Schools and Families Rushing to Remove Wi-Fi systems

Worried families ditch their Wi-Fi after watchdog voices health concerns

By Geoffrey Lean and Alex Hanks
www.independent.co.uk
Published: 03 June 2007

Schools and families are rushing to remove Wi-Fi systems after the Government's chief health protection watchdog voiced concerns over their safety.

Sir William Stewart's call for a "timely" review of the possible effects of the technology - originally reported by The Independent on Sunday in April and featured by the BBC's Panorama programme last month - has led to an unprecedented reaction from the public, according to one large dealer.

The London-based Scooter Computer call-out service said last week that it had received hundreds of calls recently.

Will Foot, for the company, said: "I have never seen such a reaction. It's completely out of the blue. More than 50 per cent of inquiries were from people worried about Wi-Fi access." He said that the company had already removed 25 systems.

Nicola Hart, of Dartmouth Park in north London, was so concerned about the radiation emitted from the systems that she removed Wi-Fi from her home, and persuaded her neighbours and her daughter's school to do the same.

She said last night: "We put the system in about four months ago because my 17-year-old son wanted to have access to the internet at the same time as us. I did not really think about any effects it might have."

While it was in, she said, she suffered "a lot of funny symptoms" which she thought were due to "an early menopause". But once she had the system removed she began sleeping and feeling better.

Her neighbours followed suit, then she approached her six-year-old daughter's school, the Trevor-Roberts School in Belsize Park, which also agreed to remove its system.

"A lot of the parents were very pleased," she says, "and a lot of my friends are very keen to have it taken out of their children's schools."

Sinead Griffiths, a researcher from Walthamstow, north-east London, also had Wi-Fi removed from her home. She says: "There is not enough information available on the subject. I don't want to take any risks. You just don't know what all this technology in the home is doing to us." She said her main motive had been to protect her children, but that she had suffered from headaches and lethargy.

The Independent's Green Goddess columnist Julia Stephenson reported last week that she too had disconnected her Wi-Fi, on the advice of her naturopath.

Sir William - the chairman of the Health Protection Agency and a former Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government - has chaired two inquiries into the effects of mobile phones and their masts. He warned against dangers from them and made safety recommendations, but was largely ignored by ministers.

In the past 18 months alone, 1.6 million Wi-Fi terminals have been sold in Britain for use in homes, offices, and a host of other buildings. By some estimates half of all primary schools, and four-fifths of all secondary schools, have installed them.

Further browsing: Sir William Stewart's first 2000 report can be read at www.iegmp.org.uk