[LINK] Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution a health time bomb?

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

Danger on the airwaves: Is the Wi-Fi revolution a health time bomb?
It's on every high street and in every coffee shop and school. But 
experts have serious concerns about the effects of electronic smog from 
wireless networks linking our laptops and mobiles, reports Geoffrey Lean
Published: 22 April 2007
The Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2472140.ece

Being "wired-up" used to be shorthand for being at the cutting edge, 
connected to all that is cool. No longer. Wireless is now the only thing 
to be.

Go into a Starbucks, a hotel bar or an airport departure lounge and you 
are bound to see people tapping away at their laptops, invisibly 
connected to the internet. Visit friends, and you are likely to be shown 
their newly installed system.

Lecture at a university and you'll find the students in your audience 
tapping away, checking your assertions on the world wide web almost as 
soon as you make them. And now the technology is spreading like a Wi-Fi 
wildfire throughout Britain's primary and secondary schools.

The technological explosion is even bigger than the mobile phone 
explosion that preceded it. And, as with mobiles, it is being followed 
by fears about its effect on health - particularly the health of 
children. Recent research, which suggests that the worst fears about 
mobiles are proving to be justified, only heightens concern about the 
electronic soup in which we are increasingly spending our lives.

Now, as we report today, Sir William Stewart (pictured below right), the 
man who has issued the most authoritative British warnings about the 
hazards of mobiles, is becoming worried about the spread of Wi-Fi. The 
chairman of the Health Protection Agency - and a former chief scientific 
adviser to the Government - is privately pressing for an official 
investigation of the risks it may pose.

Health concerns show no sign of slowing the wireless expansion. One in 
five of all adult Britons now own a wireless-enabled laptop. There are 
35,000 public hotspots where they can use them, usually at a price.

In the past 18 months 1.6 million Wi-Fi terminals have been sold in 
Britain for use in homes, offices and a host of other buildings. By some 
estimates, half of all primary schools and four fifths of all secondary 
schools have installed them.

Whole cities are going wireless. First up is the genteel, almost 
bucolic, burgh of Norwich, which has installed a network covering almost 
the whole of its centre, spanning a 4km radius from City Hall. It takes 
in key sites further away, including the University of East Anglia and a 
local hospital, and will be expanded to take in rural parts of the south 
of the county.

More than 200 small aerials were attached to lamp posts to create the 
network, which anyone can use free for an hour. There is nothing to stop 
the 1,000 people who use it each day logging off when their time is up, 
and logging on again for another costless session.

"We wanted to see if something like this could be done," says Anne 
Carey, the network's project manager. "People are using it and finding 
it helpful. It is, I think, currently the largest network of its kind."

Not for much longer. Brighton plans to launch a city-wide network next 
year, and Manchester is planning one covering over 400 square miles, 
providing free access to 2.2 million people.

So far only a few, faint warnings have been raised, mainly by people who 
are so sensitised to the electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobiles, 
their masts and Wi-Fi that they become ill in its presence. The World 
Health Organisation estimates that up to three out of every hundred 
people are "electrosensitive" to some extent. But scientists and doctors 
- and some European governments - are adding their voices to the alarm 
as it becomes clear that the almost universal use of mobile phones may 
be storing up medical catastrophe for the future.

A recent authoritative Finnish study has found that people who have used 
mobiles for more than ten years are 40 per cent more likely to get a 
brain tumour on the same side of the head as they hold their handset; 
Swedish research suggests that the risk is almost four times as great. 
And further research from Sweden claims that the radiation kills off 
brain cells, which could lead to today's younger generation going senile 
in their forties and fifties.

Professor Lawrie Challis, who heads the Government's official mobile 
safety research, this year said that the mobile could turn out to be 
"the cigarette of the 21st century".

There has been less concern about masts, as they emit very much less 
radiation than mobile phones. But people living - or attending schools - 
near them are consistently exposed and studies reveal a worrying 
incidence of symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, nausea, dizziness and 
memory problems. There is also some suggestion that there may be an 
increase in cancers and heart disease.

Wi-Fi systems essentially take small versions of these masts into the 
home and classroom - they emit much the same kind of radiation. Though 
virtually no research has been carried out, campaigners and some 
scientists expect them to have similar ill-effects. They say that we are 
all now living in a soup of electromagnetic radiation one billion times 
stronger than the natural fields in which living cells have developed 
over the last 3.8 billion years. This, they add, is bound to cause trouble

Prof Leif Salford, of Lund University - who showed that the radiation 
kills off brain cells - is also deeply worried about wi-fi's addition to 
"electronic smog".

There is particular concern about children partly because they are more 
vulnerable - as their skulls are thinner and their nervous systems are 
still developing - and because they will be exposed to more of the 
radiation during their lives.

The Austrian Medical Association is lobbying against the deployment of 
Wi-Fi in schools. The authorities of the province of Salzburg has 
already advised schools not to install it, and is now considering a ban. 
Dr Gerd Oberfeld, Salzburg's head of environmental health and medicine, 
says that the Wi-Fi is "dangerous" to sensitive people and that "the 
number of people and the danger are both growing".

In Britain, Stowe School removed Wi-Fi from part of its premises after a 
classics master, Michael Bevington - who had taught there for 28 years - 
developed headaches and nausea as soon as it was installed.

Ian Gibson, the MP for the newly wireless city Norwich is calling for an 
official inquiry into the risks of Wi-Fi. The Professional Association 
of Teachers is to write to Education Secretary Alan Johnson this week to 
call for one.

Philip Parkin, the general secretary of the union, says; "I am concerned 
that so many wireless networks are being installed in schools and 
colleges without any understanding of the possible long-term consequences.

"The proliferation of wireless networks could be having serious 
implications for the health of some staff and pupils without the cause 
being recognised."

But, he added, there are huge commercial pressures" which may be why 
there has not yet been "any significant action".

Guidelines that were ignored

The first Stewart Report, published in May 2000, produced a series of 
sensible recommendations. They included: discouraging children from 
using mobiles, and stopping the industry from promoting them to the 
young; publicising the radiation levels of different handsets so that 
customers could choose the lowest; making the erection of phone masts 
subject to democratic control through the planning system; and stopping 
the building of masts where the radiation "beam of greatest intensity" 
fell on schools, unless the school and parents agreed.

The Government accepted most of these recommendations, but then, as 'The 
Independent on Sunday' has repeatedly pointed out, failed to implement 
them. Probably, it has lost any chance to curb the use of mobiles by 
children and teenagers. Since the first report, mobile use by the young 
has doubled.

Additional reporting by Paul Bignall, Will Dowling and Jude Townend

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Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
brd at iimetro.com.au