July 13th, 2011 COREY PEIN | News
Wi-Fi Woo-Woo
Pseudo-science strikes again in a parent’s lawsuit against Portland Public Schools.
ILLUSTRATION: Keith Warren Greiman
36 Comments
Yes, this is the same
kind of Wi-Fi that provides wireless Internet connections in public
buildings, coffee shops and homes across America.
There’s virtually no
scientific basis for the belief that Wi-Fi is a health threat. But the
federal civil suit against PPS is the latest expression of anxiety by a
growing community of Wi-Fi-phobic and self-diagnosed “electrosensitive”
individuals who believe a laundry list of physical ailments can be
traced to the proliferation of consumer electronics.
Last year in Santa
Fe, N.M., a man sued his neighbor over her use of an iPhone, claiming it
interfered with his digestion. Earlier this year in Portland, a group
of neighborhood activists monkey-wrenched Clearwire’s plans to install
new towers to expand its 4G wireless Internet service, citing health
concerns. Wi-Fi fears have spawned a cottage industry around the sale of
protective amulets and field-disruptors.
To many physicists,
radio engineers and psychiatrists, all this is quackery. “Nobody has
ever claimed, as far as I can see—a legitimate organization with
legitimate credentials—that Wi-Fi was dangerous,” says Sam Churchill, a
Pearl District resident whose blog, dailywireless.org, tracks the
wireless industry.
In his suit filed
June 17 against the Portland schools, David Morrison doesn’t want money.
He just wants to publicize what he says is the threat Wi-Fi, cellphones
and cell towers pose to us all. “The telecom companies know this,”
Morrison says. “They will someday be sued like the tobacco companies.”
Morrison,
a bookseller with no science background, says he went down the “rabbit
hole” of online research after the private school where he used to send
his daughter allowed a cell tower to be installed on its grounds. He
later enrolled his daughter at Mount Tabor only to learn the school used
Wi-Fi; he filed his suit after the school district declined to rewire
its computer systems.
On June 30, U.S.
District Judge Michael W. Mosman denied Morrison’s request for an
injunction barring the district’s use of Wi-Fi. PPS has yet to file a
response.
A district spokesman says Morrison is the first parent to complain about the Wi-Fi. “The majority of the evidence says there’s not adverse health impacts,” Robb Cowie says.
There’s
no proof Wi-Fi makes people sick. Advocates like Morrison cite many
studies that experts say are flawed by design and often are not
peer-reviewed. But neither can scientists say with absolute certainty
that exposure to low-level radio-frequency electromagnetic field, or RF
EMF, radiation has no long-term health effects. The key, experts say, is
proximity, intensity and duration of exposure. Federal Communications
Commission guidelines put RF EMF exposure from cell towers and Wi-Fi
routers well within the safety zone.
Still, the
anti-wireless activists have been emboldened by a June decision from the
World Health Organization. After reviewing a large body of research,
WHO classified EMF radiation, such as that emitted by cell phones and
wireless routers, as a “possible carcinogen,” like welding fumes or
coffee.
But
Wi-Fi signals are a long way from being a proven carcinogen as
identified by the WHO—such as cigarette smoke, plutonium-239, the X-rays
used at dentists’ offices and airport security checkpoints, and solar
radiation (i.e., sunlight).
