YapThomas - The Ultimat3

Is WiMAX or Wireless Harmful??

I seriously don’t know. But I shall give you this link where we all Malaysian have been hard talking about this topic. Read ‘Say NO to Penang’s Free Wifi, XD ‘ in LowYat Forum to see what these average Joe thinks about the recent Hoo Haa about the harmful WiFi or WiMAX or whatever Wi Wi.. maybe Nintendo Wii is harmful too.. -_-

I bet we all are very uncertain ourselves on the actual risk from WiFi or WiMAX. It has been resported by BBC that “Wi-fi health fears are ‘unproven’.

I quote from the BBC article:

“Wi-fi seems unlikely to pose any risk to health,” said Professor Lawrie Challis, of Nottingham University.

Prof Challis, chairman of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research (MTHR) programme management committee, said: “Wi-fi exposures are usually very small - the transmitters are low power and some distance from the body.

“They can be near to the body, however, when a laptop is on one’s lap and my own view is that just as we encourage young children not to use mobile phones we should also encourage them to use their laptops on a table rather than their lap, if they are going online for a long time.”

Mobile phones and many other gadgets are also considered a possible risk to the health of humans. None of them are proven scientifically. It is very typical that human will only believe whatever that is proven scientifically. Unless a pure and true statement and a wide study which has its proven accord is done and shown to the public, not many people will believe. Imagine if that would happen, this multi-billion dollar industry will just skydive from where they are now.

Professor Malcolm Sperrin, a medical physic expert told BBC in the same article that:

“Wi-fi is a technique using very low intensity radio waves. Whilst similar in wavelength to domestic microwave radiation, the intensity of wi-fi radiation is 100,000 times less than that of a domestic microwave oven.
“Furthermore, tissue can only be effectively heated by a wavelength that is closely matched to the absorption, and there are strict guidelines for ensuring such absorption peaks are avoided.”
The type of radiation emitted by radio waves (wi-fi), visible light, microwaves and mobile phones has been shown to raise the temperature of tissue at very high levels of exposure - called a thermal interaction - but there is no evidence that low levels cause damage.

The expert has spoken. I shall not elaborate more about that.

Wathc this video I found on YouTube.

A Malaysiakini reader nicknamed Wizurye wrote ‘Wi-Fi has more pros than cons‘ And I would like to quote part of his letter:

While it is good to be safe than sorry, I am sure that the possible ‘hazards’ posed by Wi-Fi would be very minimal considering that most people on the street are being exposed to higher and more powerful frequencies being emitted from handphones.

In other words, if such frequencies are indeed dangerous to human beings, we should ban handphones before anything else!

We should also be asking why there is virtually no research on this issue by the US or European countries if the issue has such serious repercussions on public health.

Even hospitals are installing Wi-Fi technology and have yet receive any complaints from the health experts working there. Don’t you think these so-called experts will have more knowledge on what is good or bad for themselves and their patients?

We shouldn’t be worrying too much or else nothing will get accomplished. While I agree there is a risk, no matter how minimal that risk is, I feel that we should not neglect improvements just because there is a risk involved.

We all drive to work even though we know we could meet with an accident. Are we going to give up on cars based on a fear that we might meet with a road accident?

I certainly do agree on what Wizurye wrote. Ban telephones or any other products that emits more radiowaves than any other devices! I myself don’t know what it is all about the risk that I’m getting. If handphones has risk, which I have read much about it, then just use handsfree. It is way better that way. Similar to WiFi or WiMAX. Find ways to avert from the danger! Stay far away or something. I don’t know what’s safe but oh wells, I’m just another typical average joe. Until its proven unsafe, I will harp for the expansion of both WiFI and WiMAX technology. I want to see them EVERYWHERE…

What’s your say?