Wi-Fi sensitivity is an urban myth

I've a friend who is allergic to aluminium in that eating food prepared in it makes him feel nauseous.

He can't tell in a blind test which food is cooked in aluminium pots but does feel ill up to a day or two later. This is an accepted condition.

So the research in the article seems rather poor. I'm not saying the condition exists (contrary to your implication the signal strength of a WiFi base station is stronger the nearer you get) but that the research doesn't prove it doesn't exist nor does your comment about signals appear particularly relevant.

Having said all of that, on balance it does sound a bit far fetched though doesn't it :-) Good excuse for a day of if you've already had pig flu!

But wifi nausea is claimed to be more or less instantaneuos, so the testing is valid.

The equivalent blind test for your friend would be to feed him either all aluminium tainted food or all 'clean' food over a series of 2 days periods , and asking him how he felt at the end of each period.

But as Nick says, it's just another PR stunt for/from the luddite crowd.

What the next article going to be?

"The pope outed as Catholic"?

I don't know about Wi-Fi sensitivity, but I can tell you that I can actually FEEL WI-MAX and it gives me some similar symptoms. I think that certain types of transmissions might mess with some people more than others. Can anyone say "Class Action Lawsuit"?

I recently had cause to set up some Cisco WLAN base stations and I was staging them on my desk. My work partner complained (gently) that he was starting to get a headache from them. He looked rather surprised when I told him that the radios were currently disabled and not transmitting *any* signal.

Just to dick with him, I put one under the desk and enabled the radios. He noticed nothing.

Conversely, when I did have the radios on while they were on my desk about 60 cms away from me, I experienced a slightly dry mouth and pressure behind my eyes. I put this down again to a purely psychosomatic response.

Any dolt knows that this is shameless publicity for a conveniently-named album that wouldn't otherwise receive such wide publicity.

Newpapers do this all the time—they'll receive a PR release from a company/celebrity/university and turn it into an article. Journalists love it because it's easy for them to paste it in as the bulk of the article has been written for them already, there's no need to perform additional research, and it nicely fills in the gaps of pages on a slow news day. Ever wonder why news websites and newspapers report inane stories like the formula for the perfect female waist-to-hip ratio (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6444851.stm)? Turns out that one was sponsored by Veet, and rigged to show that slightly curvier celebrity role models were preferred over the skinnier ones. And it's a great excuse to print a photo of Jessica Alba.

I personally avoid wi-fi at home. Not because it's harmful, but because it's so damn slow and unreliable compared to a wired connection.

Declaring it an Urban Myth is as unscientific and as unsound as the claim itself. It is impossible to prove a negative, and we have not examined everyone for sensitivity. Scientifically, the condidtion cannot be ruled out. It may exist, as you point out, and so far nothing has been accomplished to "prove" otherwise. The best science can say is that so far, they have found nothing, but let's face it how long, and how hard have they been looking.

That said, I think it's probably just smoke, but that does not mean that we will not discover otherwise.

Gee, let's write a comment that shows how we didn't read the article in question.

Well, a few things you must have noted:

1. Why is that any device with a Wi-Fi chipset gets quite hot during operation?

2. Why the Wi-Fi signal is not blocked by your body?

3. Why is that Wi-Max Modems (operator level) have WARNINGS on them to stay away at least some distance and out of line-of-sight when switched on

4. No one has tested the effect fully on humans. What about all the animals?

5. In fact, I just saw a video on National Geographic of an elephant attacking the keeper who was wearing a wireless Mic for the first time

All this means is that, energy is energy and if it has to travel through you, your atoms would have to resonate causing heat to be released. In fact, no one has been able to pinpoint the cause due to the fact that your cells keep on dying and being replaced (though it all slows down eventually ... aging)!

There is documented evidence of people being negatively affected by living in close proximity to high voltage power transmission lines.

True that the effect of these wireless technologies cannot be so high that you feel sick, but, it is there like taking aspirin for a long time destroys your kidneys eventually. In due time we would know the truth!

Besides, Electro-Hyper-Sensitivity is a recognized medical condition in Sweden already!

All Swede am fag...

1) posing questions as "facts" is something only "creationists" and the likes do. strings of supposedly related questions do NOT create facts, but a narrative, which is usually FALSE.

2) to answer your questions with facts:
1. a radio needs to amplify electric signal so it can be broadcast. since amplifiers are not 100% efficient, some energy gets turned into waste heat.
2. 2.4GHz is not a frequency that is blocked so easily. if it was 400THz it would be blocked. (and be seen with the naked eye, since it is called red light).
3. since wimax uses MUCH higher radiation level, it is best to avoid being extremely close to it, when it transmits at the highest possible level.
4. 2-3GHz has been in use for decades and explored REALLY well.
5. I just saw someone who claims he was abducted by aliens on National Geographic. Anecdotal evidence is moot. besides, what has wireless Mics, that use FM frequencies, got to do with WIFI?
6. since you clearly have no idea what is the meaning of frequency, please avoid using terms like resonance - you are clearly and unequivocally wrong.
7. high voltage power lines create EXTREMELY high intensity electro-magnetic fields around them. wer'e talking MILLIONS of times higher power than a WIFI antenna, and at 50-60Hz - 40 MILLION times less frequency.

An ancient brand of Motorola flip phone used to give me headaches circa 1998. But since then the broadcast intensity has gone so far down that it never happened again. I could actually tell about 1 full second before it rang, but only with that particular phone. It really depends on the type of signal though. I was roasted by enough microwaves to increase my body temperature by transmitters in the army. Actually felt good when it was minus 30 and I was out on patrol.

The study concluded that people were more attentive and scored higher when doing repetitive tasks while being bombarded by 802.11g signals. It did have a statistically positive effect.

i work 4 tech support for a UK computer company, i had a customer who claims that when he plugged in his ethernet cable he was fine, but tried using wifi card and he was getting pins n needles and felt sick? in the end i told him 2 see a doctor as i had not herd this situation before, still at least he hasnt called ba ck and i have not had that type of problem again... so far.

because there is a water absorption band there. That's mostly why microwave ovens work. But Bluetooth and WiFi signals should be at a much lower level and would seem harmless. At a higher level one might have to worry about premature cataracts. The military and workers have limits of exposure to microwaves set higher than cell users, Bluetooth users, and so on. It's worth watching out for a, say, 1.2ghz transmitter of some kind since a 100 kilowatt transmitter could have substantial, but still legal, output at its second harmonic.

There are firms like the US BSDM that make microwave equipment intended to heat tissues (eg tumors) by zapping them or heating them to aid chemotherapy where the heating increases the effect of the drug. They use computer directed antenna arrays to direct the microwaves to sum in a fairly precise cubic volume. So microwaves certainly do have physical effects and need to be kept track of in our environment.

We can use Bluetooth cell phone headsets knowing that our safety may be increased a tad for microwaves and a whole lot for car accidents....

...is that this phenomenon apparently only happens to the British, because I've never seen the slightest mention of it in the US.

For some reason, Wifi only makes people sick in the UK... gee - does it make more sense that the WiFi protocol can detect British people, or that the whole thing is unfounded hysteria that has merely (and mercifully) escaped my home country?

BUT, in the good USofA we have warnings on gasoline pumps (petrol for you Brits) that warn of using cells phones near the operating pump. That too is a remedy for which there has never been a problem.

It's all politically motivated and as is the case when dealing with politicians the idiots usually win.

www.junkscience.com highlights a great deal of junk science including global warming.