Gegevens

Gepubliceerd: maandag 22 oktober 2012 15:36

Powerwatch.org.uk - Dinsdag 23 oktober wordt in het Verenigd Koninkrijk een meeting georganiseerd met Prof. Dr. Olle Johansson, over het gebruik van WiFi op school.

Wifi in schools exposes children to microwave radiation 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, year after year. Children are known to be especially vulnerable to microwave radiation. And evidence shows that it may damage health. The introduction of iPads into schools will greatly intensify children's exposure.

In 2011 the report of the UK HPA's £ 350,000 publicly funded investigation into the radiation levels from WiFi devices more that confirmed the high levels shown by Powerwatch on the controversial BBC Panorama program, but still concluded:

The time-averaged output power of WiFi devices will generally be lower than that of mobile phones. The exposure from WiFi devices is also likely to be lower than from mobile phones because their antennas tend to be further away from the body during normal use."

So, if we say that the exposure from WiFi is half that from a typical mobile call, when we have 20 pupils and 2 Access Points in a classroom all using WiFi devices, it is like having about 12 people in the room continuously on their mobile phones. Unless the laptops are actually switched off, this exposure is all day. If the classroom had a wired network, none of that exposure would occur. Yet the UK Health Protection Agency continues to advise schools that there is no reason not to use wifi.

Increasing issues being reported as being linked with continuous low-level pulsing microwaves from WiFi and simular sources include attention, concentration and memory problems, behavioural problems, headaches, irritability and fatigue. Certainly problems that parents and teachers do not want to see in their children.

Governments outside the UK take the issue seriously. The German Federal Government has advised everyone, not only children, only to use wifi when really necessary and to preferentially used wired networks. The director of the French Health and Security Agency has said, "the time for inaction [on wifi] is past". The Council of Europe has called for schools to have wired connections to the internet, not wifi.

One of the organisers, Martin Aitken, said, "if leading scientists contradict the Health Protection Agency's advice to schools on wifi, then parents in the UK have good reason to be worried."

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Professor Olle Johansson will call for a halt to the installation and use of wifi in schools at a public meeting in Cambridge. Professor Johansson is an internationally recognised expert on the health effects of radiofrequency radiation, which includes microwaves.

Also giving important talks will be Dr. Erica Mallery-Blythe, a medical doctor who specialises in emergency medicine and electrohypersensitivity, and Dr. Isaac Jamieson, an architect and physicist specialising in environmentally healthy buildings. There will be time for open discussion.

Professor Johansson is head of the Experimental Dermatology Unit in the Department of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. The Karolinska Institute awards Nobel Prizes.

He is visiting the UK at the invitation of the Cambridge branch of SSITA, the Safe Schools Information Technology Alliance. For information or to interview Professor Johansson on Tuedsay or Wednesday morning contact:

ssitacam (at) phonecoop.coop

» Here is a link to an interesting new Canadian teacher's article: Wi-Fi technology in schools: Is it time to reconsider?