Parents' Campaign Leads To Wi-Fi Ban In New Zealand School

drmofe writes "Two parents in New Zealand have orchestrated the removal of a school's Wi-Fi system. They have expressed the concerns that Wi-Fi causes cancer and other health issues. The child of one of these parents died recently from brain cancer. This appears to be an emotional area and one where decisions appear to be being made without evidence. The NZ Ministry of Education provides guidelines for the safe use of Wi-Fi in schools and the school itself was operating within those guidelines."

Comments

There's a question about that at Skeptics

[satuon]

There's a question about that are Skeptics stack exchange - http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1178/are-wifi-waves-harmful

This is the answer:

===============

WIFi is non-ionising radiation and so has similar issues to other radiation using similar frequencies such as mobile telephones and microwave ovens. These produce heating effects. WiFi is not focused, so any impact should be very small and perhaps not measurable.

I am not aware of any health studies specifically on WiFi. There have been studies on mobile phones which has shown that while the phone is in use and held next to the head, there is small but measurable heating effect on human tissue. My guess is that it has less impact than standing at right angles to the Sun so one side of the head gets warmer faster than the other. Even then, these studies have produced no evidence that this has any health impact, positive or negative:

A large body of research exists, both epidemiological and experimental, in non-human animals and in humans, of which the majority shows no definite causative relationship between exposure to mobile phones and harmful biological effects in humans.
And per Dr. Michael Clark of the HPA, WiFi is a fraction of the energy of a cell phone:

“When we have conducted measurements in schools, typical exposures from wi-fi are around 20 millionths of the international guideline levels of exposure to radiation. As a comparison, a child on a mobile phone receives up to 50 per cent of guideline levels. So a year sitting in a classroom near a wireless network is roughly equivalent to 20 minutes on a mobile. If wi-fi should be taken out of schools, then the mobile phone network should be shut down, too — and FM radio and TV, as the strength of their signals is similar to that from wi-fi in classrooms.”
The Sun does emit ionising radiation (ultra violet) and that has significant health effects such as sunburn, pigmentation changes and Vitamin D production. WiFi's impact, if anything, is nothing like this.

Re:There's a question about that at Skeptics

[jamstar7]

well believe either that page or the one saying that we all have cancer..

Besides, if they didn't ban mobile phones I really, really don't see the point in banning wifi.

Blaming wifi or cell phones is easy. Actually digging around and finding the true cause of the cancer is hard. Besides, you might discover the cause was environmental, say, the coating on some cookware, or contaminants in food, drink, laundry detergent, whatever. And discovering a household product triggered a cancer is actionable. Best blame it on the wifi and shift the attention of the pitchforks and torches brigade.

Re:There's a question about that at Skeptics

[Chuckstar]

For the record, the sun's heating and radio wave heating would work differently. The sun heats the surface. The sun wouldn't do a particularly good job of heating the brain. The scalp would heat up, but then blood does a pretty good job of distributing that heat around, and the skull would be a decent insulator. Radio waves would penetrate into the brain and heat it directly.

Furthermore, there is at least one study showing that glucose metabolism in the brain increases in the presence of cell phone radiation.

Having said all of that, there's pretty much no way that either cell phones or WiFi are causing brain cancer. We've been engaged in a natural experiment of the effect of these forms of radiation. Both WiFi and cell phone usage have gone from "doesn't exist" to "ubiquitous" in the course of the last couple decades. We're not seeing an increase in any cancer rate that would show a correlation (let alone causation) with the rather dramatic increase in exposure to such radiation.

These parents want someone/something to blame for their child's death. It's very much that simple.

Provide a tin foil hat instead

[kevingolding2001]

Maybe instead of removing the wifi, the school should make available a nice conical tin-foil hat, free of charge, to the children of those parents who request it.

And they could also put a prominent 'D' on the front.

Re:Wouldn't someone think of the children?

