Well apparently those silly Brits are at it again with their Wifi fears, although this time I have to give it to them for coming out ahead on things. An investigation by the BBC initiated by two viewer complaints has resulted in the finding that a program on the dangers of wifi school children was overstated. Yeah… who woulda thunk? Basically the program implied that cell phone masts are dangerous to children and that Wifi in schools is three times more dangerous. And why only two complaints? I can tell you if I lived in the UK, it would have been three!

Oh what grounds? Well apparently they did some surveys at schools and found that the level of RF radiation was three times that of the beam from a 3G cell tower. Wifi is obviously not as high in terms of RF power, but it looks like our good friend the Inverse Square Law has been laying down the law again. Actually I’m surprised that it’s only three times, but it obviously will depend a lot on how far you are from the Wifi transmitter. Of course, this is a great way to mislead, because you can get readings way higher than the tower down the street if you put the probe of your “radiation detector” close enough to the wifi router.

But in any case, it really doesn’t matter because being three times more powerful than the 3G tower is still nowhere near dangerous or concerning. And actually being thirty times wouldn’t be any reasons for concern either. The contention that the 3G towers are dangerous is based on equally bad science. When the British government was investigating the health implications of 3G cell towers, Sir William Stewart, the head of the investigation had suggested a “precautionary approach.” There was never any evidence found that the towers pose any risk to anyone, but he suggested that putting them near schoolyards and such be avoided.

In my opinion, this was a mistake. While Sir Stewart clearly understood there was no reason to think it might cause health problems, his decision to “just be extra safe and cautious” may cause more harm than good. While it’s always good to be careful, one problem many in the science community seem to have is not realizing that they are not being listened to by just other scientists. And that sort of thing can lead to some misleading info and PR problems.

The fact is that there has never been any conclusive data linking wireless networking, cell phones or other low-power RF devices to health problems, and there have been many studies! Of all the studies done, there has never been a single well controlled and reliable study to show health problems associated with low power microwave rf radiation. And this should not surprise anyone. We’ve been using microwaves since the Second World War and the health effects are pretty well understood. Many seem confused by the term “radiation” but it’s nothing like ionizing radiation. The effects are completely different.

RF radiation does not cause chemical changes in cells and does not have the effects on biology that ionizing radiation does. It can be dangerous in high levels, where the primary means of damage is “tissue heating.” It literally heats your cells like a microwave oven and can cause them to burst or for internal burns to occur before you even feel the heat. But a cell phone will not produce enough energy to heat your cells significantly when it’s next to your skin, much less across the room. There are some studies which have indicated that eddy currents might have some negative health effects from RF radiation, but these too are nearly non-existent and well bellow any damaging levels in such devices. Since there is no known mechanism for causing chronic problems with RF radiation (and believe me, they’ve looked for one), there’s every reason to assume it’s harmless and no solid evidence to think otherwise. Our whole current knowledge of RF energy and physiology supports that stand.

Oh yes. And also, the report mentioned that the the same year the study was done on cell phone towers and the health effects, the British government sold licenses to the 3G wireless companies to the tune of £22.5 billion. Conspiracy theory anyone? And of course…. it’s always the studies at schools and playgrounds. For the children. Because, who wouldn’t want to protect the children? The defenseless innocent children!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Politics, inverse square, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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