Wi-Fi woes
The parents of a 12-year-old student attending a private elementary school in Southboro, Massachusetts believe the school's recently upgraded Wi-Fi setup is making their son sick, the Telegram reports. In a lawsuit related to the claim, the parents have asked for an injunction that would force the school to either switch to Ethernet or turn down the wireless signal. They're also seeking $250,000 in damages.
According to the suit, the elementary student, referred to as "G," suffers from Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity Syndrom (EHS), a diagnosis that was issued after he began suffering from frequent headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, and other symptoms that the parents claim resulted from the school upgrading its Internet system to have a more powerful wireless signal in 2013.
So far, the school has been unwilling to accommodate the parents' requests. However, the school did hire a company called Isotrope, LLC to perform an analysis of its wireless setup in January.
“Isotrope found that the combined levels of access point emissions, broadcast radio and television signals, and other RFE emissions on campus ‘were substantially less than one ten-thousandth (1/10,000th) of the applicable (FCC) safety limits'," the school said in a statement.
The school also requested that G visit with another physician. According to the lawsuit, the parents agreed, but were miffed that the physician came to the conclusion that "there was not enough study yet done to link Wi-Fi emissions to symptoms such as those G is experiencing" after speaking with the boy for just 10 minutes.
“This doctor stated in essence that he does not believe in EHS,” the lawsuit says. “Yet he made no alternate diagnosis.”
There is some debate in the medical community whether EHS is a real thing.
"The majority of studies indicate that EHS individuals cannot detect EMF exposure any more accurately than non-EHS individuals," the World Health Organization says. "Well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure. It has been suggested that symptoms experienced by some EHS individuals might arise from environmental factors unrelated to EMF."
WHO also contends that EHS is not a medical diagnosis and that any perceived symptoms "may be due to pre-existing psychiatric conditions" and/or stress associated with worrying about the effects of EMF.
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