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GSM Association Slams Euro Call For Ban On Wireless In School
jhernik writes "The ongoing debate over the supposed dangers posed by mobile phone usage and wireless signals has exploded once again. An influential European committee has called for a ban on mobile phones and Wi-Fi networks in schools – the GSM Association has denounced the report as an 'unbalanced political assessment, not a scientific report.' The report made its recommendation to reduce mobile and wireless use in schools, despite admitting that there is a lack of clear scientific and clinical proof. However, it said the lack of proof was reason enough to restrict use, just in case, comparing mobile phone radiation to other things whose dangers were once unknown, such as asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco."
So we have politicians making a political point with "data", and an industry lobby making a political point with "data", and nobody unconnected to the politics and the money doing any analysis on the other parties "data".
How about someone comes up with something scientifically significant without proving to be in bed with one side or the other?
It's good to see schools succumbing to tinfoil hattery like this...
I happen to think that Star Wars: Episodes I-III present a serious health risk, can we ban those within 1,000 yards of a school too?
A high school football player just last week died during practice. MANY kids are hurt doing team sports in schools. There's a KNOWN, DEFINITE health threat, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt!
If they can ban stuff based on the vague possibility of a problem, why not ban what is PROVEN to be one!
TFA: However, it said the lack of proof was reason enough to restrict use, just in case, comparing mobile phone raditation to other things whose dangers were once sunknown, such as asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco."
It would seem they want to hold off using anything until somebody proves the negative....
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Isn't the GSM Association a bunch of greedy, monopolistic corporates that corrupt the government for profit? We're supposed to support them? I'm so confused. :(
Oh, and when did Europe abandon science? I thought this sort of thing was reserved for Idaho. Next thing you know they'll have creationists.
Except the "dangers" of cell phone radiation aren't unknown. Acording to the largest, longest, and most methodologically sound study on the matter, there is no elevated risk of cancer due to cell phone radiation.
http://www.rfcom.ca/programs/interphone.shtml
perhaps they haven't read the report.
How about someone comes up with something scientifically significant without proving to be in bed with one side or the other?
Without "bed" there is no funding to do studies.
Lets ban everything we can't prove it's harmless just in case. Like... I don't know... most food... drinks... gases... and surely politicians!
Someone else said it but I repeat it "Anti-nuclear, anti-powerline, anti-wireless people are ... "Idiots, pure and simple. Technologically ignorant, fact-dismissing, data-defying morons" Carl Sagan said the problem is "that we live in a scientific age where most people don't understand science"
that lack clear scientific and clinical proof.
Fruit and vegetables, they might cause cancer.
Reading and writing, who knows what damage they might be doing to people's eyes and wrists.
Wearing clothing, who knows what such an unnatural activity does to our skin.
not that there's much to be afeared about? maybe the 'weather'?
the chosen ones' holycost could never continue without a whole bunch of bogus fear hate& deception generated by fictional dilemmas while overlooking world wide massacres.
disarm. no kidding. terrifying tuesday is being executed as planned.
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No, some of us live in a scientific age, but many choose to live in a self-inflicted medieval age. Problem is, they want us all to.
Great Intellect...
A high school football player just last week died during practice. MANY kids are hurt doing team sports in schools. There's a KNOWN, DEFINITE health threat, proven beyond a shadow of a doubt!
If they can ban stuff based on the vague possibility of a problem, why not ban what is PROVEN to be one!
No, we need to BAN EVERYTHING!
It's the only way to be sure.
The trouble is if you ban bans, then you can't then ban anything else.
So you must ban everything, then ban bans.
If anything new comes up, you then refuse to acknowledge it exists. Shutting your eyes and covering your ears while yelling lalala at the top of your lungs is very helpful there....except that at that point, it's been banned.
The ban on breathing also places an upper limit to the effectiveness of the strategy, and the reign of any regime adopting it. For more information see Origin of Species (also banned unfortunately).
