PAT gives guarded welcome to wi-fi investigation.

15 October 2007

The Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) has given a guarded welcome to news that the Health Protection Agency is to investigate the safety of wireless computer networks.

PAT General Secretary, Philip Parkin, said: “Whilst we welcome this investigation I do not feel that it goes far enough. It seems to be concentrating on what should be known already rather than on what is not known. It seems to me that the HPA:

• has pre-judged outcomes before they have done the work;
• seems to only be considering the thermal effect of EMR and not the potential long-term health risks associated with the non-thermal effects ;
• is assessing against the totally inadequate ICNIRPS guidelines which only relate to the thermal effects of EMR;
• do not appear to be doing any health-related investigations amongst children; and
• appear to be concentrating on measuring radiation levels which are already known - or should have been before the technology was allowed to be used in schools.

If they don’t do a thorough investigation, people will see it as a whitewash. What we want is a thorough investigation that can either confirm there is something to worry about, or completely assuage any fears people may have about wi-fi.”

The Association believes that schools should give full consideration of their needs before installing wireless networks and should consider hard-wired alternatives wherever possible.