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Comments: 515 +- Mobile: English DJ Claims Wi-Fi Allergy on Monday July 27, @10:43AM
Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday July 27, @10:43AM
from the TV-gives-me-hives dept.
from the TV-gives-me-hives dept.
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wireless
path0$ writes "British Ex-DJ Steve Miller claims that his Wi-Fi allergy is making his life one big misery
, forcing him to live in an iron-clad home far from any neighbors. According to the article, more and more people are suffering from an allergy like his. The only positive side to this is that at least Miller didn't think of suing anybody yet, like these people did,
who claim to suffer from the same condition and were mentioned in a Slashdot article in 2008."
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Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
Crazy people are everywhere. Stop giving them attention.
Re:Crazy people (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, this is 100% psychosomatic.
Put these people in a faraday cage with a WiFi router without being able to see the unit, and have them report when it's on/off, double-blind the test and report and see if they're more than 60% reliable over a good number of tests. We'll see if it's real.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
Crazy people are everywhere. Stop giving them attention.
This attitude is unhelpful.
The symptoms this man describes sound similar to anxiety disorder with agoraphobia. It's not uncommon, and is very treatable with cognitive behavioral therapy and an anti-anxiety medication such as an SSRI. Sufferers of this have physiological symptoms which are subjectively-- and sometimes objectively-- indistinguishable from anything from allergies to more serious medical conditions. The body creates a feedback loop in the endocrine system and the mind assigns causative correlations with anything that was happening at the time. It can result in anything from hot flashes to stuffy noses to a full-on asthma attack.
Calling such a condition "crazy" just exacerbates it, and attention to it is something that has to be managed carefully to try to break the feedback loops.
Disclaimer: I'm not a psychotherapist, just a patient.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Crazy people (Score:4, Funny)
Most people with decent hearing find TV aisles uncomfortable - it's either too many random TVs putting out the same audio minutely out of synch, or the high-pitched squeal that comes from any CRT being multiplied by a couple dozen. The EMF signals are hardly the most irritating thing that a TV can put out.
O RLY? I guess you haven't sat through an episode of 'Fringe' then?
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
Or... you know... the stuff that they're actually playing on the TVs...
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I'll start taking it seriously when at least one so-called sufferer can reliably report the appearance or disappearance of his symptoms in coordination with a randomly cycled emf source in a credible, double-blind experiment.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. There was a case on my university that I found very interesting.
We have access points (AP) distributed all around the campus, meaning we get wireless connectivity pretty much everywhere. One particular AP was located inside a small room used by janitors, adjacent to an interior garden. Being inside a room, it was safe from the weather and would still provide coverage for the area.
However, one day, one of the janitors complained she was getting headaches, and claimed that the AP was the culprit. The network managers, skeptical of it, decided to test her theory and switched off it's radio interface, not telling her anything about it. Although the AP stopped emitting radio waves, the status LED and Ethernet LED still blinked constantly. For the common person, not familiar with network devices, that is enough to assume the access point is working as usual.
Unsurprisingly, the headaches didn't go away and the whining continued. Despite the technical expertise and scientific knowledge of the network staff, the school directors decided to ignore all of the advisory they provided and sided with the janitor, ordering for the AP to be moved out of the janitor's room.
Now, the funny thing is that they moved the access point around two meters from the original position, so that it was on the other side of the wall, enclosed on an opaque, weather resistant box. Radio interface was brought up and then, mysteriously, the headaches went away...
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Informative)
Some of the RFID units operate at extremely low frequencies - down in the kilohertz range. The lowest I've seen is in the 130-140 kHz range though.
These units usually use a LARGE coil as an antenna. There's a good chance the coil changes shape slightly with the duty cycle of the signal (lower than the carrier frequency) - this probably results in some audible energy coming from the security system coils. It may be such a low volume or at a frequency just outside of the normal human hearing range so that it can be "felt but not consciously heard". (This is a similar phenomenon to the well-known "GSM bleeps" - You can't hear 900 MHz or 1900 MHz RF, but you CAN hear when something in the environment rectifies it and low pass filters the signal envelope, because the GSM TDMA frame repeats at around 440 Hz.)