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
playing with yourself is detrimental to your taking part in class (if it happens at the same time). We don't need cancer scares to realise that children, on their own computers (or phones), all the time) with no interaction with other children at all, is bad.
Is this what's happening, though?
I'll be happy to be proved wrong, but let's have the science in place before we make policy changes via guesswork, please.
Instead of having to explain to students that excessive cell phone use, such as texting, during class is a large distraction to the educational process they would rather have the easier option of frightening them into submission with tales of "you'll get testicular cancer of the face!".
Or maybe they're right and we're all going to die of WiFi poisoning during class.
Does anyone really, really, I MEAN REALLY, understand how this EM crap works? I mean, just a few years ago, they discovered that effect, whatever they call it, friedsnell or something, where the stuff bounces back and hits other stuff. I think. And now they want to shoot RADIATION at us? BAN IT!!! What's next? Chernobyls on every street corner? Will someone PLEASE think of the children????
/s
Great Intellect...
Someone should Visit a Mensa how to Hack your Cell Phone workshop and do a conclusive study to prove that wireless signals boost your IQ..
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
The precautionary principal is absurd.
Nothing has ever been conclusively proved not to cause harm
Nothing can be proved not to cause harm, as the absence of effect cannot be proven.
Therefore, according to the precautionary principal, as all things are potentially harmful, all things must be prevented from coming into contact with persons, including other persons. Moreover, as it has not been proven that the effect of any individual, object, or force material or immaterial, upon itself is not harmful; then the precautionary principal mandates self-exclusion and is self-negating.
Therefore the precautionary principal is invalid, a priori.
So, there is no need to dispute the validity of any argument based upon the principal as the argument is inherently invalid.
Besides, its just plain stupid.
Cell phone radiation, being modulated on GHz frequencies, is too high in frequency to mess with brain signals
Sometimes the frequencies have to get even higher to get into the brain. Radiation from the display runs in the 400 to 800 THz band, but think of the effect that the phone's display has on its user's concentration.
They should also ban witches in school. And dragons (very dangerous, can cause fires). Also, north-facing doors (very bad feng shui). Then, they need to get rid of anything red (causes emotional stress). And try to keep the Virgos away from the Leos. I'm sure I can think of more if some industry group would pay me.
Who gives a damn about peer review!
There is no need for cellphones in school. Parents want to contact a kid: Call the school. kids want internet: use internet via wires.
Therefore, banning wireless when there is no (or not enough) data to be certain of anything, is a good precaution.
Yep. I love to get medieval on everyone's ass. A Trebuchet works nicely for that and of course my trusty sword helps get my point across to them idiots. Last but not least, there aren't any lawyers because "Might Makes Right" now back to work serfs
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Who's the asshole sneaking asbestos & leaded petrol into the schools?
In the early 1990's I had the opportunity to work on a project developing calibrated, sensitive microwave thermocouple sensors to study the intensity of microwave radiation inside 'human head models generated by cellphones'. It is of possible interest that the work was funded by a major cellphone manufacturer, however, the source of the funding did not influence the integrity of the work. I also spent considerable time comprehending (at least, giving it a good try!) the mountain of literature of the epidemiological effects of electromagnetic fields. It is of particular relevance to the 'European committee's action that the following summary statement, from a review article by James Jauchem, published in the International Microwave Power Institute (Vol. 28, No. 3, 1993) is directed: "In fact, the absence of both a mechanism of interaction and a dose-response relation do not support classification of EMFs as a probable carcinogen" Also, citing Petersen (Bioeffects of microwaves, J. Occup. Med. (1983) and Foster (Health effects of low-level electromagnetic fields, Health Phys. 62:429-435 (1992) "effects" are not necessarily "hazards". Although moderate-intensity ELFs may be capable of producing biological effects, the distinction between these effects and health effects is important. Also it is important that in epidemiological studies, an association of a factor with a health outcome often does not reflect a causal relationship. Strong independent associations can arise solely as a result of the lack of control over confounding. Some authors even suggest that some over-hyped studies are really "scaremongering made respectable by the use of sophisticated statistical methods."
