I’ve been following this subject for many, many years. Sometimes it is difficult even for someone with a fair amount of technical knowledge to wade through the crap. Finding unbiased info on the internet is about like finding a needle in an entire field full of haystacks.
One of my professors in college many years ago was one of the early researchers into all of this. According to him, this whole thing got started when an insurance company noticed that people who live next to power lines don’t live as long as people who don’t. Insurance guys get paid lots of money to figure stuff like this out, because it allows the insurance guys to get a better handle on the risks they take when they hand out policies.
For a long time, no one but the insurance companies seemed to take much notice, but then in the 70’s a study came out linking power lines to childhood leukemia. This study was later discredited, but by then the genie was out of the bottle. Things really started getting nutty in the 80’s, and by then people started to think well if power lines can be dangerous, other electrical-ish things like cell phones must be deadly too. At that point, there hadn’t been a lot of research done on the subject, so folks with absolutely no data to back up anything started making arbitrary rules about limits and such. At the height of the silliness, you had folks with field strength meters walking around playgrounds and schools proclaiming what areas were safe and what areas weren’t. And, these silly folks walking around with meters were being paid big bucks to do so, so that the schools could be freed of any legal liability. “Hey, we paid an expert and he said it was safe.”
Millions and millions and millions of dollars were poured into research. Two decades later, we can say three things: (1) There is still no conclusive link between power lines and cancer. (2) There is still no conclusive link between radio waves (cell phones, wi-fi-, whatever) and cancer. (3) People who live next to power lines really don’t live as long as the rest of us, and we still don’t know why. As my professor in college said, it very well could be that the folks who choose to live healthy lifestyles simply choose not to live next to power lines.
Here’s what we do know about electromagnetic radiation. At radio wave, microwave, infra-red, and visible light frequencies, the stuff is reasonably harmless, as long as you don’t get enough of it in one place to do some damage. Stick enough microwaves in a small box and it will cook your food (or anything else places inside the box). Use a magnifying glass to focus visible light and you can cook bugs. Same thing. Once you start getting up into the ultraviolet frequencies and beyond (x-rays, gamma rays, etc), that’s when bad things happen. At these higher frequencies the radiation becomes “ionizing” meaning that it can strip electrons off of atoms and create ions. Ionizing radiation is a bad thing, and is well known to cause cell damage and cancers. Sunglasses and suntan lotions are UV blockers for a good reason.
The confusing part of all of this is that once in a while studies do come out which show some sort of connection between electromagnetic radiation and something bad. Some of these studies are funded by groups with an obvious bias, but quite a few of them aren’t. The problem is that follow-up studies don’t show the same effects. Press coverage doesn’t help. “Power lines cause leukemia!!!” makes the headlines. “Er, nope, sorry they don’t” doesn’t even make the paper, let alone end up on the front page. It is difficult to wade thruogh all of the crap sometimes, but to date, there has been no conclusive link proven between power lines, cell phones, and anything at all bad.
Getting worked up about wi-fi (or cell phones) is a lot like shining a flashlight on your arm and saying “OH MY GOD MY SKIN IS BEING BOMBARDED WITH ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION THIS CAN’T BE GOOD!!!” It’s all a little silly.
Ask yourself this - If wi-fi radiation is so bad, how come higher frequency radiation like visible light isn’t?
Stay away from UV and higher frequencies. You are doing far more harm to yourself walking out in sunlight than you are sitting in front of a wi-fi antenna. Anything lower in frequency than UV (visible light, microwaves, radio waves) won’t hurt you. Stop losing sleep over it.
