Can you be allergic to Wi-Fi? The scientific signals are weak
Science is nowhere near convinced that “Wi-Fi allergies” are legit. But the French legal system is apparently far more credulous. Last week, it ruled that a 39-year-old woman is eligible for nearly $900 (U.S.) a month in disability benefits because of her struggles with so-called “electromagnetic hypersensitivity.”
It’s one of the first times a court of law has recognized the syndrome known as EHS, which is surprising given that hard evidence linking adverse health effects and Wi-Fi signals is fairly negligible.
Below, a quick review of what we do and don’t know about the world’s most mysterious “allergy,” with advice for those on the verge of chucking their router entirely: What is EHS? EHS is, essentially, a grab bag of physical symptoms with no known cause. Sufferers of EHS, estimated as “several” per million people, tend to experience some combination of physical symptoms, such as nausea, headaches, palpitations, fatigue and rashes or other dermatological problems, often at the same time. Researchers and public health officials have documented these symptoms: they’re definitely real, and patients aren’t making them up. EHS, to be clear, is a real syndrome, and the international health community has recognized it as such.
The problem with EHS is that “E” bit: multiple double-blind studies have suggested that, despite anecdotal reports, EHS has no relation to electromagnetic or radio-frequency signals. In fact, the World Health Organization has concluded there’s no known “medical, psychiatric or psychological” cause for the syndrome.
At the conclusion of a groundbreaking global workshop on the science of EHS in 2004, WHO suggested renaming EHS “idiopathic environmental intolerance with attribution to EMF” or electromagnetic fields — a mouthful that makes it clear the symptoms’ relationship to EMF is unclear. How do we not know the causes? We don’t know its causes because its symptoms are so fantastically common. In medical terms, these are called “non-specific symptoms”: they can indicate a multitude of different problems. A headache can mean, for instance, that you drank too much coffee this morning; it’s also a sign of meningitis, carbon monoxide poisoning and the plague.
EHS poses that problem several times over: a lot of things could cause each of its symptoms, and different sufferers manifest the symptoms differently, or don’t show some at all. What are the leading theories? There are two primary schools of thought here: the first, that environmental conditions that are not Wi-Fi could trigger EHS, and the second, that it represents a sort of reverse-placebo effect.
WHO has compiled a whole laundry list of environmental factors that could cause EHS symptoms, including the “flicker” of fluorescent lights and the glare from screens, and recommended that sufferers engage the services of someone who can evaluate their work environment for issues such as indoor air pollution and excessive noise.
They also recommend that patients see a psychologist or psychiatrist — a proposal in which they’re not alone. Writing in the Guardian earlier this year, James Rubin and Simon Wessely of King’s College London call EHS an instance of the “nocebo effect,” in which people tend to feel sick because they believe they’ve been exposed to something that will sicken them.
In one experiment, the pair showed half of their subjects an episode of the BBC series Panorama that alleged Wi-Fi signals were harmful. They then exposed the whole group to a fake Wi-Fi signal and waited to see who would get sick. The ones who watched the documentary were far more likely to develop EHS symptoms.
That echoes findings from WHO, which suspects symptoms can be caused by “pre-existing psychiatric conditions as well as stress reactions as a result of worrying about believed EMF health effects.” What does the ruling mean? To that last point about the stress of EMF health effects, the French ruling could be pretty damaging. By essentially ruling that EHS is a disability, the court legitimized claims that Wi-Fi and other electromagnetic and radio-frequency signals can cause adverse health effects. The French ruling also adds to a growing body of global legal precedent on EHS and its legitimacy. Courts in Australia have already awarded workers’ compensation to EHS patients. In Sweden, the syndrome is officially classified as a “functional impairment,” which affords sufferers a range of legal protections and accommodations.
Perhaps most important for sufferers, however, the French ruling affirms that they’re not making all this up. So, should I turn off my Wi-Fi and throw my iPhone into the sea? Probably not. Using Wi-Fi, we can say with some confidence, will not cause you to develop EHS. Unfortunately, we don’t know if that means Wi-Fi and cell signals are totally safe across the board. There isn’t a whole lot of long-term research, and questions remain around fuzzy links between, say, cellphone signals and infertility. In general, however, the advice from the medical community has been pretty comforting: the radio-frequency signals you encounter in your daily life are (a) extremely weak and (b) not damaging.
If you don’t believe that, of course, there’s a growing body of people who’d love to tell you exactly how dangerous Wi-Fi signals and their ilk can be. An entire industry has grown up around selling bracelets, blankets, blockers and pills that “negate” or “disrupt” electromagnetic energy. The great irony, of course, is that by hyping these so-called health risks, hucksters just make people more nervous — and thus clear new ground for EHS.