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
In the early 1990's I had the opportunity to work on a project developing calibrated, sensitive microwave thermocouple sensors to study the intensity of microwave radiation inside 'human head models generated by cellphones'. It is of possible interest that the work was funded by a major cellphone manufacturer, however, the source of the funding did not influence the integrity of the work. I also spent considerable time comprehending (at least, giving it a good try!) the mountain of literature of the epidemiological effects of electromagnetic fields. It is of particular relevance to the 'European committee's action that the following summary statement, from a review article by James Jauchem, published in the International Microwave Power Institute (Vol. 28, No. 3, 1993) is directed:
"In fact, the absence of both a mechanism of interaction and a dose-response relation do not support classification of EMFs as a probable carcinogen"
Also, citing Petersen (Bioeffects of microwaves, J. Occup. Med. (1983) and Foster (Health effects of low-level electromagnetic fields, Health Phys. 62:429-435 (1992) "effects" are not necessarily "hazards". Although moderate-intensity ELFs may be capable of producing biological effects, the distinction between these effects and health effects is important. Also it is important that in epidemiological studies, an association of a factor with a health outcome often does not reflect a causal relationship. Strong independent associations can arise solely as a result of the lack of control over confounding. Some authors even suggest that some over-hyped studies are really "scaremongering made respectable by the use of sophisticated statistical methods."
I would think any "effects" at all would be cause for concern, since we don't know enough to say when "biological effects" turn out to be "health effects."
Electromagnetic waves can interfere constructively, in fact it's rare a given volume of space the dimensions of the wavelength has a single photon of that length in it. Any "safe limits" are very nominal, you could have harm occuring with much lower intensity EM.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Europeans seem to have bought into this precautionary principle twaddle where everything that cannot be proven to be safe must banned.
Of course that is utter rubbish, as there is no possible way to prove anything is safe. All this really means is that anything new is forbidden, a new form of Luddite-ism.
Anyway, if low frequency EM is to be banned in schools, why isn't it banned elsewhere too? After all if we are going to protect children from this danger we must do it correctly. Mobile phones and WiFi are ubiquitous in the modern environment, and children surely spend less than 1/4 of their lives in school over the course of a calendar year.
Therefore to be actually useful Europe must now ban all low frequency EM emttters,
It's funny how in this article calling for ban on wireless can be the same as "comparing mobile phone raditation to other things whose dangers were once sunknown, such as asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco.". I found this to be hilarious to say the least!
make fast money online
...still have their biases. Sounds like xTantrum wants to be reasonable, but just can't let go of some mental model that has served him well, but at this corner-case breaks down into non-science.
My favorite example comes with light. How long will it take an average flashlight in a normal house to melt a brick of aluminum? Obviously never. Now do the math. 5 watts of light hitting the same brick, for a thousand hours turns out to have no effect. Ok, might warm it a degree or two if focused, but it will still be quite solid. 5000 watts of light hitting it for an hour will heat it quite significantly. 5,000,000 watts of light hitting it for 3.6 seconds will liquefy it and set it on fire. It's all the same amount of light. But there is a critical factor: that the first flashlight never introduces enough energy in a given second to break the metallic bonds, and aluminum (and hominids) dissipates this heat its environment. It doesn't build up for hundreds of hours and suddenly melt. And neither do we.
Good luck.
I had someone seriously tell me I should take my phone out of my posket when I can so to avoid cancer risk from 8 hour a day exposure of the same body area.
Exactly - if you have a transmitter then the intensity of radiation you are exposed to is considerably higher than just receiving since it falls off as 1/(distance squared). However this should mean that any cancers are far more likely close to transmitters so presumably it should be easy to see: cancers would be near your pocket or near your ear.
