Parents Sue School Over Use of Wi-Fi Network

Iphtashu Fitz writes "Both news.com and Wired are reporting that an Illinois school district is being sued by parents over their use of a Wi-Fi network at a local elementary school. Apparently the parents of 5 students are concerned about potential health risks to their children by the Wi-Fi radio signals. The parents are seeking class-action status for their suit, which seeks to halt the use of wireless networks but does not ask for monetary damages. The complete complaint is also available for your reading pleasure on wifinetnews.com." I would never have guessed that the emissions from a wireless network are bad, unlike the healthy emissions given off by the now inescapable cell phones that are everywhere in public.

Umm??

[dcstimm]

2.4ghz Cordless phones use the same freq! What are these parents smoking?

Re:Cluelessness

[ejaw5]

I recently got the privledge to try out the Tech International's CellSensor (http://www.techintlcorp.com/cellsensor.htm).

It measures Cellular radiation (range: .1-10 mW/cm2) and EMF radiation (range: 1-50 milliGauss).
I measured a Nokia 3360 of emitting ~8 mW/cm2 Cellular radiation and over 50 milliGauss EMF (outside the sensor's range). What else gives off 50+ milliGauss? 5.1 receiver, microwave in operation. Refrigerator gives off ~35 milliGauss and a table fan gives off ~40 milliGauss.

I didn't have a Wi-Fi device to measure, but yea, why don't they sue Pioneer, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Kenmore, et al while their at it. And if they're genuinely concerned, there's a number of things they should get out of their homes.

Oak Park District 97

[Infonaut]

Based on the "About Us" info found here [k12.il.us], this is an upscale [epodunk.com], academically successful school district located in the 'burbs west of Chicago.

I wonder if the parents of students in the inner city are laughing or crying when they read about this lawsuit. "Hah! Our kids have a tough time getting textbooks, and the parents in Oak Park are worried about wireless networks?!"

WHAT?!

[MrScience]

This is insane. My company rolled out 802.11 a while ago, and they had a few statistics they sent out to address safety concerns.

Stuff like, "Since these run at low transmit power (.03 Watts), it's 1/10-1/20 the power of a cell phone." and "You'd have to hold a body part within 2cm of the antena for 30 minutes while the radio operated continuously at 100% capacity for that time."

Just look at IEEE C95.1 1991 [ieee.org], which details the maximum safe exposure for any EM radiation.

Or, gosh, here's a thought... what about OSHA [osha-slc.gov]?! They've got a bazillion links on the research involved.

I hope this gets thrown out of the courts faster than you can blink. The last thing students need is to be shoved back into the backwaters of technology.

Re:Sad

[scoove]

expend a significant amount of money to defend themselves against these bogus charges

Unfortunately this appears to be what happens when you combine a society fixated with junk science with a political class ruled by trial attorneys.

The State of Missouri had an issue a bit more than a year ago with a state legislator that was trying to get all communication towers banned. The reason? "It might harm children." A few folks did some research on the legislator pushing the bill and guess who one of his largest financial supporters was? Incumbant local telephone companies (the competition to wireless providers). Save the children unfortunately has become code for political and legal system payola.

Unfortunately this poster touches on the reality of the current US legal nightmare: many defendents cannot afford the fight for what is right due to the complete lack of financial accountability of irresponsible plantiff attorneys and their clients. I'm predicting the school will back out and turn off their wireless devices. Their students will lack the access to information that other students might have. Unless other parents get vocal and oppose this luddite activity, they'll further the progress of their children towards a future job at Burger King.

