Last week, several media outlets ran an alarming-if-true story that equated the low frequency radiation emitted by WiFi equipment and cells phones with lead, chloroform, gasoline fumes, and the pesticide DDT.
Most of the stories cited a new review paper in an obscure Saudi Arabian journal about microscopy. The paper was a collection of previous studies that the authors claimed added up to a case that the radio frequency (RF) waves emitted by the Wi Fi devices and cells phones posed a cancer risk to children.
Readers may have been misled into believing that the scientific community and bodies such as the American Cancer Society are raising concerns about wireless devices, but this is not true.
The same small group of researchers keeps attempting to claim there is a danger. However, the larger scientific community considers this to be a fringe idea.
The chief medical officer at the American Cancer Society states that he does not consider the review paper to be an academic paper. He went on to say that if one of his students turned this in as a research paper, he would fail it. One problem was that the authors consciously picked the few studies that showed a possible effect and ignored a number of others that failed to find any connection between cell phones, Wi Fi and cancer.
The paper noted that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IRIC), part of the World Heath Organization (WHO), classified RF radiation as a “class 2b,” or possible carcinogens. The authors failed to mention that the “class 2b” category includes pickled vegetables, Styrofoam cups and coffee.
Still the question is why not take the precaution and wait until more research is done on RF radiation? However, there is already evidence that it is an extremely unlikely carcinogen. There is no plausible mechanism by which cell phones or Wi Fi devices could cause cancer.
According to some experts, overloading people with health messages that don’t matter dilutes reception of health messages that do matter.