However basic common sense can tell you that this report is ridiculous. If cell phones are wireless devices are really, or even probably, causing cancer then why are we only banning these devices from schools? We should be banning them everywhere. Asbestos was not just banned from schools but from everywhere else as well. The fact that they are going for an emotional target, "think of the children", shows that they are making an irrational, emotional argument not a rational, evidence based one.
Please don't tell these idiots about the solar neutrino flux passing through their children's bodies every day. There is absolutely no proof that these neutrinos don't cause autism.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I fail to see why K-12 students need cell phones or wireless networks to learn a damned thing.
Wired networks are a win from a management, reliability, latency and bandwidth perspective. Not being constantly distracted by stray text messages is something I would also check in the plus column.
There is at least some credible evidence cell radiation is harmful especially to children. Given wireless technology simply is not required in any shape or form to educate students what precisely is the downside? If there is even a 1% risk and you can mitigate against it easily with no cost or risk to the mission (educating kids) then why not go there? What is the value prop against?
I know many are making sports analogies but doing away with sports and PE due to accidents is different because you are loosing something of value.
There are millions of things around us that have not been proven to be safe. Can you prove that eating off china plates is safe? If we use 'has not been proved safe' as our criterion, we will be paralysed, unable to do anything.
It only makes sense to take a precautionary avoidance strategy if there is some evidence that harm could occur. Basically, you either need a plausible mechanism, or a plausible correlation between the potentially-harmful-thing and some form of harm. Leaded petrol and tobacco both have plausible mechanisms for harm which could be appreciated by scientific knowledge of their times. Burning leaded petrol puts lead into the air, and lead is a known cumulative toxin. Autopsies on smokers shows they have blackened lungs. Any new medicine affects how our body operates in some way, and so could be harmful. It would have been quite rational to suspect these products of causing harm.
Asbestos may be a valid comparison - it has been used since antiquity, when they had neither the science nor statistics to suspect its effects. According to Wikipedia, a correlation with harm was noted in 1898, so any time last century, a case could have been made for not exposing children to it.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Then it follows you can ban say, vaccines, without evidence. Hey, Jenny McCarthy reckons it causes Autism, and so do loads of people, so let's just ban it just in case, yeah? I'm not about to hit the slippery slope fallacy but it's disappointing to see lawmakers attempting to push something through that flies in the face of the evidence just because for some obscure reason it seems politically expedient to do so (hey look, we're looking after the children - can we have some votes please?).
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Fucking magnets!
There is a proven possible danger from handsets. That is, there is a higher incidence of brain cancer in rats from massive exposures of mobile-band RF. And until we'll all been holding handsets to the side of our heads for 40 years that's about all the results we can reasonably expect from science.
But as any consideration of the inverse-square law taught in those schools' physics classes will show, exposure from laptops and access points is orders of magnitude less than handsets.
And that's what's really wrong with this proposal. Lumping handsets, laptops and access points all together shows a basic lack of understanding. Without understanding, we can't expect reasonable conclusions.
There is plenty of evidence for mutagenic and other negative effects of radio-frequency and microwave fields. Just a small sample: http://www.rrjournal.org/doi/abs/10.2307/3579911 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T2D-4G7NFGG-1&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F06%2F2005&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=browse&_origin=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f82e85c25e8d4446ef498e2a2d93c83c http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8627134
So why is this not widely known? Because people tend to not look beyond the headline spin, the parent post being a good example thereof. But also because industry-funded studies tend to generate biased results http://www.seattlemag.com/article/nerd-report/nerd-report which are then touted as "proof" that there is no ill effect.
What about the 50/60hz radiation from the grid, better switch to a DC only setup for the entire school system. What about nearby radio stations transmitting with 100 kW, better put the schools in Faraday cages, or make the students wear tinfoil caps.
If not because of electromagnetic radiation (which to my knowledge is not a big problem) then because it is a great means to distract kids and disorganise lessons. I'd rather eurocrats didn't use that pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo but said that mobiles pose pedagogical problems.
People need to understand this kind of shit is not based on science, on logic, but on people being irrational.
