Is wifi giving our children cancer?
As more countries ban it from the classroom ...
Plenty of children these days are so obsessed with having internet access that they will virtually refuse to go on holiday unless the hotel or villa has wifi.
they’re certainly used to being fully ‘connected’ at school, where millions of youngsters who were once taught with chalk on a blackboard now sit in circles on the floor surfing the web on their tablets or phones.
the trouble is that though smartphones are used as educational tools in some lessons, they can also be a dangerous distraction during the day for pupils. In fact, youngsters taking phones into schools has become such a contentious issue that now a minister has called for them to be banned.
yet there is another issue that is perhaps even more important: one of the world’s top cancer experts has said the wifi beamed through Britain’s classrooms — radio waves that send signals between base units and devices such as i Pads and mobile phones — could be as dangerous as ‘tobacco and asbestos’.
Professor Anthony Miller, of toronto University, couldn’t be blunter, saying: ‘[Wifi] should not be allowed in schools.’
Prof Miller — who was Director of Canada’s national Cancer Institute’s epidemiology Unit, and has held posts in the World Health Organisation and the German Cancer Research Centre — is not alone in his fears.
He is the latest top scientist to warn that the invisible waves of electromagnetic radiation that now constantly wash over us all — dubbed ‘electrosmog’ even by some academics — may cause a future cancer epidemic, and that children are most at risk. Some concerned nations have already begun banning or restricting wifi, as well as mobile phones — another source of electrosmog — in schools.
But not Britain. eighteen years after an inquiry, headed by a former government chief scientist, recommended measures to reduce this kind of radiation, virtually nothing has been done.
Meanwhile, we have effectively been conducting a medical experiment on ourselves, and our children — whom some campaigners now refer to as ‘Generation Zapped’.
THE ubiquitous electrosmog from mobile phones, wifi, baby monitors, smart energy meters and a host of other internetconnected products is a billion times stronger than the natural electromagnetic fields in which living cells developed over the past 3,800 million years.
Worryingly we don’t know how this experiment will end. that is partly because it will take years to play out: massive exposure only began recently and cancers, for example, can take decades to develop. But partly it is because scandalously little research has been done into possible effects of electrosmog.
Most of the little we are learning comes from studies on mobile phones, which deliver relatively intense doses of the radiation to the head.
Some studies have given them the allclear, but these have generally only looked at short term exposures. By contrast, Swedish research found people exposed to them for ten years or more were twice as likely to develop a malignant brain tumour on the side of the head where they usually held their handsets.
this finding was broadly confirmed by a study, covering 13 countries, by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
these findings caused the Agency to conclude in 2011 that ‘electrosmog’ is a possible cause of the disease in humans.
And Miller believes new research should cause the Agency to condemn the radiation as a clear carcinogen.
Studies have also linked mobiles with cancer of the salivary gland and acoustic neuromas — benign tumours on the auditory nerve that usually cause deafness and problems with balance.
What worries Prof Miller, and other top scientists, is that evidence that mobile phones can cause cancer may be revealing just the tip of the iceberg of a far wider danger from electrosmog.
A room full of wifi radiation delivers a smaller dose than a mobile phone held to the head. But people are exposed to it for longer in offices, schools or at home, especially if they leave it on overnight.
And it’s not only cancer that causes concern. Campaigners say evidence shows thickening electrosmog may be linked to heart failure, male infertility, autism, severe cognitive impairment, damage to chromosomes and DNA, among other conditions.
It is also increasingly accepted that about three in every hundred people are especially sensitive to the radiation, suffering symptoms such as headaches and sleeplessness.
It should be stressed that nothing is proven, and it’s important not to be alarmist, but, whatever the danger, it is children who are most at risk from mobile phones and electrosmog in general.
their developing nervous systems make them more vulnerable. their skulls are thinner, so their brains get bigger doses. And with decades ahead of them, they will be exposed to more radiation than adults today.
So the proliferation of wifi into so many of our schools is worrying. While using wifi, devices emit radiation as well as receive it, which increases children’s exposure. More than a million tablets are now in use in UK classrooms and campaigners are urging schools to hardwire devices.
More countries and cities are going back to the future this way. France has banned wifi from nursery schools (the younger the child, the greater the danger), and restricted its use in teaching children up to 11.
It has also banned mobile phones from schools. But the country’s official Agency for Food, environmental and Occupational Health and Safety has recommended wifi devices should be regulated as phones are.
Cyprus has also banned wifi from kindergartens, and only permits it in the staff offices of junior schools for administration. Israel prohibits it in preschools and kindergartens, and allows it only to be gradually introduced in class as children get older. Israeli city Haifa has hardwired its schools.
Frankfurt, meanwhile, hardwired 80 per cent of its schools more than a decade ago, while authorities in Salzburg, Austria, wrote to headteachers advising them not to use wifi as long ago as 2005.
Ghent in Belgium has banned wifi in preschools and daycare centres, while local authorities in Spain and Italy have removed it from schools.
even faraway French Polynesia has prohibited it in nursery schools and limits it in primary ones. the list goes on. In Britain, by contrast, there is only complacency and inaction despite early warnings.
Back in 2000 an inquiry headed by Sir William Stewart, a former government chief scientist, recommended ways of reducing exposure to electrosmog, especially for children. tony Blair’s government accepted most of its recommendations, then failed to implement them.
FIVE years later, Sir William, as chairman of the national Radiological Protection Board, issued another report urging similar action, with the same lack of results. In 2007 — he was by then Chairman of the Health Protection Agency (HPA) — he voiced concern about wifi in schools. But its use has only spread.
Public Health england, which succeeded the HPA, says it ‘sees no reason why wifi should not continue to be used in schools’. Official action on electrosmog in Britain is limited to advising that ‘excessive use’ of mobiles by children should be ‘discouraged’.
As Professor Miller recently told a conference organised by the environmental Health trust, it is time to start taking precautionary measures to protect our children. the alternative is to do nothing and hope for the best. that’s what we did with tobacco and asbestos, and we know how that turned out. In the Professor’s words: ‘We ignore this at our future peril.’