SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A pioneering elementary school district outside Chicago has been sued for installing a wireless (news - web sites) computer network by parents worried that exposure to the network' s radio waves could harm their children.
According to the complaint, filed in Illinois state court, parents of five children assert that a growing body of evidence outlines " serious health risks that exposure to low intensity, but high radio frequency radiation poses to human beings, particularly children."
The Oak Park Elementary School District set up a wireless network to connect its schools to one another in 1995, long before such networks became wildly popular. A spokeswoman for the district, Gail Crantz, said it complies with all government regulations for wireless networks.
Today, the 5,000 students in the district have access to carts of laptop computers to do research on the Internet from their desks, said Steve Chowanski, director of information services for the district.
An estimated 30 million Wi-Fi networks have been installed worldwide, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance, which certifies wireless products. Brian Grimm, a spokesman for the group, said he is unaware of other similar suits targeting Wi-Fi networks.
According to Chowanski, a small group of parents had complained about the risks of installing wireless networks in the school. In response, the school board said it would continue to monitor research into the safety of the networks but reaffirmed its plan to use Wi-Fi.
" We are not going to do anything different," Chowanski said. " This is the wave of the future."
The complaint by the parents was filed on Sept. 26 in the Circuit Court of Cook County in Illinois. A hearing before Judge Nancy Arnold is scheduled for February.
The parents allege that the district failed to examine the health impact that wireless local area networks pose, especially for growing children. They are seeking class action status for their suit, which seeks to halt the use of wireless networks.
Calls to the parents and their lawyers were not immediately returned.
The Wi-Fi Alliance says Wi-Fi networks are safe. The radio waves in a Wi-Fi network use the same frequency as wireless home phones, and have one-thirtieth the power of, cordless phones, Grimm, the spokesman for the group, said.
The microwave industry has been fighting this since the pulication of the article " The Zapping of America" the premise has been used to fight the instalation of microwave links, cell sights, high voltage transmission lines, TV stations and just about anything else you can think of related to the transmission of electromagnetic energy in any form.
These same people probably use their cell phones an average of 4 hours a day, 5 watts of power transmitted right into what passes for their brain then go to the beach and bask in all of that glorious energy in every wave length imaginable.
They think nothing of doing that.
Oddly enough, up until the mid 80s, most research done on this was conducted in the (then) U.S.S.R. their conclusions were that exposure at levels common to most people were harmless. Unless you are exposed to relatively high levels of RF radiation for an extended period of time, it is harmless. No proof to the contrary has been presented by any reputable research organization since.
I was actually involved in a study of this years back when I worked for a communications company, it' s total horseschit.
the reason that hand held or " close" communications stays out of the hands of all but the military is that higher frequencies cause point mutations. Radio frequency can only in large doses cause a 1st degree burn.
these people should be shot with schit and hung for stink.
If low energy, low frequency (remember that radio and microwaves are of a LOWER frequency than visible light) RF radiation is harmful, then the streets would be littered with the corpses of teenagers clutching their cell phones to their dying breath. I' ve personally known people that probably spend on average 50% or more of their waking hours talking on a cell phone. I personally think that this is nothing more than greedy and/or paranoid overprotective parents looking to make a buck or get their name in the paper. As for their kids, the wireles network can do nothing worse to those kids than what their parents are likely doing already.
Parents Sue School Over Wireless Network
