Panorama - wi-fi network radiation risks

[WendyWeber]

Tonight's programme - says "radio frequency radiation levels in some schools are up to three times the level found in the main beam of intensity from mobile phone masts"

We only got edited highlights of what Sir William said. Also there is the standard technique of getting "sexy" science by shopping around until you find a scientist who happen to agree with what you want to say.

When you read stuff he has been responsible for that hasn't been edited by celebrity fixated arts graduates, he talks of possible risks, and asks for research.
There are mechanisms by which microwaves can damage tissue, indeed that's why we use them in cookers.
Certainly the government has been dishonest over it's handling of the issue, it often is. That's why we need effective, scientifically literate journalism.
That's why I'm pissed off.

The BBC wouldn't dream of hiring a political journo who thought that the London Underground were Islamic terrorisrs, or a celebrity cook who couldn't boil an egg. But they put people in charge of health and science programmes who have no idea, and not even an idea of how to get one.

yes i get that DC. but i just feel possible risks and the need for more research is enough to be cautious, with young children especially.

Sugarmagnolia, every device on a wireless network is emitting a signal whilst working.

Also every so often it fires off a "who's there" packet. If you have a WIFI in a town, odds are that it can "see" others, even if it can't get a good enough signal to talk.

I can't say there is zero risk, however I have a laptop on my lap at present, and am completely confident that the honey and caffeine in my coffee is doing me far more harm.

My sense is that the risks from this technology aren't being properly scaled. All electrical equipment has some risk of catching fire. This is not completely trivial, especially if you have anything made by Sony who have a reputation for building flammable equipment.
Phones catch fire as well, even ones with no Sony components. This isn't very likely to burn you horribly, but there are nasty chemicals in many batteries which you don't want to breath in.

Your TV can explode. It contains very high voltage, and glass that is holding back pressure from outside. In some countries where standards are lower, they caused dozens of deaths per year.

But what Panorama won't cover is what actually threatens you child.
It's cars.
As I recall between the ages of 2 and 10 the single biggest cause of death, far ahead of cancer etc is roads.
Do we see talking heads demanding research into the way the four whell drives are more dangerous to kids ? Does the BBC name and shame Fiat for producing cars with poor brakes, and the lowest standard of crash protection ?
Not sexy is it ?
No "mysterious force".
No celebrities...

WWhat it didn't say was whether the wireless signal you get from a single router in your home gives out the same levels of radiation you would get from systems set up in public places like schools etc. Does anyone know? "

I can't speak for all schools,particularly large secondary schools which want to cover a larger area but I do know that several primary schools in our area use exactly the same router that I have at home, which is a normal off-the-shelf Belkin.

Rustybear - I think that's the same question I asked a few minutes ago. Would be nice to get an answer though.

DC, you're not right about evidence about the cancer risk of mobile phones. There is evidence that people who use mobile phones a lot are more likely to get brain tumours on the side of the head on which they used the phone. The fact that mobiles have only been around in common use for about ten to fifteen years means that most cancers caused by them won't have shown up yet. And certainly children have only been using phones for the past maybe five years; and their skulls are thinner, so their brains more vulnerable. Again their cancers won't be showing up yet. And there are definite clusters of cancers around mobile phone masts, but the connection is difficult to prove. Obviously the mobile phone industry will do everything in its very considerable power to rubbish any suggestion that phones and masts cause cancer.

If your neighbour has a wireless connection it will leak into your house anyway, so we're all probably exposed whether we have one in the house or not. I know it's poosible for people to use a neighbours conection to go online, or by parking outside a house someone can pick up the signal from the street - possibly illegal but possible nonetheless (actuallly a Jeremy Vine discussion a few weeks ago, but focused on the legality not the health aspects).
I agree more research should be done as we obviously can't choose to avoid exposure completely.

Sm, Rustybear was quoting your post, and giving you her answer

I bet nobody here (except DC ) has had a mobile for as long as 10 years, let alone 15 - probably more like 5. And as Fauve says young children have definitely only been using them in the last 5 or so. So it is much too early to tell.

It was about 20 years before the "Radium Girls" started getting health problems and they were putting the stuff in their mouths

i have had a mobile for 10yrs

Ooh, you flash thing, misdee!

Well OK then, I bet most of us haven't (just the young ones like you and the wheelerdealers like DC)

I've had a mobile for 10 years

(I am an old fogey and remember a friend with a high-powered job who had one the size of a house brick plugged into in his car about 15 years ago - he was the only person we knew with one for years)

presumably even if we get rid of ours the one in the flat above us will zap my ds anyway.

I did not watch this programme because the pseudoscience to justify sensationalist nonsense would irritate me.

TV and radio transmitters push out even more power and cover an even larger area than Wi-Fi. However, I suspect the irony of this was lost on this programme.

DS got a mobile in Y7, and I'd say about half his class had them - he's now 19, so he's had one for 8 years.

