WiFi is / is not dangerous: BBC edition

The UK has been a hotbed of discussion in the WiFi is dangerous / not dangerous debate as of late, and it doesn't look like that's about to change anytime soon, with the BBC now getting into the act with an investigation that aims to get to the bottom of the problem/non-problem. To that end, the BBC's Panorama program recently paid a visit to a school in order to compare the levels of radiation from the WiFi signals in the classroom to that from a typical cellphone mast. According to the BBC, the radiation from the school's WiFi proved to be three times higher than that from the cellphone mast, although that was still 600 times below the government's safety limits. Bringing a bit of common sense to the program, Medical physics expert Professor Malcolm Sperrin advised against tossing WiFi altogether, saying that "it's impossible to prove that something has no effect." He also added that he's "more concerned about the heat laptops generate and the impact that could on sensitive parts of the body." Words to the wise, to be sure.

[anthony @ Jul 17th 2008 7:04AM]

the bbc is full of propagander em radiaton all over (light is a form of em radiaton) dont give in to the bbcs scaremonger tactics

[James Cooper @ Sep 30th 2008 11:17PM]

Come on people!
There is plenty of evidence for 'non thermal interactions' of EMF radiation with cells, especially micro wave and x rays.
It doesn't have to heat you up to cause chromosome damage. Don't call people scaremongers because they are researching a valid scientific theory. Those people could equally call all you nayasayers flat earth belevers or maybe ostriches with a 'it'll be right' attitude.
I'll sign off now and unplug my laptop, what an INCONVENIENCE!!!

[Joe @ May 21st 2007 12:54PM]

In my primary school I looked out the windows and there was a great giant cellphone mast there the whole 6 years I spent there so surely thats got to be worse than a little wifi router.

[David @ May 21st 2007 1:01PM]

cellphones were around when you were in elementary school??!?!

[Joe @ May 21st 2007 1:09PM]

Heh im only 13 :D Doesn't mean I am any dumber than you guys :P

[RandomThoughts @ May 21st 2007 1:46PM]

Of course Joe, the 6 years you spent in your primary school should have only lasted 3 years, but thats a different story.

Maybe we could all buy the kids those silver lined shorts and the little ones could walk around with shorts on their heads. Would look like an out take from Animal House pledge night.

[The Grand Master @ May 21st 2007 1:56PM]

Damn! I thought I was the youngest guy here, I'm only 15!

[Thomas @ May 21st 2007 4:17PM]

Not only is this BS, there is even a Wifi factfile on the BBC website that basically says so. It contains the quote "The Health Protection Agency points out that a person sitting in a wi-fi hotspot for a year would be exposed to only the same amount of radiation from a 20-minute mobile phone call." @ Joe: If your head is seven times further away from a mobile phone mast than it is from a phone, you are being bombarded by more radiation from the phone than from the mast, or so says zyra.org.uk

[Tom @ May 21st 2007 9:10PM]

Y'wot? Cellphones have been around for twenty years! That gives everyone up to the age of around thirty a chance of being in primary/elementary school when cellphones were around. Pretty big range, there ;)

[Matt @ May 21st 2007 1:03PM]

I find it shocking that any form of electromagnetism is allowed to even touch our school children! I plan to start a campaign to build Faraday cage around every primary school and block all sunlight too. Any form of electrical or magnetic device will be removed and destroyed, and any neutrinos shall be banned for good measure.

Isn't it wonderful to have Panorama editors with their media studies degrees explaining science to you?

[strider_mt2k @ May 21st 2007 1:43PM]

Don't forget the antibacterial bubble wrap!

Poor little things.

[Lee Roy Brandon III @ May 21st 2007 4:40PM]

I'm thinking of starting a super-clean private academy, I'm gonna call it "Wildfire".

[Chris @ May 21st 2007 1:13PM]

The BBC should be ashamed of the trash they put out. Every paper and news channel you put on has the "3x higher than a phone mast" headline without the trailing "600x lower than Gov standards".

I work in a College and I had 3 people ask me if it was safe to use WiFi on their laptops today. It's the same sort of crap they put out like a cell phones can blow up a petrol station or take a hospital offline.

[Aaron @ May 21st 2007 1:20PM]

Which sensitive parts of the body? I can't think of a time I've ever had a laptop sitting on my crotch. What are those kids over there up to:P

[strider_mt2k @ May 21st 2007 1:40PM]

Whew!

Good thing too because I was just completing the rollout of an exciting new line of wireless router underpants!

Not drafty, DRAFT N!

(2.0)

[McGinley @ May 21st 2007 1:50PM]

When I was 13 I had spent 9 years in primary school.

[McGinley @ May 21st 2007 3:14PM]

Is that really something to brag about?

[The Grand Master @ May 21st 2007 4:54PM]

Not really, just a novelty.

[Rich @ May 21st 2007 5:26PM]

All this talk of your ages. Does anyone else feel like they're being groomed here?

[Ignacio @ May 21st 2007 1:58PM]

You guys missed the most important part, what does it matter if "the radiation from the school's WiFi proved to be three times higher than that from the cellphone mast" when, on the other hand, [b]"The Health Protection Agency has said that sitting in a wi-fi hotspot for a year results in receiving the same dose of radio waves as making a 20-minute mobile phone call."[/b]

[Richard Lai @ May 21st 2007 2:27PM]

"He also added that he's "more concerned about the heat laptops generate and the impact that could on sensitive parts of the body.""

