Simcoe County school district in Ontario, Canada last year invested thousands of dollars on new wireless internet routers.  As a result, students on a K-12 level have better access to the internet's wealth of resources for their studies. 

However, some of the district's parents are immersed in a state of panic.  They say the Wi-Fi is making their children sick.  Simcoe resident Rodney Palmer, who has two children, 5 and 9 years old, bemoans, "Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms when their kids came home from school."

Palmer is going to pull his kids out of the schools to avoid exposing them to what he considers a toxic environment.

The only problem is that repeated studies have shown that the kinds of wireless signals used in consumer electronics are safe and pose no identifiable health risk.  Michael First, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University in New York City and editor of the DSM-IV, the diagnostic handbook for psychologists, states, "As far as I'm aware, there is no evidence that any kind of radio frequency radiation (including cellphone towers, cellphones themselves,and also including Wi-Fi) cause any negative health effects."

Strangely the public has shown little concern over TV or FM radios, which both offer a greater electromagnetic radiation than Wi-Fi routers.  Fearful Simcoe parents state that they measured the EMI in the schools (from the routers) to be four times greater than that found at the base of cell phone towers.  They apparently missed, though, that the level they measured is 600 times less than what the government considers a harmful limit.

Indeed all commercially available Wi-Fi routers fall within 0.002 percent and 2 percent of recommended maximum levels.

Surprisingly, even some local residents with backgrounds in science and medicine are adding to the hysteria.  Susan Clarke, a former research consultant to the Harvard School of Public Health who studies radio-frequency's bioeffects, was invited to speak to the parents in Simcoe County last week.  She warns, "A child’s brain absorbs this radiation maximally.  Children also absorb microwave radiation more readily than adults because they have thinner skulls."

Of course Clarke failed to produce any scientific studies to support her wild claims.

Wi-Fi fever appears to be sweeping the province, though.  Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario banned Wi-Fi internet from its campus in 2006.  School president Fred Gilbert claimed that Wi-Fi exposure was as bad as inhaling second hand smoke or asbestos exposure.

Similar claims have been leveled about cell phones, which emit much more EMI than Wi-Fi routers, but are still thought to be well within safe tolerances.  A 30-year-long Swedish study found that there was no noticeable correlation between use of low-level radiation devices, such as cell phones, and cancer.

The power of suggestion may lead to real illness, though.  Residents of Craigavon, South Africa claimed that a new cell phone tower was causing a slew of health problems.  After months of complaints of ongoing severe symptoms, the company that owned the tower made an amusing revelation -- they had turned off the tower months ago.  Embarrassed the residents vowed to keep fighting the good fight.

In San Francisco, citizens have fought unsuccessfully in court to try to block the installation of new cell phone towers.  The city did toss these crusaders a bone, when it became the first U.S. city to mandate that cell phone makers to post their radiation levels on in-store displays.

In Britain, DJ Steve Miller helped stir up fears of Wi-Fi exposure claiming he was allergic to Wi-Fi.  He claimed he could detect wireless signals biologically and would get severe headaches and dizziness from them.  He later admitted he faked the illness as a publicity stunt.