Per the allegation that the school has been ignoring evidence that electromagnetic radiation from Wi-Fi networks poses health risks, I'd invite the luddite parents and their attorneys to have a radiofrequency engineer show them what the airwaves in the classroom (or better, at home) look like. 802.11b/a/g is background noise [wlana.org] compared to many of the narrowband signals out there. Better shut off the FM, AM and TV broadcasters [osha-slc.gov] immediately. Throw away that cellphone [wow-com.com] (you don't hold that anywhere *near* your head, do you?) Better start packing candles in the kids lunch bag... those fluorescent lights are little RF monsters [inchem.org] ("to quote: while the intentional radiation of fluorescent light tubes lies in the visible light range, such tubes also generate very low levels of microwave and RF white noise (Mumford, 1949)... microwaves? That's not a classroom lit by fluorescents, it's a Easy Bake Oven from Hell [easybake.com]!). Lock up the school TV sets - what do you think that gunnplexer is firing at your eyeballs? Get weather, aviation and police radar shut off immediately (sure hope that speeder doesn't crash into the school bus). And god forbid you have one of those Air Force E-4B 747's [boeing.com] fly over your home as they do mine... one of those bastards wipes out my TV amplifier every time it flies over my farm! Heck, we haven't even thought about RF experiments like HAARP [alaska.edu] that can probably melt a human in milliseconds!

Of course, the final step for the trial attorneys and their luddite clients will be banning the ultimate producer of raw RF [noaa.gov]. Once that's done, we can all rest assured that no RF deathrays will harm us.

*scoove*

People fear what they don't understand

[xtal]

Given the incredible lack of information taught in public schools about RF and electromagnetic energy, this doesn't suprise me. People think that wireless data communication is like magic. Science programs glaze over even the most basic introduction to electromagnetics. I don't think I even had an iota of a introduction to the topic until I started university in an Electrical Engineering program. How many people could answer the basic question: How are EM waves produced? (Or rather, why are they produced?")

I hope these parents get smacked down, because there is far more RF energy coming from other sources. What they MIGHT want to be concerned about is the placement of electical substation transformers for the power grid. Would they like to teach schools without electricity?

Ignorance brought us great things like witch burning and the inquisitions. I hope this doesn't turn into one..

They don't need wifi, though

[localghost]

I might care more about this if the district had a legitimate use for wifi. It's an elementary school district, grades K-8. None of the students have laptops, and the majority of the teachers are incapable of using anything other than Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word and Gradequick.

Now the high school, on the other hand, could benefit from wifi. One student in my math class recently got a tablet PC, and we were talking a couple days ago about how nice it would be if there was a school-wide 802.11b network. Unfortunarly, our school is way behind the times as far as technology goes. We watched laserdiscs the other day in psych.

Money isn't an issue for either of them, though. Both the elementary schools and the high school have more money then they know what to do with. The middle schools just built two new buildings, and the high school got a new $3 million artificial turf football field, an artificial turf soccer field with stadium lighting, and built a parking garage. The issues are stupid parents and stupid administration.

(In case you couldn't tell, I attended the district the lawsuit was filed against)

come on

[MegaFur]

Are Wi-Fi signals all that different from standard radio signals? Aren't all of us being bombarded by stuff like this all the time that we're able to listen to good tunes on our AM/FM radios in our car?

I mean--I am basically clueless here--what's the issue? Is it the wavelength or what?

Okay, here's me actually clicking on some links, and I get this:

The Wi-Fi Alliance says Wi-Fi networks are safe. The radio waves in a Wi-Fi network use the same frequency as wireless home phones, and have one-thirtieth the power of cordless phones, said Grimm, the spokesman for the group.

Now the only catch is that's from the Wi-Fi alliance and they cannot be taken to be entirely neutral in this affair. Can anyone not associated with them back them up on this claim? Is a Wi-Fi network really the same frequency as wireless home phones but 1/30 the power? 'Cause if so, I think we can just chock this one up to Standard American Paranoia (Concerned Mom Flavor) and move on.

"Meat" of complaint

[SeanAhern]

For those too lazy (I almost was) to read the text of the complaint, I'll include the relevant portions here:

Specifically, the Defendants have installed wireless networks in each of the school buildings under its jurisdiction. In so doing, the Defendants have ignored the substantial body of evidence that high frequency electro-magnetic radiation poses substantial and serious health risks, particularly to growing children.

