My new super-powerful wireless router and radiation

Factual Questions
1

I have a new wireless router. It is fabulous, and I have been finding all sorts of reasons to be in other rooms while checking my email.

But that’s beside the point. I have searched on ‘wireless’ and ‘cancer’ but only found old mobile phone threads. My question, essentially, is whether this thing is potentially delivering enough microwave radiation to (a) kill me if I sit next to it every day for hours at a time, (b) affect my sleeping toddler in the room next door, © affect anyone else in the house.

Now, I said ‘potentially’ because I realise there are no definite statistics, or any, really, on newer wireless techonologies. I further realise that the mobile phones thing is still hotly debated, though new findings would seem to back up the ‘don’t give them to your kids’ argument. After searching the internet for AAAAAAAAAges I am well aware that no meaningful statistics will show up about this for decades, and even then they will be debatable.

The real question is, as a parent who is constantly having to make guesses about things that may or may not prove to be dangerous later on, what should I do with the router? Is there enough doubt about its safety to locate it as far from the inhabited quarter of the house as I can? Could anyone direct me to an interesting review of this issue that is neither clearly paranoid nor uselessly optimistic? Should we all start wearing tinfoil hats?

(I happen to have one already, but that’s another story)

ps: follow-up question. Should I be able to site the router on the ground floor and have a PC upstairs link to it? I mean, range-wise?

2

a) No.
b) No.
c) No.

There is no credible evidence for exposure to RF from cellphones and similar devices causing cancer or any other health problems. Those clinical studies which have studies the risks have not found any strong correlation between health problems and low-level RF exposure. Puat the router where it does the most good, i.e., gives the best connectivity from any location you care to use your laptop. It’s as simple as that. There are far more dangerous things in your house to your kids, believe me.

3

I would be more concerned about the laptop transmitter, which is resting right on the family jewels while you check your email while seated on the thrown.

Isn’t this what they use to say about cigarettes?

4

For some reason, flat dismissals of these concerns fail to persuade me. I have found plenty of them, and plenty of wildly sensationalised stuff too, but I’d love to hear some kind of balanced approach.

I’m not particularly happy about using my laptop on my lap either. If anyone would care to manufacture some lead-lined cushions, they’d make a mint.

5

True. It’s also what they used to say about eating carrots. It was wrong in one case and right (so far) in the other. So we do well to conclude that these questions are best resolved on the evidence.

6

Sorry to do this, but cite please

(you asked for it)

7

Why not get a plumber to cut you a piece of lead the size of your laptop, about a 1/4" thick should do the trick, and epoxy it to the bottom of the laptop. Be sure to also spray the exposed surface with black epoxy paint to prevent lead poisoning by contact.
:wink:

8

Carrots are members of the plant family Umbelliferae, which includes poison hemlock. Because of this, it was once believed that carrots were dangerous to eat.

9

This happens to be a subject that I’ve followed for many years. One of my college professors was one of the early researchers in the dangers of power lines. Apparently this all started when an insurance company noted that people who lived next to power lines don’t live as long as people who don’t (people at insurance companies are paid to figure statistical stuff like this out). All sorts of theories were tossed about, the leading one being that the electric fields caused cell damage and cancers. Nobody really paid much attention to this until a rather famous study was done in the 70’s that linked power lines and childhood leukemia. This turned the subject into something that few people were interested in or believed in into something that became one of the hottest subjects in the 80’s. By the end of the 80’s folks were walking around schools with field strength meters and getting paid lots of money to determine what areas were “safe” and what areas weren’t.

This was also the same time that cell phones started really taking off in popularity. In the early 80’s a cell phone was about the size and weight of a brick. By the end of the 80’s they had shrunk down to actually be comfortable in your hand. It wasn’t much of a stretch to go from power lines and electric fields causing cancer to cell phones and RF energy causing cancer. Tons and tons of money were poured into research on the subject.

