WiFi-natics

Attention terrified citizens, yet another thing to be worried about: WiFi is making you sick.

The latest scare-story bobbing up and down the news cycle effluent is parents claiming that WiFi transmissions in high schools are making their kids sick. Evidently the signals are causing headaches and disrupted sleep patterns among those presumed to be affected by the wireless internet transmissions.

Now, I'm a parent myself, and am more than familiar with the sensitivity that comes with the job. With every cough or change in behaviour we instantly think the worst. It's unavoidable. Most of us recognize that we can get a bit carried away at times and often find ourselves reigning in our emotions or biting our tongues because sometimes a cough is just a cough.

What bugs me though, is those few overzealous, single-minded, conclusion-leaping moms and dads who view just about every element of daily urban life as a potentially toxic or a government conspiracy. I'm not saying that there aren't some nasty things floating around our environment. Nor is our food supply always healthy and necessarily pristine. At the same time, if you were to believe the scare-mongers you'd be clothing your child in bubble wrap and  a Hazmat suit.

Blaming WiFi for kids getting sick in school seems a bit of a stretch. I don't know if you know anything about teenagers, but headaches and lack of sleep are pretty common. I seem to recall the first time I ever experienced prolonged and repeated migraines was in high school, and trust me there was no WiFi back then.

Technology is often a convenient target of the fear peddlers. Particularly because it's new and relatively untested over an extended period of time. WiFi however is not really a new technology. It uses microwaves to transmit its signals, the same that are used by cell phones. We all remember the last scare about cell phones and brain tumors, and before you say 'a-ha! please note that repeated independent testing has yet to demonstrate a link.

Microwave transmissions have existed for an extremely long time, beginning with um, the universe, more recently: our own sun, more recently than that: radar and television.

You may also hear the term microwave radiation when we talk about exposure to WiFi or cell phone transmissions. This type of radiation is not to be confused with nuclear radiation which is completely different and extremely toxic. Radiation in this case simply refers to the dispersion of the electromagnetic waves which is essentially what microwaves are made of. Another more familiar form of radiation is heat. Now you know why they call them radiators.

It should also be noted that a good number of households already have WiFi, not to mention restaurants, airports, hotels, shopping malls and so forth.

If exposure WiFi has anything to do with students experiencing disrupted sleep patterns it is more likely because they use it to surf the web until 3 AM then get up at 6 AM to haul thirty pounds of books to school every day. I get a headache just thinking about it. And if we're going to blame WiFi in schools for health problems why not look at the aging facilities in our educational system. From some of the building I've been in it wouldn't surprise me to find mould spores or asbestos coated pipes and ceilings. Not to mention a building full of teenagers with questionable hygiene habits and compromised immune systems because they spent all of the previous night gawking at YouTube.

Could prolonged exposure to WiFi microwaves have potentially negative health effects? Maybe. But let's at least do the research first before we start pulling kids out of school and pointing fingers at technology and the system.

Anyway, gotta stop typing I'm starting to get a headache.