Group Wants Wi-Fi Banned, Citing Allergy

54mc writes "A small group in Santa Fe, New Mexico is claiming that the city is discriminating against them by having wireless networks in public buildings. How are these buildings discriminatory? Simple. These people are allergic to Wi-Fi. And they're suing the city." I've been trying to sue people for the streetlights that I'm allergic to as well.

Three words...

[msauve (701917)]

"double blind test."

Allergic?, yeah sure you are.

The plaintiff is not unknown

[Dr. Cody (554864)]

Arthur Firstenberg, a known Mathematics major, looks to have some previous experience with electromagnetic conspiracy, mostly with cellphones and x-rays. He's also the author of Microwaving our Planet [amazon.com], published by his Cellular Phone Taskforce. Every once in a while he'll publish an article in non-scientific environmental periodicals.

Also, check out, Electromagnetic Fields (EMF): The Killing Fields [mindfully.org], it's full of lol:

Today I am homeless. My money does not provide me shelter. My good health does not ensure my survival. My friends are unable to help me. I am being killed, but the law offers me no protection.
...
Having stumbled upon an obviously well-kept secret, I researched the world literature on bioelectromagnetics, (or the biological effects of electromagnetism), and made myself an expert. I learned that electro-cautery machines, used in every modern surgical operation to cut through tissue and to stop bleeding, expose surgeons to much higher levels of radio frequency radiation than is permitted for workers in any industry. I learned that there was a disease thoroughly described in the Russian and Eastern European medical literature called radiowave sickness, the existence of which was usually denied by western authorities. This description made me remember my `unknown illness', the one that had derailed my medical career. Bradycardia, or a slow heart rate, was said, in these texts, to be a grave sign.

Because there are virtually no workplaces without computers any more, I have not held a job since 1990. I had resigned myself to living on Social Security Disability, and learned, together with other members of a support group I had found, how best to live with my disability. This mostly meant learning to avoid exposure to electromagnetic fields. But in July 1996, to my dismay, I learned that an innovation was coming to my city, which threatened to make it impossible to avoid exposure any more.
...
The California Department of Health Services has concluded that, on the basis of a telephone survey, 120,000 Californians - and by implication one million Americans - have left their jobs because of electromagnetic pollution in the workplace. The people who have left their homes for such a reason are not being counted by anyone.

Re:Yes I'd like to see that

[MagdJTK (1275470)]

And no one knows why cancer rates have increased so much in the last few years.

We know full well why more people are getting cancer. Improvements in medicine have reduced the mortality rates of other diseases hugely and improvements in vacinations have vastly reduced the number of people who even get potentially deadly diseases like mumps and measles, so more people survive to get cancer.

Put another way, if we shot everyone at the age of 40, I can guarantee that cancer rates would plummet. If we irradicated every other type of disease (including old age) then everyone would get cancer eventually.

Re:Yes I'd like to see that

[Dipsomaniac (1102131)]

Part of it isn't even that people are necessarily getting more cancer. Doctors are finding more cancer. More testing and better testing will have that effect.

Re:Yes I'd like to see that

[by Anonymous Coward]

Do you know how many natural toxins are present in vegetables? Did you know that castor beans contain trace amounts of ricin, a toxin more lethal than arsenic? Do you know how many toxic glycoalkaloids are naturally present in the potatoes you eat, and that it happens to be in the same family as the deadly nightshade? Do you know what the sun is bombarding your skin with everyday, or the potential damage it can cause to the eyes just from looking at it for a few seconds? Are you aware of the cancer risk of naturally occurring radon?

This may seem paranoid, but I choose to be both skeptical and cautious until we have proper, long-term studies of each and every molecule in our natural environment, and of what they do to us in combination. Then, and only then, will I feel safe enough to live in this world.

Re:Yes I'd like to see that

[Belial6 (794905)]

But...But...But... Those are natural. So they must be good for you!!!

Re:Yes I'd like to see that

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

No, they said "rates" have increased, not "numbers".

Who is this "they" person? from the US National Cancer Institute [cancer.gov]:

Overall cancer incidence rates (the rates at which new cancers are diagnosed) for both sexes and all races combined declined slightly from 1992 through 2004. Incidence rates for female breast cancer dropped substantially from 2001 through 2004.

The press release goes on to talk about possible reasons for various cancers. It actually gets pretty complicated when you try to make sweeping generalizations. It likely means very little biologically (the sweeping generalization statement).

The thesis that EMF from cell phones increases brain cancers has been researched exhaustively. The fact that no clear trend has emerged from numerous, large studies indicates that any effect, if any effect indeed exists, is tiny and inconsequential.

