making sense of radiation from wi-fi, mobile phone, etc

wi-fi devices only transmit when they are sending data (not continously) and operate at very low level – 0.1 watts at the most. someone sitting in a wi-fi ‘hotspot’ for a whole year, according to the health protection agency, would be exposed to the equivalent radiation dose of a 20 minutes call on a mobile phone, which studies have shown does not cause harm.

had not been able to blog for 2 days due to some problem with my blog. i guess some of you might experienced seeing some error message to do with something database when you came into my blog past 2 days, huh? well now it is fixed and hopefully it won’t happen again.

ok now i’m continuing to hoo and haa about wi-fi health risk as i had blog earlier. 95% of those i met online and offline support the free wi-fi project in penang and do NOT think it will pose any health risk at all. do those who get all high up over wi-fi being all over penang island, really understand how wi-fi work?

from mypdacafe, i came across an interesting article that talk about dispelling the myth of mobile phone radiation (which also include wi-fi).

the article began:

They say that the public discussion is confusing, with people left struggling to weigh up which claims to take seriously. Many people have become anxious about exposure to non-ionising forms of radiation, from mobiles, Wi-Fi and masts.

well, the penang government had proposed a forum – public discussion on the health risks of wi-fi. i hope the people who attended the forum won’t end up confused instead!

the article further tells us that a group of scientists had came up with a guide known as ‘making sense of radiation’, which will familairise people with discussion and controversy on radiation. the guide will also help people to question things they’ve heard or read about radiation.

• Speculative stories about health risks and RF radiation often go uncorrected, leaving a trail of confusion that prevents public discussion and policy from moving forward.
• To counter this they wanted to share some insights, like the fact that different types of radiation exist, that ‘cancer clusters’ are unusual and that by picturing what radiation is like you see that the ‘electrosmog’ metaphor is misleading.
• Current research does not show that EMFs from mobile phones, masts and Wi-Fi cause harmful effects.
• The scientists had a look at a range of products claiming to protect us from EMFs and concluded that they exploited people’s fears, were unnecessary and generally did not do what they promised.

those were the summary from the guide. remember to go and read the full article. the guide can be download in pdf format too. my opening paragraph you see here, was an excerpt from pdf guide. read especially section 3 which talk about mobile phone, pylons and wi-fi. it would hlep to save the pdf file for future reference.

notice the second point here which talk about radiation causing ‘cancer cluster’? we have heard before about people fearing that using mobile phone will cause cancer, right? but this fear is unfounded. there is no scientific proof at all to link mobile phone with cancer. some people who happened to catch cancer, i don’t know why they want to blame it on the mobile phone!

many of you might have watch the short video of how 4 mobile phones that were switched on and placed round a popcorn, managed to cook a popcorn… and believe it or not, a number of people believe it to be true! silly! not true at all. it was a hoax as you will find it from snopes, the popular urband legend website.

oh dear. i’m suppose to talk about wi-fi but ended up talking about mobile phone. er… but they are related since it is actually ‘radiation’ talk. the thing is…. first we said radiation from mobile phone is worst than from wi-fi. then we show the radiation from mobile phone is not really that harmful as we thought… so what? so radiation from wi-fi will be even less, less, less harmful!

GO PENANG GOVERNMENT! GO JEFF OOI! GO MAKE PENANG THE FIRST STATE TO BE FULLY WIRELESS!!