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| Achtung Wi-FI! |
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| Tuesday, 11 September 2007 | |
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Death by wireless, suggests German agency.
Germany’s Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) has fired yet another shot across the bows of wireless technology with a formal warning about the radiation risks inherent in cellphone networks and their sexy multimedia cousin, Wi-Fi. Increasingly, the burden of proof in this argument will rest with the wireless industry: worryingly, its interests today are served by marketeeers and lobbyists rather than the physicists who could pronounce on an issue like this with some degree of credibility. The way that the industry and its media cheerleaders (just think how much the wireless industry spends on advertising) routinely ridicule reports like this may one day appear just as craven and cowardly, as grievous and as greedy, as the actions of those who once argued that smoking was good for the health. Arrange the words ‘lawsuit’, ‘class’ and ‘action’ in an agreeable order before presenting them to the agitprops and their masters. Involuntary exposure to wireless radiation may turn out to be our century’s equivalent of passive smoking. The BfS is merely pointing out that the health risks associated with today’s wireless networks have yet to be quantified: it urges caution in the meantime, just as many similar reports have done. Operators and vendors remain blasé. ‘Electrosensitivity’ and ‘electrosmog’ are concepts as part of which a growing weight of anecdotal evidence is dismissed out of hand by the vested interests of industry. Yet the BfS is quoted by a UK newspaper as saying that it is wary of Wi-Fi “because people receive exposures from many sources and because it is a new technology and all the research into its health effects has not yet been carried out". Stick that in your wireless pipe and smoke it (don’t inhale). Jim Chalmers |
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