The Department of Health appears to have been wrong-footed by an MP who called for an investigation into whether Wi-Fi networks pose a danger to health.
Dr Ian Gibson, former chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, last week called for the Department of Health to set up an inquiry into the apparent dangers of Wi-Fi communications. He said that the threat should be seriously examined and that another inquiry should be carried out like the Stewart report into mobile-phone radiation.
The Department of Health has not responded this week to the claims or the call for an inquiry.
Gibson spoke out after two schools banned wireless networks from their premises over health fears. Of the two schools, the most notable case was a classics teacher at the prestigious Stowe School in Buckinghamshire who said he had suffered "sudden flushes, pressure behind the eyes and burning sensations", from his school's Wi-Fi network.
These reports sparked a stream of comments on ZDNet's UK's news blog. Most comments on the blog dismissed the concerns as overly dramatic, although once reader claimed that research had found Wi-Fi radiation affecting animals in lab tests.
The original Stewart Report of 2000 found no evidence that mobile-phone use caused damage to health, but recommended a precautionary approach. Compared to mobile-phone networks, Wi-Fi networks use much less power and operate at frequencies less able to penetrate the human body, two factors that reduce the likelihood of health effects on current evidence.
"Any new technology will always be subjected to criticism as being dangerous initially. There is currently no conclusive evidence that Wi-Fi is a cause for health concerns. It seems to me quite dramatic to suddenly ban Wi-Fi," commented Carsten Sorensen, senior lecturer in Information Systems at London School of Economics.
Gibson is a former Dean in Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and is now one of the city's two MPs. Norwich has become the first city in the country to deploy a free public Wi-Fi network across its city centre.
I've been using Wi-Fi for 3 or 4 years now. I used to have a wireless router 24/7 at 1 feet from me, just on my front, under the monitor for aprox. one year. Then I moved to other places, but always had a router at least 3 feet from me. All this time, I've been using wireless laptops and PDAs all over the day.
At work, I also used to have a wireless router just 1 feet from me, right over the table.
I started to have some BAD headaches since 2 years ago. As soons as they started, I got suspicious about a lot of things, inlucding caffeine (I'm a heavy diet cola drinker) and aspartame. I made many tests with those two, stopping drinking or absorving those substances for some periods of time. I had no good results.
Then the headaches started to get really bad, at the point that I thought I would faint because of it. I went to two different neurologists, both told me that I had nothing (looking the magnetic ressonance exams) and suggested me to stop taking caffeine slowly.
These headaches are annoying me for all these years and recentely I started to get suspicious about the wireless router that I had running UNDER MY BED, 24/7. I decided to turn it's radio off and use the cables instead, guess what?
NO MORE HEADACHES!
After I found this connection, I started to pay a good attention to it and found that:
1.Everytime that I spend more than 2 hours with the WLAN on in my laptop, I get headaches (migraines), some funny head twinkling and a sensation of "hot head".
2.When my wife turns her Vaio on at night at my side (on the bed), the migraine attacks severely.
3.When I spend a long time out of home, when I come back (and the WLAN is on), the headache will hit for sure in a few hours.
4.If I don't use any WLAN for one day or two, I feel much better, SLEEP well and have no headaches.
So, people, TAKE CARE and spread information like this. I've been searching for this kind of information for a few months now, but seems like a few people find it "funny" or "too psycho". It is not. It's SERIOUS.
I'm a huge fan or WLAN technologies and a run a website only about it.