Everything in excessiveness is harmful.

Yes, it keeps me up past my bed time and constantly ruins my sleep hours because I feel the need to whip out my tab and read about computers.

Still haven't sprouted any extra limbs from the radiation though 😀

No.
Even without wifi we're being bombarded with radiation from other sources - mobile phone towers, radar, radio, outer space, the sun...

DonutKing wrote:

the sun...

I'd say this is 100 x more harmful than anything else around us (not including radiation poisoning). 😀

Yup, it lets teh interwebs into your home. That's like hooking up your kitchen taps to raw sewage. 🤣

DonutKing wrote:

the sun...

Ok jokes aside, yes it's harmful, in the same way eating to many cashews are. You have much worse things to worry about

Muz wrote:

What do you guys think?

Are people being reprogrammed by the wifis? Possible explanation for Alex Jones' subscriber base?

I think you misread the article, people are being reprogrammed by their wifeys.

Wifi is as harmful as your microwave. Or less.

BitWrangler wrote:

I think you misread the article, people are being reprogrammed by their wifeys.

I guess they need some of those Alpha Male Vitality supplements...

its extremely hazardous! I bought a whole pack of Cicso WAP's (those square while ones). Damn things weigh like 5 pounds each of cast aluminum. If one fell off the ceiling and landed on your head, I can only imagine the damage it would cause. You might get a bruise or even a couple stitches.

Now to be serious... if you don't sleep several inches from your router's antenna, you'll be fine.

They say that beer and sitting are harmful, and here I sit drinking a beer and using my wifi - death wish.

So should it be turned off at night?

Only if you want to save ~10 watts of electricity usage.

@post 7 CB radio is less harmful, though. WiFi is in GHz range, like someones microwave oven or the average schmartphone. :D

Is long downloads with WiFi harmful as well?

gdjacobs wrote:

Are people being reprogrammed by the wifis?

There was a Doctor Who episode on that.

Muz wrote:

So should it be turned off at night?

You actually expecting a serious answer?

Well then...

keenmaster486 wrote:

Wifi is as harmful as your microwave. Or less.

This. Residential microwaves operate in the 2.4GHz ISM band, same one where WiFi lurks, at powers of around 750W. 2.4GHz WiFi may transmit at max 100mW (in EU, other regions have different limits). So 1/7500 of the output of a typical microwave - and packet-based, so not transmitting contiuously. The biological effects of microwaves are well documented: it heats stuff, particularly stuff containing water - such as the human body. Microwave ovens are shielded, enclosed spaces, so most of those 750W stay inside the oven, heating whatever is in it. WiFi APs are by definition unshielded, so their 100mW radiate in all directions, meaning that the actual energy absorbed by any object, even in direct line of sight, is a fraction of that. The only way to get significant warming would be to immerse the AP's antenna in your body, and even then your body almost certainly would dissipate the energy faster than it would get absorbed. If you don't shove the antenna somewhere where the sun doesn't shine, it's not even going to give you a tan.

Same applies to 5GHz, except that generally commercial microwaves operate at those frequencies. Max EIRP can be a bit higher - in some cases up to 1W, but still a fraction of a microwave oven dissipated in all directions with higher attenuation (due to shorter wavelength).

'Nasty' radiation is ionizing radiation, the radiation that destroys chemical connections and causes cancer. That stuff is at shorter wavelengths than visible light (starting around 124nm wavelength, i.e. >2PHz, so a million times shorter than WiFi), where WiFi/microwave is longer than visible light. A flashlight is closer to ionizing radiation than a WiFi AP is.

Note that radiated energy dissipates with the square of the distance from the radiator, so even a few meters away makes a whole load of distance.

Compared to other techs, if you have any mobile phones, focus on them, not on the AP:
- 2G and 3G radiate similar levels of power to WiFi
- 4G radiates about twice as much as WiFi
- this radiation is at very similar frequencies - the side lobes of the upstream of LTE band 3 partly overlaps with 2.4GHz WiFi channels 12 and 13.
- phones tend to be kept in pockets, frequently in close proximity to the family jewels.

If there is any health impact from this sort of power levels at this sort of frequency (which I strongly doubt, as microwaves have been used - and studied - for decades since their first large-scale use in early radar systems in the first half of the 20th Century), they will be seen from devices held next to the skin for prolonged periods of time.

The only studies to show any form of health impact outside of an oven (cooked dogs...) show transient symptoms - but only when exposed to high-power radars, in the range of 300W to 500kW, so vastly more than any indoor wireless communication device.

Oh, and if you're still worried, the *worst* thing you can do is to move the AP out of your room. Once again, power levels decrease with the square of distance. So it's your client devices, your phones and laptops you are actually using you should be worried about rather than an AP on the other side of the room. Once again, WiFi is packet-based, so devices only transmit when they have something to send - but how long that takes depends on the link rate, which depends on the signal quality. If you decrease the signal quality by moving the AP out of the room, you increase the time it takes to transmit the same data. So you're actually increasing your exposure to RF from your client devices by doing so. It's also bad for their battery life. Best thing for all concerned is an AP close by with power levels set as low as possible while still allowing maximum link rates.