Wi-Fi in Primary Schools

[zimzum42]

Not worried at all. If you worry about this then aren't you worried about the air they breathe anywhere near a road or a factory, mobile phone signals everywhere, the whole gamut of radio waves that are everywhere.....

 

[magnatom]

Thanks. No chance of anything rearing its ugly head way down the line when it's too late?

I would be a liar if I said there wasn't a chance. However, looking at current research, data, knowledge etc it would appear that there is no risk.

Remember your children are exposed to radio frequency waves all of the time, from cordless telephones, computers, hair dryers, mobile phone masts, mobile phones, TVs, etc, oh and there is cosmic background radiation as well.

I am reminded of the Clarins product that claimed to protect you from the aging effects of artificial radiofrequency waves. This was of great interest to me, seeing as I work with RF. I hadn't noticed that anyone in our department had been aging any quicker, but I was concerned that I would wake up one morning all wrinkly.

I was quite impressed that they had developed something that could distinguish between natural and artificial RF waves! Amazing!


Moral: there are a lot of myths regarding health risks of RF.

 

[Dan B]

We have those. My wife can't use them as they give her a sharp pain in her ear!

I find that they're often more comfortable to use if you hold the phone next to your head instead of sticking the antenna in your ear. Hope this helps

;-)

 

[barq]

People have been exposed to non-ionising radio waves for decades. There isn't anything particularly special about WiFi.

 

[domd1979]

http://www.theecologist.org/_tag/4674/0/0/25/wireless/

 

[jiggerypokery]

Mr Paul... 15 years working in the mobile industry all in RF and all related to RF and SAR and I can safely say that I have no radiation specific ailments, nor do any of my colleagues and believe me I've worked with some of the shittiest prototypes in RF shielded chambers, sat next to signal repeaters and when I was a grad recruit standing atop of a tower licking an antena.

With WiFi the absorbtion to tissue ratio is much less than that for a mobile or dect phone, the propagation of the signal is less focused again reducing any alleged RF pickling of the brain.

Reminds me of when I worked at Orange...

We had a deal with a church in Glastonbury to hide antenna on all four sides of the tower behind the louvres, this gave us excellent coverage over the town and good coverage for the festival.

The local hippies/parents found out and because a school was directly in the shadow of the church they moaned and groaned and petitioned, even picketting the office in Bristol, till we shut down the antenna. Shortly after the complaints about poor coverage in Glastonbury rocketed and whe we checked the complaints list against the petition the majority of the complaints were from people on the petition!

Stupid thing was, when the antenna were errect and the angles of propagation calculated, both physical and electrical the filed of propagation missed the school entirely and there was bugger all signal in or around the school.

If you're that bothered my solution is that you visit Wilko's, I recommend the one in Acocks Green, value pack of tinfoil, wrap round head several times to desired effect and bingo! Colander might work if you have one in the cupboard.

 

[magnatom]

If you're that bothered my solution is that you visit Wilko's, I recommend the one in Acocks Green, value pack of tinfoil, wrap round head several times to desired effect and bingo! Colander might work if you have one in the cupboard.

Ah yes, I'm sure Mr P's kids walking around with their own personal Faraday cages will go down with their mates!

 

[Headgardener]

<Puts colander on head, finds it just keeps falling off and now needs washing again>

 

[Black Sheep]

In many instances lap tops are used because they can be moved from classroom to classroom making it much easier for primaries to cope with making computers accessible to all pupils with minimum fuss. Space is usually at a premium and few schools have the luxury of being able to have a dedicated computer room.

In terms of installation costs Wifi is also a lot cheaper than a cabled network. Primary schools have a pitiful budget and anything that ekes out the number of available computers in the classrooms is normally welcomed.

ok, the computers and space thing i can understand, you can have 10 computers to a school and move them between class rooms (we used to have BBC's on a big trolly when i was there)

most schools I was working in last summer had a cabled network with network points in pretty much all the school that had been there a while that we just put our system onto.

one of these conduited into each room and an ethernet switch would do the job.

do they really need internet?

 

[Jonathan M]

Could cause problems in the brain, or heart? Those radiowaves cant be good, with being sat around them all day, be slowly cooking you!!!
Hang on, im sat by a wi-fi router thing now

Surely no more than all the wifi routers in peoples houses??