'Wi-Fi Illness' Spreads To Ontario Public Schools 663
An anonymous reader writes "Readers of Slashdot might be familiar with Lakehead University's ban on WiFi routers a few years ago in Thunder Bay, Ontario because of 'health concerns,' a policy apparently still in effect. Now it seems a group of concerned parents in a number of communities in Ontario have petitioned the local school boards over similar concerns at public schools, where their kids are apparently experiencing 'headaches to dizziness and nausea and even racing heart rates' — symptoms that appear only when they are in school on weekdays, not on weekends at home. 'The symptoms, which also include memory loss, trouble concentrating, skin rashes, hyperactivity, night sweats and insomnia, have been reported in 14 Ontario schools in Barrie, Bradford, Collingwood, Orillia and Wasaga Beach since the board decided to go wireless ...' Besides Wi-Fi signals, could there possibly be any other logical explanation for kids having more symptoms of illness on school days than at home on weekends or in the summer?"
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:5, Informative)
That's obviously the joke.
Sounds like stress symptoms (Score:1, Informative)
Parents often have so high expectations of their kids, that they push them. In the end kids are so stressed that they develop those symptoms. And the worst thing is, they can also get AHDS and other bevahior problems, just because the parents are not able to aow thery kids to develop naturally. And because all the stress is connected to the school it is logical that they develop these symptoms when entering school.
And instead of giving our kids more time to grow, we give them ritalin so they head strait for the goals we set for them. We forgot that children are also humans and they have also freedom rights. And pushing them in certain directions and hoping their can fulfill our dreams we failed to fulfill is totally wrong. So do not rip out the WI-FI just give them more time.
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:5, Informative)
I was fine all throughout primary and secondary school, but since coming to college I've noticed that I feel physically sick in the lectures, it was enough to make me stop attending lectures almost entirely (maybe I'll do better next year).
Could have been the lighting.
Some people are extremely sensitive to (C)CFLs, especially if they have a low CRI or a cold colour temperature. One of the lecture halls at college kept giving me headaches when I attended in the evening; then again, I knew it was the ceiling lamps, because I've had such issues in a couple of other CFL-lit areas in the past.
Re:Whats wrong with the children? (Score:1, Informative)
My guess, it's the parents. The parents want the children to be sick and press/force it upon the children to be sick. Its a common incident in lawsuits.
This is Canada. We don't have the lawsuit lottery that the USA has.
Re:It's Black Mold (Score:3, Informative)
Wireless routers aren't wireless... they have an Ethernet and power cable connected to them. (it's the signal they produce that's wireless)
Re:It's Black Mold (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget about modulated electromagnetic fields produced by headphones of any portable audio player! Basically inside of the skull!!
Close to hippocampus, too - a part of brain crucial in long-term memory!
Re:Spectral evidence is irrefutable! (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, I meant it as more of a witch than a troll, really. Perhaps "see if the school's routers will float in water" might have been a bit more obvious... I went for the more subtle approach, but apparently some moderators take everything at face value! ;)
Re:WiFi at home? (Score:3, Informative)
I know what you mean since I've been to 3/5 of the mentioned places, but for anyone who hasn't been there "undeveloped" is not really the right word... they're fairly typical lower-class suburban/sorta-rural areas. "Undeveloped" implies something like a third-world country... and while there are places in Canada that resemble that, lower-class areas of south-central Ontario don't really fit that description :)
Re:Predictable (Score:3, Informative)
also it cuts down on cabling . Wifi can be great for convenience. Plus teacher and students devices. Why not?
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:5, Informative)
As for wifi, that should be easy to test -- do the kids get sick in malls? Somehow I doubt it, but lots of stores use wifi. If the kids don't feel the same in the mall (except perhaps when walking withing 50' of a "Body Shop" store's stench), then it's not likely wifi.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, a lot of factors come together to make schools a great place for spreading germs:
1) You are dealing with kids who tend to get sick more often anyhow. This is in part because their immune systems are still developing, and in part because they do not take many of the hygiene steps that most adults do (like not putting everything in your mouth).
2) It's lots of people spending a lot of time in close proximity with one another. There are more than a few illnesses that don't live for long outside of a body, so some distance goes a long ways to stopping it. You don't get that in school, kids are packed in pretty good.
3) You shuffle and mix people around. While most of the time is spent in close proximity in class, you then mix it up at recess, at lunch, in different classes (for the older grades) and so on. So things don't stay contained to one subgroup, they have the chance to move.
