Simcoe County school district in Ontario, Canada last year invested thousands of dollars on new wireless internet routers. As a result, students on a K-12 level have better access to the internet’s wealth of resources for their studies.
However, some of the district’s parents are immersed in a state of panic. They say the Wi-Fi is making their children sick. Simcoe resident Rodney Palmer, who has two children, 5 and 9 years old, bemoans, “Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms when their kids came home from school.”
Palmer is going to pull his kids out of the schools to avoid exposing them to what he considers a toxic environment.
The only problem is that repeated studies have shown that the kinds of wireless signals used in consumer electronics are safe and pose no identifiable health risk. Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City and editor of the DSM-IV, the diagnostic handbook for psychologists, states, “As far as I’m aware, there is no evidence that any kind of radio frequency radiation (including cellphone towers, cellphones themselves,and also including Wi-Fi) cause any negative health effects.”
Strangely the public has shown little concern over TV or FM radios, which both offer a greater electromagnetic radiation than Wi-Fi routers.
I would also like to know how they managed to measure the RF in the classrooms. Are these meters available at the source now?
Rico, I don’t think there is an educational benefit to having every child at a computer, unless it’s a class on computers. I am assuming a few connections per classroom. Even that I suspect is not a benefit over traditional luddite methods.
MikeN
look up 21c education. The times of a student a textbook, a pen and paper at a desk are almost over. for better or worse, education is going digital. It doesn’t matter if the public thinks a 1:1 computer:child ratio is good or not, the TEACHERS like it for many reasons.
For some subjects, I agree with the ideals. Obviously you don’t really need it for gym, even though products exist for examining performance much like the pro athletes use to find flaws.
The biggest idea behind the kids having ubiquitous access to tech is so the kids can get the skills to continue learning more than just the 830-330 a day.
We had a similar incident here in So. Cal. a year or so back. The city was gave a permit for a cell tower in a park across from an elementary school and the parents pitched a fit. The radio waves were harmful, cancer, blah, blah.
The funny part is the school has a very large commercial microwave relay station in the middle of the school yard. Far more RF from that than any cell tower.
People battle for the rights of children as if they are the same group from decade to decade. They do grow up.
It kills me how this is the same logic as those against vaccinations.
What is worse is when I was their ages I played on a concrete slab playground, had no seat belts in the car, wandered all day long from sunup to sundown during the summer with NO supervision, trick or treated around the neighbourhood and ate candy (with red dye 5 straight out of the bag, had most meals with butter and salt on pretty near everything and got cuts, abrasions and scratches and never used a triple antibiotic ointment or spray.
And wow! I’m still here with no major health issues and only take aspirin from time to time for a headache.
Go figure. Kids must be made more fragile than when I was young.
Cursor_
I thought Canadians were of average intelligence… I guess I was wrong.
The statement;
“As far as I’m aware, there is no evidence that any kind of radio frequency radiation (including cellphone towers, cellphones themselves,and also including Wi-Fi) cause any negative health effects.”
Is asinine as higher power RF radiation can and WILL cause serious problems. I know several examples from my military experience.
Speaking as a former high power radio transmitter tech.
#5 if you are wearing a full body Faraday cage you are completely safe. The current will flow through the cage to ground leaving you untouched…. Unless the current is so high it melts the cage, then you would be well done.
I am currently sitting at my desk writing this. There are two routers less than three feet away. A major cell tower is less than a block away. There are a number of power lines converging above the house where I live.
At the moment I am drinking a 32oz diet soda that contains both aspartame and ace-k. I just got done brushing my teeth and using a fluoride wash a little over an hour ago.
Yeah me…
#24 DHZ – Cell phone towers on school grounds are a huge issue in Tampa. If a school allows a tower only that particular school, not the school district, receives the cell tower rent money.
North American cell phone frequencies are in the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands. 802.11g, b and n use the 2.4GHz band. This is the same frequency as microwave ovens – a microwave oven maybe 2450 MHz (2.45 GHz) for instance. This is called the industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band. There are no long term studies that document the long term effects of low wattage exposure to these frequencies. I never could understand this.
Today’s children will have considerably more exposure at the 2.4 GHz frequencies then even today’s teenagers.
“Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms when their kids came home from school.”
Notice “OTHER neurological and cardiac symptoms.”(my emphasis) Symptoms are just symptoms. A headache can come from many sources, only rarely is it a brain tumor.
I can see the possibility that energy waves could cause harm, because there are strong enough ones that indisputably do. What about the rest? Okay, fine.
Saying these cause brain or heart trauma is WAY out there.
I’m not even going to defend cell phones, but Wi-fi signals? And how exactly is keeping the kids at home going to work?
Unless you live in ye old isolated cabin you are already exposed to multiple wi-fi transmitters belonging to your neighbors.
This is worse than those vaccine morons.
#29 Dude, you are living on borrowed time.
When it comes to people worried about things that are put in vaccinations, fluoride in the water, and high fructose corn syrup in an enormous amount of food – there is actually some evidence in their favor.
However, Wifi routers emit approximately .003% of the ‘radiation’ of cell phones, but I bet these f-tard parents won’t quit using those.
“Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms when their kids came home from school.” — maybe it’s the Ritalin and other Psychotropics they are feeding them at school?
They should be much more concerned over the serious effects of dihydrogen monoxide!
That stuff is everywhere in the school, yet nobody seems willing to do anything about it!