Sebastopol's brave rejection of WiFi

<p>The Press Democrat editorial titled "Flat Earth City" (March 29) did a disservice to the Sebastopol City Council.</p><p>Residents of many cities have testified to no avail about the health effects of wireless technology. But in Sebastopol, the council members did something different and courageous: they listened.</p><p>Let me emphasize something we all agree on, both proponents and opponents: WiFi emits microwave radiation.</p><p>The only disagreement concerns whether this radiation is safe.</p><p>To those who are so sure it's safe that they're willing to irradiate all of the Earth's inhabitants -- the willing along with the unwilling, the birds and wildlife along with the humans, leaving no place untouched -- I say what is often said to global warming deniers: What if you are wrong?</p><p>For the sake of a convenience that was invented just eight years ago, you are willing to risk catastrophe.</p><p>I personally have friends with epilepsy who have seizures if exposed to a cell phone or to WiFi.</p><p>I have friends with diabetes who can't keep their blood sugar under control unless they avoid all exposure to wireless technology, including cell phones, cordless phones, WiFi, cell towers and all the rest of it.</p><p>Because of the work I do I have come into contact with, and have collected case histories for, thousands of people for whom the wireless revolution has meant extreme pain, suffering, discrimination, isolation, usually joblessness and often homelessness.</p><p>They include doctors, lawyers, physicists, engineers, stockbrokers, teachers, librarians and others who were living entirely normal lives until just a few years ago.</p><p>The public discourse on wireless technology has focused on speed, bandwidth, feasibility, cost, aesthetics, property values, historic preservation, automobile safety, emergency services and everywhere else but where it needs to be focused -- which is on human rights and democracy.</p><p>It may shock many people to learn that 70 percent of all studies on cell phones have found one or more health effects.</p><p>But "wireless technology is safe" has been repeated so often, like an urban legend, that few people are paying attention to the scientists doing the research, much less to the millions of refugees that this technology has created.</p><p>"Is it really wise and safe to subject ourselves to whole-body irradiation, all round the clock and wherever we are, with the same mobile radiation which laboratory studies have shown to cause serious injuries and effects?" asks Dr. Olle Johansson, a neuroscientist at the world-renowned Karolinska Institute. "Of course not!"</p><p>Arthur Firstenberg is a Mendocino resident and founder and president of the Cellular Phone Task Force.</p>