4) Cleaning procedures are not that good. There is neither the time nor the money to do a through cleaning of everything in school every day, especially given all the potential surfaces where germs can hide. As such schools are just not kept as clean as some other environments that are similar (like a hospital).
5) Nearly everything is shared. At home and at work my computer, my desk, etc are all mine, reserved for my exclusive use. At school that is rarely true. Desks are often first come, first serve, computers are in labs used by all and so on. The more people that use something, the more chances it can be used as an infection vector.
6) Absence is discouraged. Workplaces often tell sick people to get out, even if they want to come to work. They want things kept healthy, rather than perfect attendance. Schools heavily pressure attendance, and it can be a real pain to miss things and have to play catchup. As such kids may end up going to school when they are a bit sick, but seem ok, whereas an adult might choose (or be forced) to stay home. Also with cuts to subs teachers practically have to be dying before they can miss a day. Well sometimes "a little sick" means "Highly contagious but without frank symptoms."
Basically schools are just ideal places for spreading disease. Now this isn't all bad, kids need to be exposed to disease for their immune systems to develop and strengthen. However it also means that you have to accept that they will be sick a lot more than you probably will be.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:5, Informative)
Wish I had a mod points -- who the heck moderated parent as troll?! I find mercury poisoning from a tuna diet quite believeable, heck if you eat more than a can of tuna a day you may be putting yourself at risk.
You need to eat quite a bit of tuna on a tuna-based diet; perhaps a pound per day?
Let's run some numbers.
EPA's limit is 0.1micrograms per kg body mass per day. So for a 70kg adult, the EPA limit is 7ug per day.
Now one pound of tuna is ~450 grams, at FDA average of 0.2ppm concentration in tuna, you get 90 micrograms, so you're 13 times over the limit. If you're unlucky and get fish close to FDA limit of 1ppm mercury concentration, you get 0.45 mg.
Out of 0.45mg of mercury per day, about 0.4mg will be accumulating in luckiest of circumstances (to be conservative, I'd just assume 100%). You'll be sick in short order.
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps this chart [fda.gov] helpfully provided by the cocksucking regulators with data going back as far as 1978 would have saved you some grief. Or perhaps the very notion of "I'm going to eat only one thing" might have encouraged a normal person to do some research beyond reading the label on the damn can.
What part of "consult with your doctor before starting any program of diet or exercise" didn't you understand?
And then seriously? Your reaction to your own gobsmackingly foolhardy ignorance about what you put into your body results in you trusting nobody but yourself to supervise your water quality?
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:3, Informative)
There's a big debate among water purification vendors about this.
On the one hand, makers of non-RO (reverse osmosis [google.com]) systems say that you need minerals in water.
Vendors of reverse-osmosis or large solar distillers [google.com] reply that people have been drinking rain water (which doesn't have minerals) without adverse health effects, so you don't need minerals in water.
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:4, Informative)
I used to think regular water tasted like nothing, then I tasted distilled water. Think flour but liquid.
ObTopic:Dumb parents are dumb. Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:3, Informative)
I thought the fluoride in the water is why we don't all have "british looking" teeth.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
Chris Rock had a better one - in third world countries, you don't see anyone with allergies because there ain't shit to be allergic to. It's all REAL FOOD instead of processed chemical crap and HFCS.
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:1, Informative)
That doesn't make any sense: there is a big difference between when a chemical dissolved in another, and a chemical binding to another.
Blood, for example, is a complex solutions containing various vitamins, minerals, hormones and cells.
The water you drink is absorbed into the rest of your body and is added to the different fluids bodily (blood, lymph, cytoplasm, etc.).
Then, as your kidneys filter the blood, they pull out wastes like uric acid, and the water they are dissolved in.
So you drink water, this new water is added to other water that already contains minerals in it, resulting in more water with stuff dissolved in it. At this point the new water and old water are indistinguishable, and act the same way.
Nothing is expelled from the body's fluids until the kidneys do their job of filtering the blood.
Also, water isn't absorbed until it gets to your colon. So if you drink water with your food or within a few hours of eating, some of the minerals in the food that is in the process of being digested (from your mouth to your stomach to your small intestine) will get dissolved in the water as it makes its way to your colon aka large intestine.
The only way distilled water could be bad for you is if you are replacing water containing minerals that, unless you drank them in your water, you would be deficient in, which is the case for almost nobody.
Re:Mod the summary funny (Score:3, Informative)
When you drink distilled water, you are increasing your fluid volume WITHOUT increasing your intake of essential minerals. This causes minerals in your tissues to move into solution until equilibrium is reached. When you excrete the excess water, these elements are removed from your body.