These folks are loons.

they need treatment...

[sxpert (139117)]

send them to live in some remote caves in the mountains. as for me, I'm allergic to idiots

Re:they need treatment...

[NIckGorton (974753)]

Pattern matching is a wonderful thing, and you are correct that it is a function of our intelligence and a product of evolution (for example avoiding eating things that make us sick.) However something else that developed out of our intelligence was logic and the ability to evaluate empirical evidence.

Last Tuesday I went to a Sacramento Kings game. The Kings were ahead one run and my boyfriend left to use the restroom. As soon as I put his glove on (as a defense against the crapload of fouls they were hitting at us) the other team scored two runs. When he left again to get a beer, I again put on his glove and the other team got another run. Pattern matching (and superstition) would lead me to believe that in future I should not put BFs glove on if he leaves, because the Kings will lose the game. However, logic and a basic knowledge of the physical universe tells me that this pattern is a false one.

In this case the individuals in TFA have again falsely matched a pattern. They certainly have symptoms from their illness (which is a type of panic attack, which can give quite impressive and scary symptoms.) However, instead of accepting the reality that their expectation of becoming ill on exposure to X is a self-fulfilling prophesy and accepting therapy aimed at breaking that false association, they insist that Wi-Fi (or chemicals or whatever) is causing their symptoms in a manner unrelated to their expectation of becoming ill. Medicine and society does them (and others with purported multiple chemical sensitivity) no help by continuing to feed their fears and psychopathology.

We are designed to match patterns, but we don't have to be ruled by these when they are in error. I don't think that my wearing BFs glove has any more power to influence the outcome of a Sacramento Kings game than Wi-Fi causes these people any serious ailment outside of panic attacks. Show me a reason that these are related, or do a prospective double blind or good quality epidemiological study showing a link and I might believe you. That study has been done to people with 'MCS' and 'sensitivity' to EM radiation and it shows their is no effect from the purported causative agents. We haven't done it with the Kings, but if you buy me a set of season tickets, I will be happy to undertake it for you.

Allergy

[Bazman (4849)]

I'm allergic to stupidity. Can we ban these people?

Are they allergic? Let's not let data get in the way of a good argument: No [badscience.net] they're [wellingtongrey.net] not. [wikipedia.org]

Wow, even Wikipedia agrees.

Re:Allergy

[hansamurai (907719)]

Wow, even Wikipedia agrees.

Not for long...

They can't ban WiFi

[Hoplite3 (671379)]

They can't ban WiFi because I'm allergic to stupid.

Now how will we decide whose needs trump whose?

Re:They can't ban WiFi

[MrNaz (730548)]

Easy. The adversarial legal system: We find out who can afford to hire a bigger team of lawyers.

It's all in the mind.

[Jeremy Erwin (2054)]

Phone mast allergy 'in the mind' [bbc.co.uk]

However, when tests were carried out in which neither the experimenter or participant knew if the mast was on or off, the number of symptoms reported was not related to whether a signal was being emitted or not.
Two of the 44 sensitive individuals correctly judged if it was on or off in all six tests, as did five out of 114 control participants.

So, perhaps a few double blind tests are in order.

Re:Uh..

[c6gunner (950153)]

I'm sure someone who knows statistics better than I will jump in, but 2/44 or 5/114 "correct" (even though better than chance) no doubt has little significance, given the small sample size.

Well the key there is that the "5 out of 144" were the control group for the experiment.

In other words of the people who claimed to be sensitive, only 4.5% correctly identified when the mast was on in all 6 tries. Meanwhile in the control group - the group of people who do not claim to be sensitive - 4.3% correctly identified when the mast was on in all 6 tries.

Draw from that what you will, but the only logical conclusion is that a group of people who claimed to be extremely sensitive to EM signals are no more sensitive than a random group drawn from the general population. It's like taking a group of people who claim to be NBA all stars and pitting them against a team of randomly selected people, and then having the game end in a tie.

Cool I am moving there asap

[infonography (566403)]

I have some designs for tin foil hats, I just could never find the proper market.

Looks like I am gonna be rich!!!!

Cage 'em

[clang_jangle (975789)]

I say we quarantine them all in a nice Faraday Cage.

Get used to suffering.

[pla (258480)]

FTA: Arthur Firstenberg says he is highly sensitive to certain types of electric fields, including wireless Internet and cell phones. "I get chest pain and it doesn't go away right away," he said

Well then, looks like you'd better move to the middle of nowhere, rather than trying to live in a fairly large city.

