the '80s at the earliest, chances are that I wouldn't have been a "cancer patient". I'd just be some mysteriously dead guy.
cya,
john
Imagine all the people...
I work with MRI machines every day. 1.5, 3, and 9.4T magnets. Depending on the control room configuration, you can hear the He pump. Not always, though. Sometimes, the machine just sits there. If I am being led to a machine, I can sense it at about 1 Gauss line, most definitely at the 5 gauss.
.2T and there's the same sensation, although the 5 gauss line is much closer to the magnet.
I've worked with permanent magnets at
Older magnets did not have very good shielding, so that line extended quite far from the machine.
Back in the day, when CRT monitors were used, a MRI machine would interfere with the monitor, causing the color to shift and the image to rotate--even if the machine was 50 feet away.
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 ]
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.
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
So what happened? Some dumb bitches signed the waivers and then had unprotected sex which resulted in horribly f*cked up babies. So they sued the drug right out of the market and I had to suffer for a decade until Remicade came out. Tegison worked so well for me that my pharmacist contacted every one in the supply chain from Alaska to South America and bought cases of the stuff out of his own pocket so I would have it as long as I possibly could. So if someone ignores the warnings that say "hey stupid! Don't DO that!" and they do it anyway they shouldn't be able to ruin it for guys like me who actually followed the rules. But that is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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?
Actually, that brings up an interesting point...
We consider, for example, civet coffee to be natural - and it's something that's been processed by an animal.
Humans are natural.
Therefore, isn't everything that a human produces natural, too?
The only argument that I feel can be made that way is if we're talking geographically - for example, cactii aren't natural in the arctic. Or, moon rocks aren't natural on Earth.
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.
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