Children shouldn’t keep laptops on laps while using wireless internet

30 April, 2007

Children are to be discouraged from placing their laptops on their lap when using wireless internet connections owing to potential health risks, an expert in the United Kingdom has warned.

Professor Lawrie Challis, who heads the committee on mobile phone safety research in the United Kingdom, has urged that pupils be monitored, in the backdrop of mounting public concern over emissions from wi-fi networks.

Professor Challis told British newspaper The Daily Telegraph that he is concerned about the fact that few studies have been carried out into the level of exposure in classrooms. He believes that, if there are health problems, they are likely to be more serious in children.

Prof Challis is chairman of the Mobile Telecommunications and Health Research Programme, which conducted the investigation, funded by the Government and the industry, into the potential health risks of mobile phones.

He said that, till more research is conducted, children who used wi-fi enabled laptops should only do so if they kept a safe distance from their embedded antennas.

With a desktop computer, Prof Challis said, the transmitter will be in the tower. This might be perhaps 20 centimetres from the user’s leg and the exposure would then be around 1% of that from a mobile phone.

However, if the user places a laptop straight on his lap and uses using wi-fi, he could be around 2 centimetres from the transmitter, and receiving almost the same amount of exposure from a mobile phone.

Children are much more sensitive than adults to a number of other dangers, such as pollutants like lead and ultra-violet radiation. So if there should be a problem with mobile phones, then it may be a bigger problem for children, Prof Challis said. “Since we advise that children should be discouraged from using mobile phones, we should also discourage children from placing their laptop on their lap when they are using wi-fi.”

In the past 18 months, nearly 1.6 million wi-fi connections have been set up in British homes and offices, and about one in five adults owns a wireless-enabled laptop.

Estimates show that half of all primary schools and four-fifths of all secondary schools are using wireless networks.

Wi-fi works through the transmission of radio waves between a router, which is connected to a telephone line, and a small transmitter in a computer. Under international guidelines, the amount of energy absorbed into the body from such radio waves cannot exceed 2 watts per kilogram when averaged over any 10 grams of tissue.

The maximum signal strength next to the router or computer transmitter is 0.1 watts and the power level falls off very rapidly beyond a few centimetres from the transmission points.

It is believed that a classroom having 20 laptops and two routers could combine to produce emission equal to that from a mobile phone.

Alasdair Philips, director of Powerwatch, a consumer group, remarks: “We are not talking about problems caused by heating. Our brains and nervous systems work by using electrical signals. I believe these signals are being interfered with by exposure to this wi-fi radiation. Based on studies reporting effects experienced by people living near mobile phone masts, I would predict chronic fatigue, memory and concentration problems, irritability and behaviour problems – exactly what we are seeing increasingly in our school pupils.”

The Health Protection Agency also advises children to limit their use of mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the Austrian Medical Association is pressing for a ban on wi-fi in schools.