I keep hearing about the "evidence" about cancer from mobile phones. What I don't ever hear is what it actually is.
I have a moderate barrier for evidence, all you'd have to do is show a higher rate of cancer in phone users to non phone users.
But "evidence" is not fact and to be called proof would require more work than has ever been done (or at least published).
Actually I hate mobile phones, I was almost the last person I know to get one. In the end my firm had to force me to get one, or rather to actually use the one they bought for me.
But that wasn't any artistic fear of "radiation".
The radium girls is slightly different.
The radiotoxicity of radium had been known, but as was the case in those days, no one really cared enough to check stuff that was freely available.
As for the long term mass marketness of mobile phones, a mate of mine was an editor of something like "what mobile phone" in 1992. It was mass market even then.

I am specifically not saying that there is no danger. I'm saying that the BBC is not to be trusted in any health or science issue. They are sloppy and sensationalist, with a contempt for the truth that would shame Al Gore.
If the BBC had been around in Galileo's time, they'd have a spokesman for the Catholic Church saying that "because so many people believe the Sun goes round the Earth it must be true".
They'd probably organize a premium rate phone in on the Earth's orbit, and publish the result as "news".

DC, I wasn't questioning if anyone knew that radium could cause radiation damage, but it took 20 years before the symptoms developed even though they were actually ingesting the stuff; so who can say at this stage whether or not mobile phone use in young children will lead to health problems in the future - it's far too soon. (I will not attempt to generalise about how many primary-aged children have had phones for how long!)

Surely it's better to be cautious though?

DC, that has been shown - there was a lot of news coverage of it fairly recently. Basically a govt scientist was on all the news progs saying that they were setting up a ten-year study of mobile phone use, because there was evidence that people who used mobile phones a lot were more likely to have brain tumours, and that those tumours were on the side of the face on which they held their phones. The scientist - I'm afraid I can't remember his name - had been thoroughly browbeaten by the mobile phone industry and was very cowed in his approach, being careful to state that he wasn't saying mobile phones caused cancer. Nonetheless, I'm not happy to wait ten years for this study to establish a concrete link. It's not that hard to minimise mobile phone use and to insist that your dc do. I'm more upset by the fact that my dc are also being zapped at school by their wifi.

Your CPU will be generating a radio frequency signature at a frequency not massively different from the wi-fi signal (e.g. 2GHz processor will at least generate a 2GHz square wave.) In that context, think of all the children playing educational games on so-called safe computers with
wired connections to the internet!

As for this supposed damage to the brain by mobile phones, exactly what mechanism has been proposed to explain this? Is it the cumulative energy absorbed per kilo, per unit volume or per unit area? Are we talking peak power rather than cumulative? Is it reliant on the cumulative time it exceeds some threshold power? Is it twice as dangerous when it is raining or snowing?

Can pigs really fly?

I agree that cancers can take a long time to show up. However, mobile phones have been used since the early 1980s, and humans have been exposed to that sort of radio spectrum since the second world war.
Lots of time, lots of people.

Personally I don't buy the "browbeaten" by the phone industry line. To be sure, some will be scared off, but many of the scientists I know would take that as evidence that there was something to find, and look just to spite them,

Fauve has a good, testable hypothesis. Most people are right handed, so you'd expect tumours to be far more on one side than the other. You'd also expect that since mobile phone use increases over time, that this effect varies along with it.
Simple statistics will show a link.
There is precedent for exactly this approach. In the US, they found that skin cancer was far more common on left arms than right. Apparently due to drivers having one arm out in the sun.

As for better safe than sure, that doesn't bear much scrutiny.
Sniff your new mobile phone.
Go on, really.
It smells of some solvent. Pretty much all solvents are carcinogenic. Almost all electronic equipment is cleaned this way.
Thus "better safe" would mean never letting your child near any new manufactured item made of plastic or metal.
The Sun is far and away the biggest cause of radiation cancers. There appears to be no "safe" level at all. We can measure skin damage surprisingly quickly even in British springtime.
Who here filters the water their kids drink ?
Have you looked at the legal levels of heavy metals, pesticides, and other scary things they are allowed to leave in ?

So-called "organic" foods contain just as much known naturally occurring carcinogens as as agribusiness products.
The "bitterness" of leaves is a mix of alkaloids that are evolved by leaves to screw with animals that eat them. It is not a coincidence that many drugs come from leaves, and that nearly all of them are directly poisonous.
You can't eliminate risk, and certainly induced hysteria from arts graduates at the BBC is not the way to manage risk.

Unfortunately, Joe Public does not appear to understand the difference between risks and hazards.

Also DC, most solvents are not carcinogenic. Many yes, most no.

Children have not been using them since the early 80s.

DH checked last night the levels of radiation from our wireless router, phones and tv sender. The phone and tv sender were 2 x the legal limit in the states. The router was 10 x the states limit.

I have to say, that for once I agree almost entirely with DC. I may have to go and lie down.