Britain is in the grip of a Wi-Fi revolution with offices, homes and classrooms going wireless - but there is concern the technology could carry health risks.

The Government insists Wi-Fi is safe, but a Panorama investigation shows that radio frequency radiation levels in some schools are up to three times the level found in the main beam of intensity from mobile phone masts.

Can anyone say "non-sequitur"?

The Government says wi-fi is safe (for once they are right about something), but let's look at that "but".

True, the clever Panorama investigators proved that electromagnetic radiation near a wi-fi access point is more intense than electromagnetic radiation some distance removed from a mobile phone mast, but giving this as a "but" after saying that the Government says wi-fi is safe suggests, incorrectly, that they have somehow disproved the Government's assertion and that wi-fi is therefore unsafe.

Hogwash.

The comparatively high intensity of wi-fi alongside mobile telephony is simply an inevitable consequence of the inverse square law which says that the intensity of an electromagnetic field decreases in inverse proportion to the square of the distance from the source. So the mobile phone mast, which has a very significantly higher power output than any WLAN access point, would have to be on the school roof before the radiation levels due to both were comparable.

So what?

Regardless of the relative levels of these sources of electromagnetic radiation:

• they are both very low intensity
• the EMR is non-ionising
• and the same spectrum is used by a variety of other devices which have not been singled out as health hazards.

Let's look at one of those - the baby monitor.

Yes, the same spectrum as is used for wi-fi is commonly used for baby monitors (and DECT telephones and video senders and ...). Now, in a baby monitoring application, which is the transmitter and which the receiver? Yes, the transmitter is that unit you put by baby's cot, mere inches from his precious little head so that you can hear little Jimmy when he wakes up. In order for Jimmy's cries to be picked up by your receiver some tens of metres away, little Jimmy's brain must be exposed to electromagnetic radiation many times stronger than the EM field he may toddle through from time to time while you're surfing the t'internet wirelessly. So Jimmy's brain will have been fried many times over long before he ever gets to school and finds himself exposed to (gasp) wi-fi.

Except that... How much of that EMR is absorbed by Jimmy's brain? None? Yes, none. That's why you don't need line of sight between Jimmy's transmitter and your receiver. He's transparent to the transmission.

So there's half an hour of good telly wasted and another useless, technophobic hare set running needlessly.

So disappointing. I'd have expected better of Panorama.

Category: Misc
Technorati: WiFi Safety

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