Wednesday, February 22, 2006

College: No More Reckless Experimentation

Filed under: Public Health

We're referring, of course, to a dangerous new college trend: kids are using it to help them with school, to get to know each other, hell, just for kicks.

It's wifi! Everyone's doing it, but no one knows how safe it is. Of course, that hasn't stopped entire cities from adopting the technology, making it freely available to the masses. But hey, Lakehead University will not jeopardize its students until wifi is proven safe:

A Canadian university has limited Wi-Fi networks on campus, not out of information security concerns, but because the long-term safety of the technology is "unproven".

Fred Gilbert, president of Canada's Lakehead University, made the order on the basis of possible health risk from the technology, especially to young people. Inconclusive studies into possible links between radio transmissions and leukemia and brain tumors from, among others, scientists for the California Public Utilities Commission, led Gilbert to make the "precautionary ban".

"All I’m saying is while the jury’s out on this one, I’m not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students.

So, kids, you should be free to take your laptop onto the web sometime in the mid-twenty-first century...

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