Last Friday the San Francisco Chronicle carried a front page, above the fold article about Google, the Internet search provider offering to install wireless broadband Internet service (WiFi for short) for all of San Francisco for free. The offer didn’t come out of the blue. It was in response to the first phase of the City of San Francisco’s TechConnect program, a program intended to provide WiFi access anywhere in the city.
The next day, the Chronicle’s business page carried an article about how Google has its eye on unseating Microsoft as the Titan of software. On the one hand, as a corporate entity Google is trying to do good. Friday’s article even described how Google might provide WiFi service for free throughout the United States. On the other hand, this is an old corporate strategy pioneered by Gillette: give away the razor and sell the razor blades; give away Internet access and sell services and advertising.
Back in July, Layna interviewed Cindy Sage, an expert on the effects of electromagnetic and radio frequency radiation, including WiFi. In September she submitted testimony to the City’s TechConnect commission on the potential health risks of installing WiFi. Yet no mention is made of these or any other potential health risks anywhere in the information I looked at from the TechConnect program.
In her statement to the TechConnect commission, Ms. Sage provided a significant list of health risks based on various studies on the effects of radio frequency radiation exposure similar to what San Franciscans will experience. These include memory loss, sleep disorders, reduced motor skills and reaction time in school children, decreased immune function, and much, much more.
The irony here is that San Francisco is the first major American city to adopt the precautionary principle. The precautionary principle, as I’ve discussed before, says that before you take some action, first be clear about the problem you’re trying to solve, then look at all the alternative solutions, then weight the risks of those alternatives. Yet the TechConnect process seems to have turned its back on this principle. When implemented, San Francisco will be blanketed by WiFi radio frequency radiation. Everyone gets exposed, making it a significant public health issue.
I don’t expect the people of San Francisco to drop like flies when they throw the WiFi switch. Instead, some children will become a little slower, some people will have more trouble sleeping, and some people will get sick more often. Press the bar for a food pellit San Francisco, you’re about to become a medical experiment.
Although commercial interests are deeply involved in this for commercial reasons, I don’t believe it’s an evil conspiracy between the City and Google or any other corporation. At it’s core, TechConnect has a laudible purpose: to provide information access to low income households and to others for whom access is limited by providing WiFi service.
But let’s stop and do this right. Let’s use the precautionary principle. What IS the problem San Francisco is trying to solve? “Provide WiFi access to all citizens?” No, because that assumes a solution. The problem is how to provide access to the wealth of information available on the Internet and from other sources to low income and other citizens whose access is now limited. What are the alternatives for that? And which ones have fewer potential risks than WiFi?
The moral of this story is that we, individually and collectively through our government, should not be mesmerized by a technology, so that its lack is felt to be a problem, whether that technology is WiFi, genetically modified organisms, pharmaceuticals, or surgical procedures. The trick is to see the problem clearly without assuming the solution.
The issues in this article are developed (with references) in issue #8 of the Progressive Health Observer in the article titled “The WiFi Blues.”
Related resources are available on the Radiation page.
