City-Provided Wi-Fi Rejected Over "Health Concerns"

exphose writes "A small, hippie-friendly town in northern California, Sebastopol, had made an agreement with Sonic.net to provide free Wi-Fi across the downtown area. However, not everyone in town was pleased with the arrangement. According to Sebastopol Mayor Craig Litwin, citizens had voiced concerns that 'create enough suspicion that there may be a health hazard' and so they canceled their contract with Sonic.net. Some more details are at the blog of Sonic.net's CEO."

Take off and nuke the site from orbit.

Its the only way to be sure.

Re:Teach her some physics.

Well, I don't mind if they don't want town-wide wireless internet access. I think the internet will be a better place if these types of people *don't* have access.

Lay off the weed, man!

It's time to lay off the weed, me thinks. WiFi signals are as harmless as any other radio signal. I suppose they may try to get FM and AM radio blocked, as well? I am curious, though, if these same people just happen to be carrying cell phones.

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

In his science fiction novel Firestar [amazon.com] , Michael Flynn points to the hysteria over electric blankets as proof that a large portion of society is too dumb to appreciate technological advance.

And fifteen years ago there were already fears that power lines were making us ill. If they caused long term effects, surely some would have manifested themselves in the meantime, but it all just looks like fear over nothing.

Active hams spend a great deal of their life around RF. Has there even been any suggestions that they develop certain illnesses more than the average population?

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

You say that there are links between cellphone use and brain tumors but it seems that for every study claiming that, there is a study claiming there is no link.

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

There have been som studies funded by the UK Department of Health which showed no convincing results from cellphones. Now, they migh, of course, be in the pocket of the cellphome manufacturers, like they might be in the pocket of the drug manufacturers. But with a socialised health service, they are the people who are going to end up payiong the first level, purely medical, costs of any ill effects that there may be. Whcih suggests to me that, if they were going to err, they would be likely to err in the direction of overcaution rather than recklessness.

All the accusations against cellphones have been generally anecdotal i.e. a number of people have been found who were both heavy cellphone users and got brain tumours. But when large scale statistical studues are done, these "clusters" disappear. If you ask averybody with a tumour whether they were a heavy cellphone user, some will say yes. Probably more than really are, becasue moderate users will tend to judge themselves heavier in order to have something to blame for their tragedy - randomness seems much more frightening that a technological accident.

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

Turns out that any connection between power lines and increased cancer rates was always a false positive. In all cases, it was mitigated by some other cause, such as the community was getting it's water from an aquifer downstream from an old chemical dump. The initial research which made the connection, was falsified, and the scientist, well, he's not doing research any more.

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

I bought and live in a house near high voltage lines. Remember the distance-squared law? If you're worried about high voltage power lines 400 feet from a house, you should be very concerned about the 110v 2 feet away in the wall, and absolutely terrified by an electric blanket a fraction of an inch away!

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

WiFi signals are as harmless as any other radio signal

It's not the WiFi you should worry about, but the routers [wellingtongrey.net]...

Re:Lay off the weed, man!

considering that we're constantly being exposed to low levels of background radiation, and higher levels of radiation from the Sun.

You know, you might have hit it right on the spot there. People seem to confuse different types of radiation. They assume that just because it's called "radiation", it's the same as the ionizing radiation from the earth and from those evil nucular power stations! It's completely different. A campfire radiates heat, that doesn't mean it will give you cancer.

Electromagnetic radiation doesn't even begin to affect us until they are about one million times higher in frequency than cellphones and wifi. Then we're talking about UV-light, and we have a pretty strong source of that hanging over our heads during the day. I never see EM-sensitive people complain about the sun.

well, fortunately

Fortunately, non-free WiFi and non-open WiFi doesn't have the same kinds of health hazards.

from the blog

When it's at it's highest power level, you hold it next to your head to conduct a conversation. Ever notice that your skin gets warm after a long call? That's the only side effect of RF energy - warming.

Uh I thought it was because it's a computer that has no way to shed heat other than to bleed it out into the air / someone's face.

Re:from the blog

Yes. There is absolutely *no way* that a mobile phone can cause appreciable RF heating. A microwave oven heats water, because it's an incredibly powerful microwave source at a very specific frequency focused into a resonant metal box. A mobile phone typically produces 1/1000th as much power, and spreads it as evenly as possible around the antenna.

More information.

Great article on debunking the spurious claims of health risks from Wi-Fi can be found here [tobyinkster.co.uk].

Stupid hippies

So, something with far less power than a cell phone system and you've bought the hype.

