Truth: A lack of Wi-Fi is definitely bad for your health

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17 COMMENTS

  1. Apparently both the ABC and the guardian needed some filler due to their non coverage of the nbn.

    :(

  2. The stupids (aka knuckle-draggers) are stupid enough to believe it so just take advantage and play along, tell them we finally found a good use for their precious copper. It is 20% more effective than tin foil at blocking that pesky electromagicalnetical radiations so wrap your heads in copper cables guys.

  3. AC wifi is a marketing scam and noisy crap. It does cause me headaches when turned on so keep it off. It does absolutely nothing to fix noise and interference. Cables work. As far as Fixed wireless goes it requires line of sight and so that means quite a few people can’t get it ! Again in this circumstance fibre works !

    • I’m sorry, but how do you know that it gives you headaches? The only way you can KNOW that it causes you headaches is if you conduct a blind test, wherein you don’t actually know if it’s turned on.

      • I only get EM headaches when I tune my tinfoil to let in commercial radio. ABC FM is fine, Public Access radio is mostly harmless.

  4. Weather radar sits in the middle of the 5 GHz WiFi band, transmits with hundreds of kilowatts (about 1 million times more power than your WiFi router), and is located in the middle of most large cities.
    But you can’t see the antenna, so no-one cares.
    Of course, there really are dangerous sources of electromagnetic radiation that definitely do cause cancer. By far the biggest one is the sun.

    • Yep, no one cares, no one has noticed any effects, health or otherwise, from the weather radars and no one is blaming them for anything except bad weather forecasting. No one knows what that white dome on the hill even is.

      I used to look up to Catalyst.

  5. The human body is a decent antenna. Some parts of the body are better than others. To say RF does nothing would be ignorant. It would create low level voltage differences just like an antenna does to matching frequencies.
    While there is no proof that low level RF harmful, I do think that looking at the cumulative effect of ALL RF a person is exposed to needs to be continued with quality research.

    …and yes, I like Wi-Fi

    • There is extensive (and ongoing) research on the effects of RF on the human body. At high power levels, it is clear that there are real effects.
      But the power levels that people are exposed to in any realistic scenario are tiny, and the health effects have been conclusively demonstrated to be absolutely minuscule, and quite possibly non-existent.

    • ok, I’ll bite :

      Did you actually read that link ?
      e.g. from the link :
      “A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use. ”

      and

      “IARC has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), a category used when a causal association is considered credible, but when chance, bias or confounding cannot be ruled out with reasonable confidence.”

      Yes, it is possible that using a mobile phone for many hours a day could result in a very slight increase in risk for some extremely rare cancers. But with numerous studies done on both people and animals with exposure over a period of decades, it is clear that the risk – if it exists at all – is extremely small.

      If you use a mobile for several hours a day, then by all means get a hands free kit. It will prevent neck and shoulder pain, and just possibly it might reduce your already tiny risk of brain cancer.

    • … and for good measure here’s a list of some common things the IARC considers more likely to cause cancer than things in class 2B :
      – Alcoholic drinks
      – Sunlight
      – Acetaldehyde, found in e.g. coffee, bread and ripe fruit
      – Meat
      – Any type of smoke
      – Any petroleum products
      – Working night shifts
      – Working as a hairdresser

      In other words, don’t eat meat, fruit, bread, alcohol or coffee, don’t go anywhere near a car or petrol station, don’t go out in the sun, don’t stay up at night, don’t cook using a fire and don’t get your hair cut.

  6. Since when is derision a substitute for science.

    A limited number of studies have shown some evidence of statistical association of cell phone use and brain tumor risks, but most studies have found no association.
    http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet

    The scientific reality is the matter is is still undecided. Evidence to date is not proof for either side of the debate. Not finding a definitive causal link is not the same as proving there is no causal link.

    Meanwhile further studies are underway, including a large prospective cohort study (5 countries, 290,000 subjects) launched in Europe in March 2010 that will run for 20-30 years.

    Personally I have no concerns making a handful of short calls each day, but I’m not prepared to let my children spend an hour or two a day with a mobile held against their heads.

    • Evidence to date is conclusive proof that the risk – if it exists at all – is very small. Significantly smaller than numerous other risks that we are exposed to every day which most people simply ignore – e.g. eating too much sugar, getting a suntan.

      All manner of electrical equipment emits RF radiation, often unintended and often at surprisingly high power levels. Newer equipment actually emits less, as standards have improved and we have introduced devices like WiFi that are extremely sensitive to interference.

      People have been using mobile phones for 20 years, and select groups have been exposed to significantly higher RF radiation for the last 100 years. The risks have been studied extensively in humans and in animals. Yet the evidence amounts to a few studies which show a very slight increase in the risk of certain types of rare cancers might be associated with cell phone use. Numerous other lifestyle factors are also associated with cell phone use.

      Overall, cancer risk is declining, as people have been educated about vastly more important risk factors like smoking.

      Having said that, limiting the amount of time you spend holding a phone to your head is prudent, easy to do and reduces a range of very real risks (e.g. neck pain or falling over because you don’t have a spare hand to steady yourself).

  7. It is easy to ridicule people claiming problems with EMF by quoting studies showing it is safe. However, studies by their nature tend to isolate a single factor and test that. What they do not test is a range of cofactors which may alter the result.

    As an analogy, think about testing of new pharmaceuticals. Trials are generally done on healthy young people, and based on that, the drug is declared effective and safe. However, this result cannot be extrapolated to older people, sick people, people with genetic defects, people taking other drugs for different conditions, and so on, because the drug may behave differently in those cases.

    No drug trial considers all these factors. Did the studies that “proved” EMF safe trial a range of situations before coming to their conclusions? Could the result be more properly categorised as “not proven to be dangerous”, which is very different to being safe.

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