Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Wi-Fi Signals Causing Health Issues?

New reports are surfacing of certain people who are "electro-sensitive" and being affected by Wi-Fi signals, causing headaches and chest pains.

You'll understand if I read something like this with a large degree of skepticism. This is not new. I've reported this earlier with people who claim almost the same symptoms with cell-phone signals. Look at how credible those claims are.

I'm not saying these people didn't experience all this, and I'm not saying we shouldn't look into it. But considering the track record of such claims in the past (including claims about transmission power lines), we shouldn't enact bans and legislation just YET until there's clear evidence of a cause-and-effect. And let me tell ya, we are a LONG way off from that at this point.

Zz.

4 comments:

Kent Leung said...

The failure to find cause-and-effect will not stop the crackpots from making up their own false pseudo effects (possible invoking "quantum physics").

The cleanest study would be to do a blind test with Wi-Fi transmitters next to "electro-sensitive" people.

Storm said...

I'm electrosensitive and I'm not a 'crackpot'. I happen to know my own body and have been struck by the correlation between using WiFi and a whole lot of symptoms ranging from swollen eyes to prickling, itches and ringing in the ears.
I understand the need for double blind results. I believe once a properly designed and independently funded study is done they will show up.

Anonymous said...

I find it very interesting that all the supporters of wifi and cellfone use are always very rude, name calling and using false logic in their poorly constructed arguments, surely diplaying all of the symptoms of wifi without noticing: rather like heroin addicts. "Wifi? I can handle it"...yeah right. I bought a handy little wifidetector made by Kensington and when I walked through town and felt the presence of wifi as the dull headache kicked in I turned the detector on and sure enough there was a high level of wifi emanating from a building nearby. As I never get headaches normally and am extremely fit and healthy I notice the difference very quickly. Since avoiding the wifi hotspots in town for the last 6 weeks Ifeel so much more energetic and my work rate has doubled. I am a record producer and high creative work rate is very important to me. Staff in a local bar have commented on headaches and constatntly arguing with each other for no apparent reason since wifi was installed 2 months ago and most are now looking for other jobs in a wifi free zone as the company owner refuses point blank to listen to them. Surely there should be some legislation in employment law to protect employees?

ZapperZ said...

Unfortunately, your comment here simply illustrates EVEN MORE the problem if this kind of "evidence". The fact that you somehow confused your anecdotal evidence with valid, scientific evidence clearly made your post the poster child for why the general public tends to be scientifically illiterate as far as the scientific method goes.

The FACT that you were 'expecting' when to feel your headaches is enough to influence the nature of your "investigation". Why do you think many of such investigation requires a double-blind study, where even the people who administer the study are often themselves not told when something is "on or off"? This is to prevent the investigators from inadvertently influence the outcome by the way the react or behave.

What you should have done is to volunteer to be studied carefully, the way that those other people have been studied in the investigation that I've mentioned in the blog post. Whether you suffer from it or not is besides the point. The fact that you are confusing an anecdotal evidence with a scientific evidence is what is making your comment backfired and illustrate clearly why it is difficult to take seriously people who make such claim.

Zz.