Similarly, CRT TVs often have horizontal refresh rates in the 15-16 kHz range, right in the upper end of the human hearing range. If the transformers in these TVs malfunctions slightly, they'll vibrate at this frequency. Really cheap/defective/failing monitors and TVs will make enough noise at hsync to be heard. I remember we used to have a monitor we had to junk because you couldn't use it for more than 20 minutes without developing a headache - it started squealing softly at hsync frequency.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Crazy people (Score:4, Insightful)
And can he walk outside? Why haven't power lines played havoc with him?
Either the guy is a liar, or he has some mental problems.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if he has a microwave in his place... or even a bluetooth adapter somewhere.
Or, racks and racks of electronic DJ gear....
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Test This Claim: (Score:4, Insightful)
This is an incredibly easy claim to test.
First: See if he can identify when the "Wi-Fi" is on or off.
Second: If he can (which would be highly unlikely and scientifically amazing)... see if he can differentiate between Wi Fi, Bluetooth and his Microwave.
Why do we report bizarre claims to Slashdot without requiring the scientific method to be applied.
If I claim to be psychic and to be able to use ESP to read emails out of thin air, does qualify for the front page of Slashdot?
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Re:Test This Claim: (Score:5, Funny)
Why do we report bizarre claims to Slashdot without requiring the scientific method to be applied.
If I claim to be psychic and to be able to use ESP to read emails out of thin air, does qualify for the front page of Slashdot?
If you have to ask... you must be new round here.. :-)
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Re:Test This Claim: (Score:5, Informative)
This submission was posted by sampenzus which means it's just more idle crap polluting the front page.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Crazy people (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like any properly blinded experiment.
The MSG episode was almost on par with a MythBusters experiment. One group got MSG (all on one side of the room), one group didn't (other side of the room). After eating they asked for food enjoyment and symptoms, then who thought the food had MSG. Better studies have presented the same result with more precise conditions.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate to play the part of Captain Obvious, but the article you linked to seems to indicate that those "afflicted" react to fake EM fields, too. Not very convincing...
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Informative)
In 2005, a systematic review looked at the results of 31 experiments testing the role of electromagnetic fields in causing ES. Each of these experiments exposed people who reported electromagnetic hypersensitivity to genuine and sham electromagnetic fields under single- or double-blind conditions.[1] The review concluded that:
"The symptoms described by 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to electromagnetic fields can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' is unrelated to the presence of electromagnetic fields, although more research into this phenomenon is required."
Seven studies were found which did report an association, while 24 could not find any association with electromagnetic fields. However, of the seven positive studies, two could not be replicated even by the original authors, three had serious methodological shortcomings, and the final two presented contradictory results. Since then, several more double-blind experiments have been published, each of which has suggested that people who report electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to detect the presence of electromagnetic fields and are as likely to report ill health following a sham exposure, as they are following exposure to genuine electromagnetic fields.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, no one disbelieves that EM waves can have an effect on organic tissue. For a much safer and less sarcastic and condescending proof, GO OUT IN THE SUN. I don't believe that low level EM waves can have such a deleterious effect. I also believe that no scientific study has shown any correlation. Finally, I believe that people claiming to have such a condition respond to fake exposure they know about, and do not respond to real exposure they DON'T know about. In conclusion, while I accept the fact that this may possibly have a slight chance of being real, my working hypothesis is that these people are making shit up because they are crazy hypochondriacs.
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Re:Crazy people (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I guess the hungover are also fairly allergic to sunlight.
People wouldn't be able to function in a city if they really were allergic to what they claim they are.
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Seriously (Score:5, Insightful)
Cordless phones? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm allergic to BS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I'm allergic to BS (Score:5, Funny)
I'm allergic to BS.. And I got a nasty rash just reading the summary.
For the love of god; DON'T CLICK ON THE DAILY MAIL LINK!
There's levels of BS on there that scientists haven't yet been able to measure.
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Re:I'm allergic to BS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Easy to test (Score:4, Interesting)
Put him into a room. Randomly switch on and off a WiFi-net and ask him to tell if it is on or off. If he manages to get more than 50 % right there might be something to it. He would also be the first person to manage this in years and years of testing.
And He Can Profit! (Score:5, Informative)
A properly scientific proof of this would most likely qualify him for the JREF challenge. If he can physically detect relatively minor electromagnetic radiation on these frequencies, he could win himself a million dollars. http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html [randi.org]
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Re:Easy to test (Score:5, Interesting)
This comment following TFA says it all:
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The problem with this claim is that WiFi uses the 2.4 gigahertz frequency spectrum along with Bluetooth phones, cordless home phones, and just about any other consumer wireless device. If he really had an 'allergy' like that, he wouldn't have been able to leave his house for the past 15 years. He should try to promote himself a different way than this.
