Wi-Fi foe sues neighbor for using electronics

[deadrats]

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Wi-Fi-foe-sues-neighbor-for-using-electronics

A Santa Fe man who says he suffers from electromagnetic sensitivity is suing his next-door neighbor for refusing to turn off her cell phone and other electronic devices.

this article struck so close to home that i almost got deja vu, i set up a wireless network in my house, a house that i share with my brother. when my brother found out he hit the roof, and we had more than a heated discussion with him claiming that wireless signals are "bad for your health", that they have been linked to various forms of cancer, brain tumors, and the like. we went back and forth for hours, and he even went so far as to conduct extensive research to offer me "proof" of what he claimed, "proof" which i must admit seems quasi-convincing. ultimately i acquiesced and switched the lan to hard wired, but here's the rub:

my brother isn't some uneducated slack jawed yokel, he has his B.S. in mechanical engineering from a very prestigious and competitive school and he currently works for a major firm as an analyst, i also have a client that is a physician and i asked his opinion and he said that while the jury is still out as far as 100% conclusive evidence, he tends to lean towards believing that various forms of em fields are harmful to the human body.

of course i'm no dummy myself, and i have more than a passing familiarity with the physics governing electromagnetic fields and i asked them both a very simple question: if all these e-m fields are so bad for our health, then why is it you don't see a significantly higher rate of cancer, neurological disorders and the like when you consider that we get bombarded with extremely powerful e-m waves 24/7 from various sources, including the sun, radio transmission towers which are obviously pumping out sh*tloads of juice when you consider that you can pick up a radio station over 100 miles away, tv stations, ham and cb radio transmissions, not to mention the e-m fields generated by the electrical wiring in your house (contrary to popular belief the casing around the wires do not shield against e-m field leakage, if you take an e-m counter and hold it next to your electrical box you will sh*t when you see how high the e-m fields are.

so it doesn't really make any sense to me, but then again i'm not a doctor...

[guns1inger]

So-called 'electro sensitivity' has no scientific basis, and is not a physical illness (read that how you will). Serious studies have been done, and in each case, when controlled testing was done, the results were the same. Basically, when people claiming to suffer from 'electro sensitivity', when put in proximity of devices but blinded to whether or not the device was active, were unable to determine when the device was active. To date, no sufferer has been able to demonstrate that they can actually detect when a device is affecting them. There is also a growing body of study that suggest psychotherapy is very effective in helping 'sufferers' who are willing to accept that the problem is not physical.

The sad part is that many 'sufferers' either have other underlying maladies that do not get treated because they end up wasting their time chasing a false disease, or they are simply unable to accept that they are getting older, and suffering the effects of, well, getting older.

The case for cancers is not so clear cut, with most quality studies coming up either negative or inconclusive. Where definitive proof is claimed, it is usually after a post-hoc review that attempts to draw cause and effect relationships that support a preconceived viewpoint. There was even a recent study that suggested that mobile phone use might help reduce the effect of alzheimer's disease (again, another one-off study with little to no value in isolation).