Parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick | Hacker News Reader

Parents suspect Wi-Fi making kids sick

cbc.ca

The parents complain they can't get the Simcoe County school board or anyone else to take their concerns seriously, even though the children's symptoms all disappear on weekends when they aren't in school.

Somebody please tell me this was intended as a punchline. If so, it is beautifully arch.

Great lines in science reporting, 2010:

"I'm not saying it's because of the Wi-Fi because we don't know yet, but I've pretty much eliminated every other possible source."

Maybe it's the cafeteria food.

Surely this one is better:

Well what doctor has been schooled about the rate of microwave infections?

Who needs schooling? Everyone knows that a microwave infection can be cleared up in a few days with an over-the-counter ointment.

I hear homeopathy works pretty well for this kind of things.

Awesome "alternative-medicine" sketch by two British comedians:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMGIbOGu8q0

When I was a kid, my classmates and I would frequently get temperature, feel tired or sleepy, and even have strong headaches during school days...

... usually it happened just before a test, or a "long enough period of time" since our last such occurrence. Later on we found out going to the beach was a great help, but we never got teachers (or parents) to listen to us. :(

I'm 100% sure that these kids have absolutely no issues at home, where their parents operate cordless phones and microwave ovens in the same unlicensed spectra, and their house is bombarded by WiFi signals from their neighbors (in my previous home, I could see 20+ unique SSIDs).

I love one of the reader comments to this article; I can't tell if it's serious or just a beautifully crafted troll. I'm worried it's the former:

The eyes are very sensitive to EMR and you will notice many young people now wear ball caps and granny sunglasses even when it is cloudy. This is similar to sun blindness.

Oh yay more electro-sensitivity BS. Completely unverifiable claims of people who think electronics hurt them. Here's a blog post I saw on the matter: http://depletedcranium.com/interesting-new-electrosenstivity...

"In all cases, the measured Wi-Fi signal levels were very far below international exposure limits (IEEE C95.1-2005 and ICNIRP) and in nearly all cases far below other RF signals in the same environments."

From this study: Radiofrequency exposure from wireless LANs utilizing Wi-Fi technology.

Abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17293700

Full text: http://www.medfordumc.org/celltower/wifirfexposure.pdf

What is the banana equivalent dose of a strong wifi signal?

Zero. Microwaves are non-ionising.

Not a physicist. However, I'll take a qualitative stab.

Radiation that we care about (mostly beta and gamma) is measured in rems, which is essentially a biological statement about how much tissue damage is associated with a certain dose of a specific type of radiation.

I assume that WiFi releases no beta particles (electrons), so we're just talking about EM emission: visible light, X-rays, gamma rays, all that fun stuff.

Your WiFi equipment is emitting in the microwave spectrum. The energy of photons at these wavelengths is orders of magnitude weaker than the energy of ionizing radiation (essentially gamma radiation). If you don't ionize, then there is no currently known mechanism by which you can cause cellular damage (except via thermal damage ;-) ).

If we were to posit the WiFi emitter as a blackbody radiator, it would have to be thousands (millions?) of times hotter than room temperature to have an appreciable emission of gamma radiation thanks to Planck's Law.

In other words, I'd guess that 1 banana probably emits as much ionizing radiation as all WiFi emitters have for all time.

If you want an unreliable quantitative statement, try this: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/featu... (1 year of strong WiFi = 20 minutes on a cell phone - which as far as we know is also 0 rem).

Another anti-vaccination movement? Oh dear.

I am not saying I believe there's any correlation, but I think the parents concerns do deserve a closer investigation: sure there might be no correlation, but maybe there is.

That's the scientists job: let the investigate and their final word is it.

This is an example where everyone needs a fundamental lesson is statistics: Correlation does not imply causation.

They'll probably want to ban cordless phones as well..

Is there a plausible mechanism?

By which wifi can cause illness? No.

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