Is Wi-Fi Bad For Your Health?

Is Wi-Fi Bad For Your Health?

A BBC television show has found elevated levels of radiation in a school using Wi-Fi, prompting a debate about the safety of wi-fi. But is it all just hype?

We all know the benefits of Wi-Fi broadband – the ability to check your e-mail in a hotspot or use your laptop anywhere at home, for instance – but a British television program hascontended that Wi-Fi could be dangerous to your health. But is it all a storm in a teacup?   The BBC Panorama showtested radiation levels in English one school equipped with Wi-Fi and found them to be three times that of radiation emitted by cell phone masts. That’s prompted a debate about the long-termsafety of Wi-Fi, although it’s still 600 times lower that the radiation safety levels issued by the British government.   Wi-Fi uses low intensity radio waves, whose wavelengths aresimilar to those found in microwave ovens, although 100,000 times less intense.   While Sir William Stewart, head of the Health Protection Agency, said thatthere should be a review of the long-term effects of wi-fi, his own agency has calculated that you’d need to sit in a Wi-Fi hotspot for a year to receive the same dose of radio waves thatyou’d absorb for a 20-minute cell phone call.   To date, there is no indication that low-level exposure causes any short or long-term damage to tissue, and Professor Lawrie Challis,chairman of the Mobile Telecommunication and Health Research program management committee, noted that “Wi-Fi exposures are usually very small – thetransmitters are low power and some distance from the body.”   He did, however, advise that as safety precautions, children should not make long calls on cell phones, and that they shouldrest laptops on tables, rather than on their laps.   The debate continues.

Showing 4 comments

  1. Harris at 11:15am 19th May 2010 We have a flat in Rouen and since the explosion of wifi boxes, we have now 13 networks coming into the appartment from neighbours, some of which are super powerful 5 bars ! Since one year I have perpetual head aches and cannot sleep well. We did not feel this way 18 months back when hardly anyone had wIFI.
    It is wrong to say it has no consequence. I feel the IMMEDIAT NOT WELL BEING with those 13 emitting Wifi antennas.
  2. Richard Lyons at 4:54am 24th May 2007 I work in the field of EME and human health, for a Telco company, so you might say I'm biased but the simple fact is my children use Wi Fi and I have no concerns about their health. This is cereal packet science. There is no debate amongst serious scientists. It is populist hogwash.
  3. Sam at 10:03pm 22nd May 2007 Hah! We'll die from global warming before we die from Wi Fi radiation.
  4. Ethan at 4:36pm 22nd May 2007 Are they serious? If Wi-Fi is bad for your health, imagine what radiation you are getting from the signals the military uses - that you don't know about!
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