This is where it starts getting a bit murky and hard to sort out, even for someone with a good bit of technical knowledge on the subject. By this time you have two groups, those who believe that all things electrical are the spawn of the devil and will cause the end of civilization as we know it, and those who think that this stuff is all basically harmless, and both of these groups are quite vocal in their opinion. The problem is that each group funds research, and since they are funding the research, it calls into question whether the research being done is truly unbiased. In many cases it is not. Ever since the late 80’s and early 90’s, numerous studies have been published that report some link between either cell phones and power lines (or both) and something bad, usually cancer. In some cases these studies are done by biased researchers, in some cases they aren’t. However, as far as I am aware, no study has been done to date which has proven anything bad and has also held up to follow up studies by other researchers. Basically, the long and short of it is that the “cell phones are evil” group has not scientifically proven its case yet, and this is after a couple of decades and many many millions of dollars of research, which I think is significant.

Electromagnetic radiation is a broad spectrum of stuff. At the low end you have long wave radiation, then radio waves, then microwaves (which are a type of radio wave), then infra-red, then visible light, then ultraviolet, then x-rays and gamma rays. Our current understanding of it is that the lower frequency stuff is pretty much harmless (unless you put enough of it in a small area to cause heat damage). Once you get part way through the ultraviolet range of frequencies though, the energy starts to become “ionizing” meaning that it can strip electrons off of atoms. This is known to cause cell damage and cancers. It’s also why we have UV blockers for sunglasses and sun tan lotions, but we don’t have IR blockers for the same. Everything above these frequencies is dangerous. Everything below them isn’t. One thing that the “RF is deadly” group also needs to explain (in my opinion) is why RF would cause damage when higher frequency radiation like infra-red doesn’t.

I can give you dozens of cites (from reptable research groups even) on either side of the argument. What I can’t do is find a cite of a study that held up under peer review and subsequent follow up studies that says RF is dangerous. Right now, that’s where we stand. I will tell you this much. Finding an unbiased source on this on the internet is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

10

Yes.

If you don’t have the security enabled on the router you can also expect your neighbors and maybe even some people in nearby neighborhoods to also link to it. You might even get someone driving by in a car linking to it. There’s actually a hobby for this sort of thing (seeing how many unprotected networks you can get to driving around with a laptop). I kid you not.

11

Thank you. Thank you very much!

12

I think the key here is what engineer_comp_geek put in his fourth paragraph. The radiation that your cell phone and WLAN puts out is in a wavelength range, that it doesn’t have enough energy to knock electrons out of their orbits, so it can’t cause chemical damage. It is possible to put in so much of it, that the heat accumulates, and temperatures cause chemical changes, which is how microwave ovens work. But with cell phones and WLANs, the power is low enough that we’re not talking about heating up tissue.

Causing cancer, so far as we know, would include doing chemical damage to the DNA in a cell, or changing one molecule in a cell into something else that could then damage the DNA. But since WLANs can’t cause chemical damage, it’s just not plausible that they could cause cancer. So to believe in this link anyway would require pretty strong evidence that there is a link, and after many years and very much money to study, no credible evidence of it has been found. I think it’s very unlikely.

What’s certain is that even if there is some small link that has so far evaded our best measurements, that risk is still way below the risks from other things in your house, such as electical shocks, falling TVs, pans of hot liquids dropped in the kitchen, choking on grapes, drowning in the tub, suffocation, not to mention the risks in automobiles. You’re wasting your time worrying about radiation from your WLAN, that’s for sure.

13

The only known method by which microwaves (or anything longer than ultraviolet, for that matter) can cause tissue damage of any sort is by cooking. If you’re being exposed to microwaves strong enough to cook you, you’ll feel the heat. Therefore, if you’re not feeling heat from your antenna, you’re almost certainly safe from it. I understand your desire for a balanced answer, but “no” is, in fact, the balanced answer.

14

the radiation from a wireless router doesn’t even register as a blip on the (hopefully noncarcinogenic) radar screen. You would be better off worrying about the people they are around or the crime rate in your neighborhood or a blue billion other bloody things. As a society we spend a lot of time obsessing about things of little consequence.

Just wait until he or she is a teenager. Do you really think there is even a remote chance you will be able to keep them from having their own cell phone? Heck, we may not even have landlines by then.

If I were gauging the risk I would tie a hundred of the routers to every part of my body and wear them every day before I would cross a busy intersection on foot (at least I would if my only consideration was health risk).

15

There are no doubts about its safety. It most likely conforms to one of several standards set by the IEEE, 802.11a, b, or g (pick a flavor). Part of the standard is that the output of the antenna be less than 1W, and AFAIK, all are actually less than 100mW. And that’s if you are right up next to the antenna. The inverse-square law means that by the time you get a few feet away, we’re talking effectively nothing. the only reason your laptop’s card can pick up the signal is the sophisticated signal-reception technology therein. You’re in more danger of getting a sunburn from your incadescent light bulbs.

