Week 6 - Do Won Lee

Do Won Lee

Section 2

Week 6

            Brian Spero and Cindy Russell’s article about the mass integration of Wi-Fi discusses how Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) can harm people that happen to be around where it’s being produced. Although there debate whether the presence of EMFs can cause harm to people, the amount of technology and devices that are being implemented into schools should create some concern. Schools everywhere in the United States are becoming more reliant on technology and as a result, students and faculty are exposed to potential harm from EMFs for simply going to school. Spero brings up the fact that Wi-Fi especially is becoming more and more common on school campuses, and they’re becoming stronger as well. On college campuses particularly, they require very strong routers that can deliver Wi-Fi signal across a wide area and through buildings. Russell writes about how studies have been done where EMFs cause disturbances to other organisms, such as migratory animals also plants placed next to routers. Russell also writes about how other countries are acting to combat the potential harm of EMFs on children and students. European countries are limiting the amount of exposure that children in school can take in, as well as limiting the time and distance children can be around electronic devices.

            The United States education system is actively exposing children and adults to EMF without knowing the full potential of harm they can cause onto them. It can seem like the Americanization of harm from EMFs because unlike other countries, the United States doesn’t seem like it’s taking any real active measures to prevent potential harm, unlike other countries like those in Europe. Even Canada is following the United States and not Europe when it comes to concern about EMFs.

            In Spero’s paper, he says that some ways to prevent or decrease exposure to EMFs is by going from wireless back to wired. Replacing wireless peripherals like computer mice and keyboards are ways to decrease EMF exposure. But one that I find interesting is going from using Wi-Fi to once again using ethernet cables. I myself use ethernet cables in my dorm room, simply because it is more efficient compared to Wi-Fi, I didn’t really put much though into EMFs. However, one of my roommates also wants to use an ethernet cable as well, especially when we both play video games, as the Wi-Fi isn’t always as reliable, but after further inquiring with student housing, we learned that each room offers only one ethernet cable port. This limits the ability for more than one person from using ethernet. But that doesn’t seem to matter anyways because simply being the dorm exposes us to EMFs, regardless of whether we use Wi-Fi or not.

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