IRLANDA. The Union for education professionals: Dangers of Wi-Fi in Schools

Dangers of Wi-Fi in Schools

By Walter Graham, Chairman, Northern Ireland Opposing Masts (NIOM) (waltergrahamwalter@yahoo.co.uk)

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. Reproduction on the Voice Website is for readers’ information. Voice is not responsible for the information, opinions or links provided.)

Wi-Fi networks wirelessly connect to the Internet - they transmit through the air using microwaves rather than through a conventional telephone line.

The government are installing wi-fi laptops in most schools in Northern Ireland without any safety testing or warnings that there could be wide ranging side-effects. Drugs undergo years of testing before they are released to the public.

Below are the first three paragraphs of a report byDr Andrew Goldsworthy, lecturer in biology (retired), Imperial College London, which illustrates the scientific concern:

"Do not believe the Government or the Health Protection Agency when they say mobile phones (and by implication Wi-Fi) are safe; they are not. They can cause excruciating pain to some ‘electrosensitive’ individuals, they interfere with normal brain function and have been shown to shatter the DNA in living human cell cultures. All of this can be found in peer-reviewed scientific journals but, until now, has not been in the public domain (see also www.bioinitiative.org ).

"The government and the Health Protection Agency are under huge pressure from the mobile phone industry (from which the government receives tens of billions of pounds in tax and licence fees) to deny that there are any health effects at all. They usually hide behind out-of-date "official" safety guidelines that were drawn up when it was thought that the only way that living organisms could be harmed by electro-magnetic radiation was if it were sufficiently strong to cause significant heating.

"This is totally false. There have been countless papers in scientific journals over several decades that show very clearly that there are non-thermal biological effects (some of them extremely harmful) of electromagnetic fields that are well below the official safety guidelines."

You would think that with all the health and safety laws in schools that the government would require safety testing of equipment before it exposes children and staff to any risks - unfortunately this isn’t the case with Wi-Fi. You would also think that the government wouldn’t take the risk of litigation should teachers or children take ill and it is proven to be Wi-Fi microwave radiation caused - unfortunately it may be the principal of the school who takes the liability as the education authorities have merely offered the equipment to the school; it is the principal who chooses to install it.

This leads to the question: Is there a safer way of delivering internet connections? Yes, simply wire the classroom with multiple telephone and power outlets, thereby doing away with the risks. A school in Northern Ireland recently hardwired the school at a cost of £1,200. Not an unbelievable amount when weighed up against the possible health damage!

A BBC Panorama programme Wi-Fi: A Warning Signal [transcript video] showed that Wi-Fi in the classroom was 3x stronger than a phone mast in the beam of greatest intensity! Also featured on Panorama was Professor Olle Johansson who lectures in neuroscience at the Nobel prize-winning Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.

Professor Olle Johansson

Professor Johansson presented at Stormont in Belfast on 28 October 2008.In a presentation lasting two hours, he read from scientific papers demonstrating health effects such as depression, learning impairment, behavioural problems, migraines, infertility, cancers, etc. Professor Johansson told 70 delegates to the Stormont meeting that he believed the microwave radiation emitted by the equipment used to provide wi-fi in schools posed a significant threat to the well-being of children and teachers.

He showed his audience a dramatic series of images depicting the effects which microwave radiation can have on human cells and claimed that long-term exposure to wi-fi networks represented a very real risk to health. He said the long term side-effects may not turn up for years, possibly generations.

Using asbestos as an example, he stated that: "the victims weren’t known until 50 years after exposure; since Wi-Fi is so new no studies have yet been done. Since there are thousands of studies proving harm from microwave radiation and none proving it safe, we must err on the side of safety especially where developing children are concerned."

He called all wireless equipment "dangerous toys". Prof. Johansson pointed out that if all this equipment disappeared, life would go on fine without it. He said: "Can we take the risk of infertility in our children when there is a safe alternative?"

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