I have no bone to pick with the Catholic Teachers. Well, perhaps the fact that we are still having a little trouble separating church and state is an issue, but hey … it’s been there a long time.
But when they want to stifle progress with an unbelievably slack bit of logic, well …
If you click on it and read the paper, you will see that they are calling for a stoppage of the installation of WiFi in the classroom in order to protect the children from the negative effects of radiation.
They cite cell phone regulations as the primary radiation source quoted by the World Health Organization in a paper on carcinogens and they cite the fact that many countries have stricter guidelines than we do about exposure to this radiation. That being 15 minutes a day. However, what the teachers fail to discuss is the fact that cell phone radiation is transmitted directly into the user’s skull from an effective distance of zero.
This is not at all the same thing as sitting in a room where WiFi is running between devices. Most of those devices are on the floor (computers), on the desk (laptops) or on the ceilings (routers) and thus the distances are dramatically higher. Radiation effects drop rapidly with distance. And I quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_radiation_syndrome#Distance
Distance
Increasing distance from the radiation source reduces the dose according to the inverse-square law for a point source. Distance can sometimes be effectively increased by means as simple as handling a source with forceps rather than fingers.
But here’s the kicker. Virtually every child in school today comes from a home with tons of the same wireless radiation from multiple devices.
That is … these children all have a wireless router in the home and they all have one or more computers, cell phones, iPods or iPads. Add to that one or more wireless phones at one of three bands (900Mhz, 2.4 Ghz or 5Ghz), the last two bands overlapping those on the router and computers. They might often have laptops or iPads on their laps every evening, possibly all evening.
In other words, every home is already flooded with this radiation, and no one talks about that because there is nothing much to talk about.
Basically, the cry to take it out of the classroom appears to be utter nonsense from the get-go. The same lack of critical thinking that has the stupidest of celebrities campaigning against vaccines.
The source might be a movie, but this clip is by far the best explanation of this mob mentality that pervades the political landscape these days …
And here is a great article that really debunks this stuff …
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/02/oh_no_school_wi-fi_is_making_our_kids_si.php