Quick, lets go sell them some electromagnetic wave blocking paint, we could make a fortune.

"Health" Concerns?

Could it be that someone there is worried about their own FINANCIAL "health" instead?

Does someone there have a vested intere$t in making sure this deal fell through?

As with anything else... follow the money.

Electrickery next

What about that Electrickery, man? No one knows how it really works, and it, like, leaks out of the cables if you don't plug something in at the socket. And then you have pools of it lying about your floor, except you can't see it. And everyone knows things you can't see are evil, man.

Turn that shit off back at the town limits. It's the only way to be safe.

Now where's my tinfoil bandana?

Self damning

I find it ironic that the CEO makes a grossly inaccurate statement that actually hurts his cause:

Compare this to the mobile phone that you keep in your pocket, which is typically three to ten times this power level. When it's at it's highest power level, you hold it next to your head to conduct a conversation. Ever notice that your skin gets warm after a long call? That's the only side effect of RF energy - warming.

The warmth of a cell phone has nothing to do with RF. It is waste heat generated directly by the transmitter - it is not the result of RF energy being absorbed by the skin and converted to heat. Even low-frequency transmitters get very hot when transmitting. VHF and UHF mobile rigs, like those used by emergency services and amateur radio operators, have huge (relative to the size of the radio) heatsinks on the back to dissipate the heat so the final stage electronics are not fried. My amateur handheld (Yaesu VX-7R quad band) can transmit at 5 watts, and the magnesium case literally gets so hot at that output power that it is difficult to hold. That is transmitting at frequencies vastly lower than cell-phones (144-148 MHz) which pass right through skin. It's not the antenna that gets hot, or my head, it is the case housing the transmitter.

Also, batteries get warm when generating high amperage, especially really compact batteries like lithium-ion. So that also contributes to the warmth of a transmitting cell phone.

legal ramifications

Is there any way Sonic.net could sue these guys for backing out of an agreement for made-up reasons? This seems like someone not paying their bills because a unicorn told them to.

No big surprise

EM radiation of various forms has been a boogieman for a long time, and I'm sure it won't change. Hell we saw this at work. The campus is rolling out a new WiFi system with complete coverage. When I say that, I mean it. They are making sure you get a signal everywhere. This necessitates a truly amazing number of access points. There's somewhere in the range of 50-100 in our 5 story building. The placement of these is dictated by where they do the best for signal coverage, not by convenience (like hallways or electrical closets and so on). This means some are in offices.

Well, people bitched, and thus the APs has to be moved in the offices. They didn't like having them directly overhead, so they'd get moved to the side and such.

Now, you want the really silly part? I work for the electrical and computer engineering department. Yes, that's right, people with PhDs in engineering, who have all taken classes on this kind of stuff, are afraid of the radiation boogieman.

If people with extensive educations in related fields are going to bitch and ignore the facts, you can damn well believe that regular people with no understanding will do so.

I think maybe I should just get in to the market of selling whole-house faraday cages.

The view from Sebastopol

Having lived in Sebastopol for 15 years, and in Silicon Valley for 20 years before that, I feel compelled to make a few observations about the context of this decision by the city council (with which I disagree).

1. "Hippie friendly" does little to convey the truly eclectic mix of people who live here. You name it, we got it: 5th generation farming families, refugees from Berkeley and the Valley, 200 acre commercial winemaking operations next door to the 2 acre "wine estates" of retired attorneys, a surprising number of geezer geeks (including me), a large gay/lesbian community, and, yes, a certain number of people wearing tie-dyed clothing and reeking of patchouli oil. About the only group in short supply here is neo-cons. (Thank .)

2. Speaking of geeks, some of you may have heard of a project call nocat.net. It uses off-the-shelf WiFi hardware to deliver broadband to places miles (and hills) away from the nearest cable/DSL connection. It was started by a group of people in ... (wait for it) ... Sebastopol. It was founded by people from, and had its meetings at, O'Reilly.

3. This area has higher-than-average levels of education and of political activism. I think these are good things. However, having a college degree and being willing to make yourself heard does not necessarily translate into knowing what the hell you are talking about. This is a universal truth.

4. People in general do not understand the technologies they use, and Sebastopol is no exception. I would bet good money that at least some of the people who are so vocal (here and elsewhere) about the dangers of WiFi are actually using a laptop that has--you guessed it--WiFi. Some of them may have actually decided not to have a WiFi router in their home "because of the radiation," but it's almost a certainty that they forgot to turn off the radio in their laptop. I'm not a radio engineer, but I seem to remember something about radiated energy falling off as the inverse square of the distance. Which means that, whatever the perceived dangers from the router, they are actually much more exposed to radiation from their own laptop. (Not to mention that little radio transmitter they nestle against their brain, AKA their cellphone.)

