In the 80’s, as a soldier, I spent a lot of time in the field, communicating on various types of radios. Back in the early 90’s I got my first cell phone, as part of my work in the Army.
Had it with me all the time and used it almost every day. In the late 90’s, I was installing and using Wireless routers and wireless computers and was on my 4th cell phone. When I retired from the Army, I started my own IT company and spent a lot of time installing and using a variety of WiFi devices and appliances. By this time, I was on my 7th cell phone. Today, I have several wireless transmitters in my home, several iPhones, iPads and other wireless receiving devices. I use WiFi and cell service virtually everywhere I go.
According to Mrs. Latchford, I should be dead. No one can possibly survive that much EMF.
With over 20 years of technology experience and use, I think I can call myself knowledgable about WiFi. I was using wireless services before there was an Internet connection that EMF fear mongers could use to educate themselves on. I have only one real question for those Google educated “experts”: Do you really understand how much wireless signal and/or radiation is already around you?
Did you use a cordless phone today? Did you walk by a satellite dish or use a microwave oven? Did you sit in front of a computer to send those e-mails or search the Web? Did you listen to the radio in your car? Did you stand outside in the sun, today?
If you picked up a phone when you were a teenager, did you know anything about the magnet you were putting next to your ear? Did you cringe every time you had to drive under high tension power lines? Did you ever think of the cosmic radiation we are exposed to every day?
I have read all the reports from organizations like the WHO and it frustrates me that the anti-WiFi crowd cherry picks the information out of these documents. No words like “inconclusive” and comments such as “To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use (WHO Fact Sheet - June 2013)” are ever used in their rants about the harm of EMF. The biggest issue around EMF is the fear and anxiety that this crowd creates on their own.
The fact is, the reason that some schools and governments have limited or eliminated WiFi is not because of science. It’s because of the pressure created by a public being educated by the bits and pieces of data that serves a particular agenda from a particular group. If you were to run a digital spectrum analysis in any community, with or without cell towers and WiFi, you would find all kinds of signals flying around. Why, because we have been surrounded by all of these various signals for many decades.
Council needs to spend a little more time educating themselves in understanding the technology and a little less time pandering to a 100 homeowners who are scared about something they don’t really understand themselves.
Sean Smith
Campbell River