- Dr. Black, Los Angeles, CA, 24/7/2009 14:30
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Not to mention that cosmic radiation doesn't conveniently omit some portion of the EM spectrum. Has he ever been outdoors??
There have always been people who claim that some particular class of witchcraft is making their lives hell. In days of yore it was the evil eye; during the hippie era it was Bad Vibes; today it's some portion of the EM spectrum, because that's the Newly Widespread Thing That We Know Is There But Can't See, So It Must Be Causing Our Ills.
Crank these people's tinfoil hats one notch tighter, and they'll claim it's thoughtwaves from aliens instead. Oh wait, we've already had that one!!
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Re:Easy to test (Score:5, Funny)
He should try to promote himself a different way than this
Yeah seriously; he should just start a band and try promoting himself under his own name. Call it the Steve Mill... umm, never mind.
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Re:Easy to test (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Easy to test (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Easy to test (Score:5, Informative)
Quite right. People who claim to be "allergic" to modern technology invariably fail to prove it in properly designed double-blind scientific tests. In extreme cases, you find people who claim to be allergic to anything "artificial", be it synthetic fibers, plastics, electronic equipment, automobiles, or any one of a thousand other modern conveniences. Their complaints are real, but the root cause is psychological, not physical.
Some EHS (electro-hypersensitivity) sufferers go so far as to line their rooms and clothing with aluminum foil to supposedly "shield" themselves. In the most extreme cases, they move out into the country and adopt a 19th century lifestyle to completely divorce themselves from the modern world. Of course, they're still being exposed to EM radiation even in remote areas, as AM and shortwave radio transmissions span the globe, not to mention the EM radiation emitted by the sun. But once they believe they are safe from EM radiation, their symptoms abate.
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Re:Easy to test (Score:5, Funny)
But once they believe they are safe from EM radiation, their symptoms abate.
Whoa, that's weird. I believe I'm safe from EM radiation too, and I've never had any EM allergy-related symptoms. Coincidence? I think not!
You know what this means? The allergy is real, but believing it doesn't affect you is a cure! It makes sense, too -- allergies are an auto-immune response of the body, which can conceivably be affected by the central nervous system, if not consciously then subconsciously. People can learn to control their heart rates or body temperatures, maybe we unknowingly control our immune systems to respond or not respond to things it shouldn't. Thus the luddites fear of technology creates the very allergy that makes them fear technology. A vicious cycle!
But hopefully we can make use of this, and I can believe my way of of this annoying mold allergy -- THAT I DON'T HAVE BECAUSE I'M SAFE FROM MOLD. I KNOW I'M SAFE I KNOW I'M SAFE.
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He can probably earn $1M bucks if legit... (Score:4, Interesting)
He should contact the James Randi foundation for their 1M prize for paranormal proof [randi.org], as they might very well consider "WiFi sensitivity" paranormal behavior.
Re:He can probably earn $1M bucks if legit... (Score:4, Informative)
From the Foundation's FAQ on the challenge ( http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/254-jref-challenge-faq.html [randi.org] ):
Many people have already undergone preliminary testing by the Foundation. Their claims have been deemed "paranormal." None of them succeeded in proving the abilities they claimed. I don't have the source handy, but I'm pretty sure that Randi himself has stated in the past that this sort of EM sensitivity would qualify.
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Steve Miller allergic to Wi-Fi? (Score:5, Funny)
Some people call him the space cowboy
Some people call him the gangster of love
Some people call him Maurice
Because he has to stay in a Faraday cage to block out the wi-fi signals he's allergic to...
What about Microwave Ovens? (Score:4, Interesting)
If he were really allergic to Wi-Fi, wouldn't he have an extreme allergic reaction to microwave ovens too?
Re:What about Microwave Ovens? (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. Yet if he does use a microwave oven, and you were to point this out to him, he would quickly declare that the WiFi transmissions must have some additional quality that makes them "bad" as compared to microwave oven radiation.
You must always keep in mind that you are dealing with people suffering from a psychological disorder. Logical arguments means nothing to them; they'll simply ignore what you're saying, or rationalize their behavior in one way or another. I've heard that some drugs for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder can be helpful in extreme cases, but these people are completely convinced that their ailments have physical causes, and will reject any suggestion that "it's all in your head".