Even If:
1) A physiological basis existed for having an autoimmune response to RF,
2) Only the 2.4GHz range of frequencies triggers it (since we literally live in a sea of RF, including from natural sources),
3) The 9th circuit accepts "electrosensitivity" as a valid "disability", and
4) The city backs down on this...

Well, given all that - What do you plan to do about the 50,000 nonmunicipal WAPs in your area? The FAA, NOAA, and military radar installations scattered around the country? Or for that matter, the microwave ovens found in every home and restauraunt in the country?


And even if you have a legitimate complaint - Welcome to the real world, where no one cares about your pitiful psychosomatic response to spoooooooky radio waves. Get a shrink, get used to chest pain, or move to Afghanistan.

easy fix

[machine of god (569301)]

Lets just glue some crystals and magnets together, hand them out, and say the block the harmful energy.

Re:easy fix

[conureman (748753)]

Did you think that you were joking? I've seen those for sale.

This is bad for us who really DO have allergies!

[Theovon (109752)]

There are people who really do have allergies and food sensitivities and such. Those people need to be careful about what they eat and expose themselves to. But when crackpots like this enter the fray, they make trouble for us, because they makes us all look like crackpots. It's no different from over-diagnosing ADHD. There are people who really have it (although I understand, interestingly enough, that some cases are helped by dietary adjustments). But then there are the countless more who just have discipline problems; they need a smack in the butt, not Ritalin.

That all being said, there are some hypotheses that humans can be affected by EM radiation. And maybe it's not good for us. I mean, being exposed to high levels of microwaves can cook you, so I'm sure low-levels aren't entirely risk free. Then there are the proposed links between power lines and leucemia. It's all worth investigating... with a critical scientific eye. But calling it an ALLERGY is just stupid and betrays a total lack of understanding what an allergic reaction is (an immune reaction to a foreign protein).

Re:Why do we assume it isn't possible?

[AaronLawrence (600990)]

Because many, many studies have been done on many variations of radio waves and their effect on humans and have all concluded there is no danger so long as the safety limits already set, are adhered too.

Re:Why do we assume it isn't possible?

[moderatorrater (1095745)]

To reiterate what an earlier poster said, there have been studies, and none have shown this to be a real issue.

Furthermore, it's not up to the people who want to disprove these people to provide the evidence, it's up to them to provide the evidence, which I guarantee they won't. They'll have some pseudo-scientist walk in there, he'll talk about the effects that these poor souls have to live through constantly, and then go home and continue writing on his webpage about how science has been stealing the future from us by suppressing the discovery of his perpetual motion machine!

And this would be fine as long as judges and juries knew how to read science and recognize its value compared to pseudo science, but most people can't. The patent office, at least as of a few years ago, patented multiple perpetual motion machines every year, either because they didn't read the application or because they didn't know that it was physically impossible. So, as long as they can put some crackpot up there who knows enough science-sounding gibberish to fool someone who doesn't know better, they actually have a chance of winning.

Is it possible that these people are actually allergic to wifi signals? Absolutely. It wouldn't even be a contender for strangest thing ever. The reason there's such a backlash against it is because there have been so many times that people have made similar allegations and ignored, lied, and suppressed actual science showing that they were wrong. Tempers are already flared over this issue, and it looks like these people are going to do the exact same thing that's been done before.

Re:Let me get my tin foil hat

[Sponge Bath (413667)]

maybe they haven't heard of the sun

Yes they have, but they call it the day-star and it burns them.
Apparently they are allergic to it as well.

Re:that's not all

[NIckGorton (974753)]

nobody owes you a perfect environment,

No, but we have decided as a civilized society that we will allow people with disabilities reasonable accommodations so that they can fully participate in society. We require places of public accommodation to have wheelchair access for a small minority of people who need it. We require employers to provide special assistance to employees who with accommodations can do the work. A blind programmer might require special equipment and programs that will cost his employer extra. However as a civilized society we require that.

These are good things and show that we have evolved past the point in society where we would leave people with disabilities to suffer or die. Leaving nature to 'trim the unfit out' as you suggest borders on repulsive depending on your definition of 'trim out'.

However that isn't the reason that this request should be denied. It should first and foremost be denied because there is no such thing as an allergy to Wi-Fi. I can't say that I have a disease where I am required to get a massage, a steak, and get laid twice a day or I will die.... and expect society to provide for this me. Because such a disease does not exist.

Secondly though, this approaches the point where even if they had a true allergy, it would not be a reasonable accommodation. A blind person can expect to be allowed a fair chance to be a programmer, but not an airline pilot. When there is a significant detriment to enough people, accommodations cease to be reasonable. Banning public Wi-Fi would have a serious detriment to some segments of the population and therefore might not be a reasonable accommodation.