On March 16 the Edmonton Journalcarried a story about how some Alberta parents want their schools to look for ways to reduce children’s exposures to Wi-Fi signals, to the point where they are considering “ensuring school districts offer schools that are Wi-Fi-free when enough parents request them.”
Good luck with that.
Wi-Fi is the use of radio signals to transmit data on the Internet wirelessly. It has become engrained into our society almost as much as the telephone, probably because most telephones (i.e. cellphones) have it built in.
Ten years ago I had one wireless Wi-Fi router in my house. Over time, they accumulate. Let me do a quick count now. Well, there are three routers in my laundry room that provide me with SaskTel Internet and television service. The wired portion of those routers allows for the maximum Internet service I can get without having a fibre optic line running into my house.
Since wired Internet is more reliable than wireless, most of my Internet devices are hard-wired in. Even so, my desktop and my wife’s desktop both have built-in Wi-Fi. There’s a Wi-Fi dongle on the kids’ seven-year-old desktop because that was more convenient than snaking a 50-foot cable. The seven-year-old laptops also have Wi-Fi.
My wife’s new laser printer has Wi-Fi capability, as does my tiny mobile photo printer.
My eight-year-old Nikon D200 camera had a Wi-Fi battery grip add-on, which cost me almost $1,000 but hardly worked. Spencer’s $100 point and shoot camera, on the other hand, also has Wi-Fi. Each of my GoPro cameras have Wi-Fi. The older one has an add-on module, and the newer one has it integrated. I anticipate all my future cameras, and their flashes, will have Wi-Fi built in.
Now let’s add two beat-up iPhone 4s, three even-more-beat-up iPods, four iPads and we’re at nine Wi-Fi idevices.
The “smart TV” upstairs has a Wi-Fi dongle allowing it to receive Netflix and YouTube from the routers downstairs. The bargain-basement Blu-Ray player I got on a Boxing Day sale for $69 has similar capability downstairs.
That brings the grand total to 22 Wi-Fi devices in this house alone, of which as many as 14 might be active at any one time. This does not count the several Wi-Fi routers in the electronics junk tub. If Wi-Fi is going to cause health issues, our collective goose is cooked.
Other than the fact I have proven I am a techno-geek, the reality is Wi-Fi isn’t just a gizmo – it’s infrastructure, in the same way a wall socket is for power, or a kitchen faucet is for water. For many of the devices we now count on for day-to-day activities, Wi-Fi is a necessity. Without it, you have a brick.
I dare say that there are people out there who have even higher Wi-Fi concentrations around them. Consider a typical office – every person can be expected to have a smartphone in their purse or pocket. There’s the office router, the printer, perhaps the “smart thermostat,” every computer in the room, every tablet present for personal or professional use. In a large bullpen-style office, there will be so many Wi-Fi radio signals floating around, it’s hard to even imagine.
So, the big question is, is this killing us? Is it harming us? I have no idea one way or the other. But if it were, one would think we’d start seeing the widespread consequences. It wouldn’t be a matter of one or two cases popping up. Wi-Fi is so prevalent in Western society, if there were Wi-Fi related illnesses, one would expect them to be as common as a plague.
If it is an issue for children, shutting off the Wi-Fi in schools is not going to make much difference. They are going to be bombarded everywhere else in their lives unless they live on a farm. In town, their neighbours may have as many, or more, Wi-Fi devices as I have (think Wi-Fi surveillance cameras). The mall, corner store, arena, park, anywhere there are people (and their smartphones) they are going to encounter Wi-Fi, just as they would electricity and running water.
Is there a Wi-Fi issue? Or, like water fluoridation, will it simply become part of the background?
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected].
