WiFi Health Scares again

I thought that we had seen the last of WiFi health scares when we discussed the topic last year. But no, thanks to what appears to have been a rather badly put together documentary by the BBC "Panorama" programme, which has stated that "WiFi  is causing child cancer", the whole issue is back in the news.  I have to say that I haven't actually seen the programme myself and therefore not in a position to criticise at first hand, but there has been plenty of coverage elsewhere.  It does seem to me that the BBC seems to have gone done the road of scaremongering and the application of bad science.  One week the Panorama programme is exposing the pseudoscience of scientology while the next it is applying pseudoscience in its own documentaries.  It is sad to see a programme with such a long history of documentary making take this path.

I suppose there is a case for the application of good science to help resolve this issue, but as we live in a world where we are surrounded by wireless energy, I still can't see that it is likely that a WiFi  access point is likely to emit radiation at more dangerous levels than mobile phone systems . As the  the Guardian states,

“The Health Protection Agency says a person sitting within a WiFi hotspot for a year receives the same dose of radio waves as a person using a mobile phone for 20 minutes.”

The computerworld blog has a good summary of the issues here and here. While this cartoonist thinks we all need to be afraid!