Fellows, heat up your balls and it'll be like the movie "Children of Men" in a few years' time.

[Jon @ May 21st 2007 4:02PM]

Just watched Paranoma. Slightly disappointed by it (well compared to last week's very entertaining Scientology episode) because they only interviewed like one pro-WiFi scientist, therefore the reporting wasn't exactly balanced.

Personally I am not against wireless technology (though I am still old school pro-Ethernet), even if a very very small minority might be affected by it.

I am sitting on the fence on this, at least until more proper research is done. Until then I will take the risk.

[jimhuf @ May 21st 2007 4:57PM]

BBC propaganda, the best in the world. Its upsetting the rest of the world gets to know how stupid the british media thinks the public are. but then again no-one ever got poor underestimating the public.

[Big @ May 22nd 2007 6:22PM]

It is absolutely ridiculous to even bother suspecting Wifi signals as being dangerous.

First of all if you understand the Electromagnetic spectrum, you'd know we are BATHED in radiation of all frequencies during every moment of every day.

Everything from FM/AM to sound is a form of radiation.

The only possible danger I could think of is that having radio radiation close to you could possibly ionize some of your microscopic particles but...then again, we are all gonna die eventualy, why worry about some radio signals?

[mathew @ May 21st 2007 5:21PM]

The missing detail:

They measured the cell phone tower radiation from 100m away, but measured the wifi radiation from 1m away.

So, total fearmongering crap, basically.

[Rich @ May 21st 2007 5:25PM]

That'll be because people don't tend to stand 1m away from a mobile phone mast, but _do_ tend to stand 1m away from a wireless router...

[mathew @ May 22nd 2007 3:33PM]

People don't tend to stand 100m away from the mobile phone antenna in their mobile phone, though. And just as the signal from the mast to the phone must start out powerful in order to be receivable 100m away, so the signal from your phone antenna...

[Jeffrey @ May 21st 2007 7:12PM]

I expected more from the bbc rather than only getting a pro electrosenitivity campaigner/salesman to do the on screen demo. would have been a fairer test if they had shown the output from the phone mast whilst next to a phone making a call instead they compare wifi going at full pelt to an area without an active call within a few meters

[Sean Donnellan @ May 22nd 2007 5:16AM]

Panorama used to be a serious programme, but now it's a poor pastiche of a 3rd rate tabloid, and a disgrace.

If this was a Channel 5 programme, it would have been ignored, but it's been trailed as "news" by the BBC for the last week, and so the papers have picked up the story word for word, without any investigation.

Ironically the BBC website has a discussion, where it quotes the other arguments.
Fortunately, we’re too lazy to chuck our wifi routers out and lay Cat-5, so this will go away soon enough.

[mattclarkie @ May 22nd 2007 8:22AM]

The man actually changed the scale on the meter so it was measuring smaller quantities, it was .eg. 3 micro whatevers intead of 1 milli whatevers, but to an idiot it would appear 3 times higher as the meter would show 3 instead of 1.

He even admitted he was changing the scale on the program, but to a layman they wouldn't have picked that up and it fitted with the BBCs bias so they didn't mention it.

BBC always jumps on the scare bandwagon. Wifi is scary? I sleep less than 3m from a router and my brain is perfectly cheesey I mean cognitive.

[zoara @ May 22nd 2007 11:50AM]

This programme is Bad Science.

http://www.badscience.net/?p=414

[GBaz @ May 22nd 2007 12:08PM]

What about the 0.5W of a 2.4 GHz (same as WiFi) cordless phone that people press to their head. No one ever complains about those causing problems.

[TheWakeUpCall @ May 24th 2007 3:17PM]

I saw this program and it was completely bias, which is not what I expect from the BBC to be honest.

[tom @ May 26th 2007 7:39AM]

Our school has just installed a device called hubshield; it is meant to block the majority of radiation comming out of each wifi hub. It has certainly at least reassured our parents and staff. www.hubshield.com

[stan @ Jun 14th 2007 6:47PM]

To put things in a little perspective, we're being exposed 24/7 these days to about 100 million times the EM radiation we evolved with (sound is not EM radiation), and our cells use microwaves to communicate, turn genes on and off, etc., meaning these artificial signals can entrain, amplify, or dampen our bodies' natural signals, creating long-term havoc. Exposure is also cumulative, like radioactivity, and a low-intensity signal can actually have a greater effect than a stronger one, probably because it resembles the body's own MW and doesn't trigger a defensive reaction. As far as cell phones go, personally I like my brain raw. A couple Russian researchers (they're way ahead of us on this) recently cooked an egg between 2 cell phones, and heat shock proteins have been found in cells exposed at levels way too low to cause any heating effects, according to industry and government. Bottom line is that if you expect the industry selling you this stuff and the government to have your health in mind, all I can say is beware of people selling bridges.

[r3loaded @ Oct 14th 2007 12:05PM]

Absolutely true. Your far more at risk of dying from radiation by going outside to be exposed to the solar and cosmic radiation then from any mobile phone mast.

To the FUDmongerers: EM radiation (both natural and artificial) is a fact of life. Get over it.