Relax, put the receiver wherever it’s convenient, and enjoy your Wi-Fi.

16

802.11b/g works on the same frequency band as microwaves and, AFAIK, the power put out by WiFi antennas is lower than the acceptable leakage spec for microwave ovens. So even IF wifi antennas were dangerous, microwave ovens would be more so.

17

Cheers guys. I should say that “there are far more dangerous things in the house” doesn’t count as much of an answer either, because… well, it’s neither here nor there, is it? I already spent years trying to make all of those as safe as possible as well! Most parents to ask these questions will have done the same thing, so there’s little point telling them to worry instead about electical shocks, falling TVs, pans of hot liquids dropped in the kitchen, choking on grapes, drowning in the tub, suffocation, not to mention the risks in automobiles, the people they are around, the crime rate in their neighborhood, or a blue billion other bloody things - they already do!

However I am very grateful for the responses, particularly engineer_comp_geek’s, and I do feel quite a lot better about the wi-fi. I am now ready to start worrying about something else.

Eek! I am?

:eek: :eek: :eek:

:: runs off ::

18

What, specifically, is the make, model, ratings, etc. of this fabulous router?

19

You’re probably more likely to make yourself ill worrying excessively about EM radiation than any harmful effects of the extra radio waves. But don’t stop worrying altogether. We’re enveloped almost everywhere we go by electromagnetic fields that were absent for the whole of our evolution. Such EM fields can easily be measured, and the harmful effects of large field magnitudes are well documented. Here’s the EM field safety notes for the University of California: http://www.llnl.gov/es_and_h/hsm/doc_20.07/doc20-07.html
Even unvarying magnetic fields of a sufficient magnitude can cause “nausea, metallic taste in the mouth, and vertigo”. And that’s without having a metal plate in your head.

Just because the energy of an electromagnetic field isn’t sufficient to ionise your atoms, it doesn’t mean it won’t have an effect on your health. Your body is a mass of little electrical impulses (even on a cellular level), and it doesn’t take much of an electrical field to disturb these. It’s undisputed that large electrical fields are damaging; the question is, what levels are safe? Legal standards are lowering the limit as research reveals more: BBC NEWS | Health | UK plans to lower EMF limits

It may even be that some low-level EM exposure is be good for you. New Scientist journal reported research that claimed a small amount of ionising radiation was generally beneficial to health, being just damaging enough to stimulate the immune system into good housekeeping mode. I’ve also seen people claim ill health from EM radiation from electrical appliances and house wiring. One guy suffered horribly until he replaced his desk lamp. Maybe coincidence, maybe not.

I wouldn’t be too worried about the EM radiation from a wi-fi link. Your PC, monitor, TV, CD player etc. will be chucking out plenty of their own EM fields. There are standards for EM emissions that these applicances have to meet, but these limits are set only for the benefit of other devices, not your health. Even then, my PC interferes with my TV and the radio, and the TV interferes with the radio a little also. But never live too near an electricity pylon! The EM field strengh near these is so high that it ionises the air (that’s what’s doing the crackling noises), and even at ground level you can generally get enough volts-per-metre to strike a fluorescent tube. Here’s some neat and scary art from the Bristol University Physics department’s artist-in-residence: BBC NEWS | UK | England | Bristol/Somerset | Power lines spark light show

I met a guy once who, every night, used to kiss his wife goodnight and go out to sleep in the caravan in the garden in an earthed Faraday cage. He wasn’t stupid (he was a water pollution scientist), but I think he may have been taking EM pollution to extremes. He also claimed (transitory) ill effects from sunspots. Or possibly he’s right, and we’re slightly mad for putting up with EM exposure.

Note on terminology: Electric fields and magnetic fields are different aspects of the same beastie, as linked by Maxwell’s famous equations. When they’re lumped together they’re referred to as Electromagnetic (EM) fields. The same field can be measured in a number of different ways, depending on what you’re looking at, so we can be dealing in units of volts-per-metre, amps-per-metre, Gauss, Tesla and so on. It gets much more complicated than this if you want to get into more detail.