Here's a great example:
I work for the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at a university. This means faculty here have electrical engineering PhDs, they've take classes on radio waves, understand how they work. These are not uneducated people, and they are educated in a relevant area.
So a few years ago we got building wide WiFi. I mean complete, 100% coverage. Like 300-400 access points over 5 floor or something. This means they aren't just in out of the way places like closets and halls, but in offices too.
One of our faculty got all mad about this, and built a little shield for his. It is a small aluminium thing that is only open on one side. It does effectively prevent that unit from transmitting towards where he sits.
Well this is completely stupid because of course it is not harmful but for an additional reason: these things all work together. They adjust their signal strengths to make sure everywhere is covered. He blocks off his unit? The ones near it compensate. There is no net change in the levels where he is (yes I've measured it). What's more, his wife works at network operations so he knows this.
A PhD in EE, but acting like a moron. It is not science, it is voodoo that drives people to worry about this crap.
I think it's solely a political question, as in: are pupils to be *available* for telephone messages while in class or at school?
I think there is a good reason to say that they aren't. Certainly not while in class, and for that reason jamming cellphones in classrooms strikes me as totally reasonable. Whether cellphones should be jammed in the hallways or on the grounds is another matter though.
..because kids are there to LEARN not to piss about on Facebook and their mobile phones.
Who gives a toss about the potential health issues, above is reason enough.
I'd even go a stage further and line all school buildings so they block all GSM & Wifi signals - make sure the school secretary & parents swap contact phone numbers in case of emergencies, problem solved.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Sooooo, it's OK to get cancer when you're not in school? And EM radiation has been studied for how long, going back to high voltage lines near houses? Maybe we should ban earth's EM fields in schools, too! OK, maybe there is some long term risk with holding a phone directly to your head for thousands of hours. I'll give you that. WiFi? What about all that radio and TV signals? Really looks like a flimsy excuse to ban something they don't like on "non-evidence." What the heck kind of position is that to take? Why not extrapolate it out to "Anchovies may cause head explosions. We just don't know because there is no evidence of anchovy explodiness." (no, I don't like anchovies.)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
This report is a crock-of-shit with not one fact or real study in it, and is another example of political elites writing 20 pages where one would do. It is essentially incomprehensible BS.
As with all good Enviromentalist reasoning it uses the Precautionary Principle to justify the proposed ban.
It is controlling socialist nonsense, just like AGW, and just like fracking complex nonsense to frighten the sheeple.
I think the risk analysis should be trivial: Likely more children will die from asthma attacks and accidents due to teachers being unable to call for assistance on their mobiles than will be saved from "radiation".
OLPC uses ad-hoc wireless, and therefore wouldn't be usable in schools either :-(
These people are being incredibly disingenuous... what they really want is to eliminate the disruption caused by phones ringing and students texting during class. If they were at all intelligent, they'd stop wasting time trying to legislate the problem away, and just install wallpaper Faraday cages in all of the classrooms.
However, lets do it for a real reason. Those kids are twittering, facebooking, TXTing etc etc etc. Put your phones on SILENT and pay attention damnit.
Citation please. And they better made sure that there's a proper control to exclude heating as the culprit.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Translation: Scientific studies haven't supported our position so far so more need to be done until we get one that gives us the results we're looking for. Meanwhile, since we already have decided what the outcome will be, we should go ahead on banning this stuff.
Let's see... what else can we ban because there's no proof it is harmful?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Turn off the lights! They're leaking electromagnetic radiation!
The symptoms of Wifi exposure are the same as those quoted during the Salem Witch Trials as having been caused by Witches.
Both are actually caused by hysterical moronism.
"...other things whose dangers were once unknown, such as asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco."
Yeah, um... Those are known. You can go and ban radio signals when their danger becomes known. Don't forget to ban radios in cars and TVs at home. If nothing else, if the ban spreads to America, we might at least get a bunch of paranoids to stop watching Faux News.