What does all of that mean? Hell, I don't know. I guess I was irked by the simplistic labeling from the original story.

Re:FM radio? TV?

Well hey, lets just get rid of microwave ovens, radio stations, television signals and police radios.

You're thinking too small.

Hint: massive thermonuclear reaction taking place above our heads every day, subjecting the Earth and everything on it to almost inconceivably powerful doses of electromagnetic energy.

Kinda irrelevant

Disclaimer: I'm not among the "electrosensitive" crowd, and I couldn't care less about routers and cell-phones.

That said, I find the "but there's a big nuke overhead!!!" argument just as bunk.

The fact is: you don't get all the frequencies from that ball of light. There's this thick atmosphere, including such layers as the ozone layer and the ionosphere. Plus such things as the water in the atmosphere which are just as good there at absorbing a certain band of microwaves, as, well, when you heat water in your microwave. These things absorb almost anything to the left of infrared or to the right of UV-B.

Let's just say there's a reason why they worry about shielding the craft in which they'll send a man to mars. Or why the gamma ray telescopes are put in orbit, and not at ground level. Or why over-the-horizon radar can actually see beyond the horizon, by bouncing the signal on the ionosphere. It's just as almost-opaque to those signals from the other side, you know.

So, yes, you have a big nuke over your head, but you also have some hundreds of kilometres of damn good shielding between you and it. Most frequencies outside the visible spectrum, or nearby, you're _not_ getting the full radiation of that nuke. You're getting them in homeopathic doses, if at all.

Even briefer: It doesn't prove what you think it proves. Sorry. It's as irrelevant as saying that heat can't kill because you have billions of tons of molten lava under your feet and it hasn't killey you yet.

Re:maurer is a fraud?

She should call James Randi, since she apparently has the paranormal ability to detect radio waves. For $1m, she could buy herself a nice big Faraday cage.

Not fraud; sick in a way she doesn't understand

People who complain of RF sensitivity are in the same category as people who complain of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. They really do suffer from a disease that causes real symptoms. However the disease they have is a form of panic attack - which can in the case of MCS especially progress to something akin to agoraphobia. When you test people who are labeled as having MCS in a blinded fashion to things they are sensitive to, they don't get triggered any more often than placebo. (Expose them to placebo puffs of air and expose them to the chemical they are sensitive to but don't tell them which is which, and they can label them correctly no more better than would be expected from chance.)

However, the problem is that people with these really are tortured - they are truly convinced of this sensitivity and sometimes end up housebound and with ruined lives because of profound avoidance of perceived triggers.

The question is though, how do you address this in a patient and from a societal perspective. Say I have a person with RFS or MCS as a patient. If you say: 'Look, hon. You are a total whackadoodle. You need to just get over it and stop having panic attacks, K?' that may fix the problem in that they will not haunt your practice, but they will go to another provider who will further validate their phobias and be worse off. If however, you can engage the person in care, even perhaps give them medicines in what may be a placebo effect (and maybe in a manner that helps the basic panic attack), and help them gradually get over the symptoms and regain their life, you are doing a better thing. But that requires controlled validation of their experience, and it ain't something you are doing in a few months. This is a long haul thing... and its a lot of energy. I limit myself to only a few people who require this at any given time in my practice.

From a societal perspective, its the same issue: if a person with RFS or MCS says 'I can't access X public venue without Y accommodation' what do you do? Even knowing that its a form of panic disorder, that doesn't obviate the need for accommodations. We let people with mental health problems have a lot of accommodations not aimed at 'toughening them up' but aimed at making them able to fully participate in society. And like all accommodations, we have to balance the reasonableness of the request against the rest of societies needs. Expecting a wheelchair ramp on public buildings is very reasonable. Expecting that all buildings have lights turned off at 6pm is not. If a person with MCS needs a 'scent free space' in order to be able to go to college, that's reasonable... until a person with psoriasis is told she can't use her medications that control her disease. They can reasonably expect me to limit cologne use, but not things that are required to treat a serious health problem.

In this case, I actually think the reasonableness of the request doesn't balance out. Though there are other ways that it could be addressed. Talk to local businesses who already offer wifi, request that they take down their wifi if the city guarantees free and consistent access for their customers.