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Re:What about Microwave Ovens? (Score:5, Insightful)
You must always keep in mind that you are dealing with people suffering from a psychological disorder. Logical arguments means nothing to them; they'll simply ignore what you're saying, or rationalize their behavior in one way or another.
So, you're saying the mysterious wifi allergy disease is actually a religion?
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Yeah, let's do the math... (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. Microwaves are allowed leak up to 5 mW/cm2 at 5 cm according to the FCC. Half that leakage (2.5mW/cm2), is almost exactly the same output as a typical wi-fi access point. Which means if he can stand next to the microwave while he nukes his burrito, he shouldn't have any issues with wi-fi.
So unless he's actually 802.11b/g sensitive, I call BS.
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Lets try to be helpful (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard of this before, and I've always been skeptical of it. Not because that I think it's impossible for people to absorb electromagnetic radiation, but because the first people to expose me to this sensitivity believed pyramid shaped crystals could fix them. I really blame them for killing all of the credibility this condition may have had with me, but it's their own fault. This always struck me as a powerful example of the placebo effect. People want to feel sick when electromagnetic waves are around them, so they do. I've had a few friends deeply wrapped up in holistic medicine, and you could pick any random ingredient on your soda (anything man made) and they give you a story of how they feel sick when they are in the room with that ingredient.
I'm not going to sit here and bash the people who think they have this symptom. You're going to get 50 posters who have done that thoroughly by now. Instead I'm going to offer them a suggestion. Find a person who exhibits a visible symptom when they're exposed to the types of radiation you object to. If we can take a person and reliably give them a rash with a wifi router, then we're in business. Until then you're...well this lady who had her house covered in tin foil.
"But beneath the coats of magnolia paint, she points out, the walls are lined with a special paper that contains a layer of tin-foil; and upstairs, the windows are hung with a fine, silvery gauze."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-450995/The-woman-needs-veil-protection-modern-life.html [dailymail.co.uk]
Hold on... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because it's all in someone's head doesn't mean they aren't suffering from it.
I know what he needs (Score:5, Funny)
Allergies (Score:4, Insightful)
EMF sensitivity (Score:5, Interesting)
As a kid, I could actually hear some EM quite distinctly. It was only the stronger pulse-like stuff, like arcing transformer a hundred meters away, or lightning strikes within about 2km. I can still hear lightning strikes that are fairly close as a faint crack in my head, a second or so before the thunder, but this ability seem to be diminishing as I age.
Of course, there is no frickin way anybody can feel 100mW of 2.4GHz radiation from any distance, and not feel 1kW (although shielded, but leaking a lot more than 100mW) microwave oven.
Found a corroborating study on the net (Score:5, Interesting)
FWIW take a look at this study (http://www.aehf.com/articles/em_sensitive.html [aehf.com]) which shows after weeding out people who are affected by fake situations, that this is a real health issue. An M.D. is involved in the paper. After weeding out people who got faked out by placebos and "active challenges", they got 100% positive, 0% negative. (I just briefly flipped through the paper so read it more carefully please.)
Re:Close Mindedness (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we're biased because, to date, double-blind studies done with people who are "WiFi sensitive" have turned up nothing. It is up to the people making the claims to prove their claims. If they are sensitive to WiFi signals, this can be trivially proven by a double-blind experiment. Yet, no-one has produced one.
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Re:Close Mindedness (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean I probably think the guy is a kook, but can any of you really guarantee he is wrong? No, the history of science is of people being proven wrong. You are all just biased because you love wifi.
Uh-huh. Well I have a pretty solid theory that he's wrong based on the evidence that he has doubtless been bombarded with EM radiation of the same frequency and equal or greater magnitude for years with no complaints due to the vast numbers of other electronic devices and cosmic radiation entering our atmosphere.
So frankly I can't "guarantee" he's wrong (well okay I can -- he's wrong or your money back) but as far as I'm concerned the burden of proof is on you/this kook to give a plausible reason why Wi-Fi is different.
You're just biased against science, and think that because scientists have been shown (by other scientists!) to be wrong in the past means that any random arse thing you make up on the spot with some half-assed casual observation behind it has an equal or greater chance to be true than something studied via the scientific method.
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