And later:

16. In fact, there is a substantial and growing body of scientific literature studying and outlining the serious health risks that exposure to low intensity, but high radio frequency (RF) radiation poses to human beings, particularly children. For example, responsible scientists have reported that prolonged exposure to low intensity RF radiation can break down DNA strands, cause chromosome aberrations and break down the blood-brain barrier, thereby permitting toxic proteins to invade the brain. And, these occur at radiation levels below what a child would be exposed to by sitting in front of a computer on a wireless network.

17. Other researchers have observed other potential health risks that they believe are traceable to exposure to low intensity RF radiation at levels that are at or below the levels that children would experience by using wireless LANs in a classroom. In fact, at present, the lawyers for the Plaintiffs and their clients have collected more than 400 scientific articles, summaries and references outlining health risks from low intensity RF radiation exposure, all or most of which have been researched and written after 1995. By way of example only, attached as Exhibit 2 is a listing and a summary of thirty-one articles, all of which deal with the potential health risks from prolonged exposure to low intensity RF radiation, i.e., radiation given off by, among other things, wireless LANs.

And finally:

19. Defendants have stated publicly that they have examined the current, prevailing government regulations relating to safety of wireless technology and the system installed in District 97 poses no health risks to humans. This statement is false. The only U.S. standards that relate in any way to radiation exposure were developed by the F.C.C. before 1993 and relate only to thermal radiation. The radiation that Plaintiffs object to here is non-thermal and the federal government has not promulgated any standards relating to this.

Re:I wonder how many parents ...

[Jennifer E. Elaan]

Well, technically speaking, if all the wires in the CPU are treated like transmission lines and properly terminated, the emission should be negligable. It's only when you have traces resonating at the clock rate that problems occur.

That said, modern clock distribution nets look more like big grid antennai with massive amplifiers (several watts of the 70W that an average CPU uses goes to clock distribution) powering it. So it does radiate quite substantially.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Lighting dimmers (the typical type used in homes) are NOT rheostats!

A typical (cheap) lighting dimmers is rated for about 600 watts of connected load. (You can get fancier ones rates for 1200 watts or more.) A rheostat capable of handling a 600 watt load is about 8" in diameter and 2" thick! (Hint: it wouldn't fit in the little rectangular J box used for home light switches and dimmers. Not to mention the fact that a high power rheostat dissipates the unused electrical current as heat - something it couldn't possibly do if crammed into a J box on a wall surrounded by fiberglass insulation.)

So how does the typical home lighting dimmer work, you ask? Well, it uses a solid state switch known as a TRIAC and a technique known as "phase control" to chop up the AC waveform. Basically, a timer circuit is reset at zero crossing (the start of an AC half cycle) and waits for a portion of the half cycle before switching on the TRIAC. If the delay is equal to one half of the half cycle, half the AC waveform is delivered to the connected lights, which glow at about half brightness.

A waveform with a relatively sharp edge is created when the TRIAC switches on part way through the AC cycle meaning lots of harmonics which ultimately means the wire running from the dimmer out to the lights acts as antennas and spew out the upper harmonics as RF / EMI. The harmonics are greatest when the half cycles are chopped in half (when the dimmer is set at approximately high brightness) - if you listen closely lighting dimmers buzz (mechanical vibration due to the lower harmonics) and you will actually notice this buzzing is at its worst around half brightness.

There is a related (patented) technique called reverse phase control that is built around a relatively new type of switching transistor called an IGBT. Same basic idea but (as the name implies) in reverse - instead of the half cycle starting in the off state and switching on part way through, it starts in the on state and switches off part way through. The elimination of the sharp turn on edge significantly reduces the harmonics generated.

The reverse phase control patent is owned by the Rosco theatrical products company (used in their IPS lighting control systems.) You can imagine that the harmonics generated by a typical theatrical lighting system (often up to 100,000 watts of lighting being controlled) can be a serious problem. (So much of a problem that electrical panels with oversized neutral buses are required to prevent the neutrals from melting and special power factor correcting transformers are required to prevent this noise from contaminating the rest of the AC system.) Anyway, the reverse phase control eliminates most of this problem - it also results in smaller equipment cabinets, less fan noise due to lower heat production, etc. Pretty neat.