[YttriumOxide]

Oh gosh. This is not a very good precedent. I hope the children are taught that: -The radiation from WIFI is the same type as what comes from the Sun, which is essential for all life on earth. -We all emit radiation.

Thankfully, New Zealand isn't as 'backwater' and 'stupid' as the summary makes out.

From TFA:

Science Media Centre manager Peter Griffin says the death of Te Horo pupil Ethan Wyman from a brain tumour was a tragedy for his family, friends and school mates, but that to blame it on wi-fi is wrong.

Mr Griffin notes there is no evidence anywhere in peer-reviewed literature to suggest wi-fi signals pose an elevated risk of developing brain cancers.

And also:

In a statement, the Te Horo School board said it would take wi-fi out of junior classes and replace it with ethernet cable. However, wi-fi will not be removed from the senior school due to the wishes of parents who were surveyed on the issue.

The board says it shares the government's view that wi-fi is safe.

"We have sourced information from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Health and other submissions," the board's statement says.

"Based on this information the board believes that Wi-Fi does not pose a health risk to staff or students."

So it really is just a couple of dumb people putting pressure on the school and not indicative of the school's or Ministry of Education's thoughts at all.

High pitched noises

[RogueyWon]

I wonder how much of the occasional health panic that springs up around wifi - and indeed other technologies - can actually be attributed to the high pitched hums that can be emitted by badly manufactured devices.

For instance, when I moved home last year, my new ISP - Virgin Media - provided me with a router when I signed up with them. Their "superhub" - basically a rebranded mid-range Netgear home router - shipped with a cheap and nasty plug adapter, which was prone to emitting a high pitched squeal. Google will turn up plenty of forum threads on the issue if you're interested. Anyway, because it was right on the edge of my hearing range, it took me quite a while to work out what was going on. Until I did, I suffered several weeks of sleeping problems, headaches and nausea - pretty much the typical symptoms associated with cries of "wifi is harming my health". Swapped the plug adapter for a better made one and everything was fine.

Now admittedly, I've always been sensitive to these things. When I was a teenager, my dad had a job that meant that there were often medical devices (monitors, defibrilators etc) used in training course in the home. One weekend he had brought home a monitor device that emitted a particularly horrible hum and left it switched on for testing. Nobody else in the family could hear it, but it made me quite violently ill. He refused to believe that I could actually hear anything until I talked him into a blind test where I went into another room and then shouted "on" and "off" as he toggled the power on the device.

So yeah... while schools should be pushing back on the idea that wifi can harm childrens' health, I do think a lot of them might want to check whether any of their electronics are giving out high pitched squeals like that (particularly as childrens' hearing tends to be more sensitive to these ranges).

"Just let them have this one"

[Chas]

No.

Because then we eventually wind up with a long, LONG string of idiocies being perpetrated just to make someone "feel better".

No.

HELL FUCKING NO.

As sympathetic as I am to these people, no parent should have to outlive their child, there's no excuse for idiocy. NONE.

Issues like this need to be met with compassion and a firm resolve not to simply sway in the face of someone's excess of emotion. Especially when said excess of emotion leads to fuzzy thinking and unsupportable actions such as this.

If these people want to scream and call you a heartless monster, so be it.

The whole "give in just a little so we can all get along" mentality is part of what's wrong with just about EVERYTHING nowadays.
There's this braindead notion that you can just compromise on EVERYTHING and it'll be okay.
The problem is, it's NOT okay. And the only people who seemingly aren't willing to compromise are the ones who're making these logic-impaired demands on others.

It needs to change.

Re:Only if there's an absorption band.

[amorsen]

Radio waves don't just get absorbed when passing by some matter, they have to be of the right energy.

Water will absorb an extremely wide band. Contrary to popular belief, 2.5GHz is NOT a special resonant frequency for the water molecule, pretty much any cell phone band would work fine for microwave ovens. 2.5GHz was picked for engineering reasons, not out of physical necessity.