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September 10, 2007

German Authority Says Los to Drahtlos? Canadian Piffle on Wi-Fi Health

By Glenn Fleishman

Two ridiculous articles today on Wi-Fi and health: Look, if there are nonridiculous articles, I’ll write about them, too, but puh-leeze. Todays’ crop is too much. If you write an article today and just wave your hands about government statements without including any of several recent studies and comprehensive reviews of studies that show no connection between ill health and wireless (typically cell at higher power levels than Wi-Fi), then you’re just plain making stuff up. A reporter or expert can disagree with the array of studies out there, but ignoring them doesn’t equate to refuting them.

First, the UK Independent weighs in on its never-ending campaign to overcome the preponderance of scientific information by distorting freely available details that anyone can check on. They say that the German government “ruled” that citizens should avoid electrosmog, and switch to landlines (which, by the way, produce electromagnetic radiation, thank you very much). The Register links to the actual information released, which was an agency response to questions from members of the Bundestag, the German parliament. My German is rusty, but the July 23 document is really a set of questions about the state of the government’s knowledge of the deployment of Wi-Fi hotspots and the risks. The Bavarian government apparently suggested Wi-Fi networks be used as a last resort in schools, but the document doesn’t describe any form of ban or advice that I can make out. (Per the headline, drahtlos is the German work for wireless.)

Next, in Canada, our friend Dr. Magda Havas, last seen as an advisor to the Lakehead University head’s decision to suspend Wi-Fi use by the school, surfaces again here with specious statements that lack any research support. The article has weak citations on the matter—no formal studies, slight government response—while failing to mention any of the readily available research, which includes dozens of studies that demonstrate no EMF/health link. The most recent of which received a fairly positive response, as it showed that people could exhibit an electrosensitive response even when no fields were present under carefully monitored circumstances.

Posted by Glennf at September 10, 2007 1:48 PM

Categories: Health

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