Having watched the Paranoia ..oops Panorama show I think it just sank to a new low.
Maybe they have never heard of the Inverse Square Law...Put simply, it states that the energy twice as far from the source ( in this case the mobile phone mast ),is spread over four times the area, therefore it is only one fourth the intensity. ..and so we go on,always obeying the laws of physics.....If we now take the hypothetical Mr X holding his mobile phone up to his ear, we have just proven, beyond question, that the unwitting chap is getting far more "energy" from his phone than he ever will in a month of Sundays from the poor old phone mast aerials.From this we can conclude that if a mast is a danger, then that little phone we all love to walk around with, is a veritable threat to mankind.
So much for sensationalism on TV....in my opinion it`s utter tripe.

C Cunnington, Skegness, ENGLAND.

Forgive for being ignorant but does not EMF affect everything that is electrical. If so I find it incredible that people do not realise that the central nervous system is, although not made of metal, the bodies natural electric sensor and motor function control system which work on ~70mV threshold level for a signal to be useful. Thus of course it will be affected by background electromagnetic radiation. The moon causes 75% of earth’s surface to move, tidal motions of water. this is achieved through gravity and any exsisting body with gravity will have an EMF. It has I think be proven that people, some more than others are effected by mood swings during the lunar cycle as well. So is it not just a little bit F***ing Obvious that man made electrical systems on the planet's actual surface will have some effect on their physical and mental state. Why trust people who are paid by industry?

I currently am studying medical engineering in Leeds, thus not entirely without intelligence.

E. Rogerson, Leeds, Britain

Is Wi-Fi safe because its emissions are 600 times lower than the official guidelines? The guidelines are based on the recommendations of ICNIRP, a club of 14 industry friendly scientists who still deny the existence of any non-thermal biological effects of non-ionising radiation despite the existence of a body of at least 3000 studies demonstrating the contrary. A quote from the ICNIRP guidelines says it all: ’these guidelines are based on short-term immediate health effects such as stimulation of peripheral nerves and muscles, shocks and burns caused by touching conducting objects and elevated tissue temperatures resulting from absorption of energy during exposure to EMF’. I believe they prevent “frying our brains” in the short term. Yet, I don’t believe they are protecting us from non-thermal effects, like DNA breaks, disrupted cell communication and the opening of the blood brain barrier, which occur at levels as low or lower than those commonly found in a Wi-Fi equipped classroom!

Andrea Klein, London,

Microwave transmitters are being used on the streets of Baghdad
to disorientate and disperse crowds - this is known as the Active
Denial System.
Similar tactics are also in operation in Brighton, England, to break
up groups of vagrants on the streets. What other evidence do we
require that microwave radiation is harmful? It is already being
used as a weapon!

Frankie Fox, Neston, UK

The Health Protection Agency's Guidelines are flawed. They measure heating effects from the transceivers when the problem lies not with the emissions heating the body but interfering with its bio chemistry, reducing melatonin and seratonin levels which leads to the serious illnesses that are now being reported all over the country where people live around masts.
Time to stop hiding behind the current statistics and take notice of independent scientists all over the world who say this technology is harmful.

Catherine Botting, York, UK

Even if scientists do manage to prove, without a doubt, that wi-fi and cell phones are harmful to our health, people will continue to be dismissive and will continue to use them. It was in 1946 when scientists agreed tobacco was bad for you. But people still smoke, people still drink and drive. People still throw batteries in the garbage, even though they know it's a bad idea. Even though millions have been spent studying the issue, it won't matter what science produces. Wi-fi has provided too much of a convinience for people to give up that easily.

Sam Blue, Saint John, NB

Does this mean that by using an FM broadcast unit for my ipod and having the kids in the back using their WiFi connections whilst driving past a phone mast under a power line I could end up as ignorant as a chairman?

We could always force everyone to forget the wheel.

Bill, Kuwait, Kuwait

Signal strength from a radio transmitter falls dramatically with distance. The only question mark over mobile phones was whether having a handset within a cm of one's brain was totally safe. Most scientists now believe that it is.

The signal strength from a base station at a distance of around 100m will be tiny. Signal strength from a WiFi terminal is also tiny. So what does it matter if they are about equivalent in the classroom?

If people are to worry about radiation, try looking at the analogue TV masts - they emit massively more power than either WiFi terminals or mobile phone base stations.

Sandy, Bristol,

Does this mean that by using an FM broadcast unit for my ipod and having the kids in the back using their WiFi connections whilst driving past a phone mast under a power line I could end up as ignorant as a chairman?

We could always force everyone to forget the wheel.

Bill, Kuwait, Kuwait

The only health issue which concerns "them" is the one of the industry. From mad-cow-desease to weapons-of-mass-destruction "we" have lost confidence in "their" expertise.

So if "they" have to value the health of some children against a healthy industry, who would win? Could the telecom industry ever be threatend by some similar devices being rated as dangerous? Wouldn't a discussion of lowering thresholds mean that billions could be written of?

Driving or even looking at fast-moving (15mph) trains turned out to be not life threatening. - Maybe our grandchildren will have the same laughter about our concerns of a new technology.

To be sure, the industry should to be forced by law to provide a very small part of their turnover / investment to critical groups to investigate and research if the provided technology is unsafe / environmental unfriendly or to clear their doubts. - Otherwise we will always read studies like: "Smoking is healthy. (Dr. Malborough)"

Andreas Loibl, Vienna, Austria

Does this mean that by using an FM broadcast unit for my ipod and having the kids in the back using their WiFi connections whilst driving past a phone mast under a power line I could end up as ignorant as a chairman?
We could always force everyone to forget the wheel.

Bill, Kuwait, Kuwait

WiFi is very similar in most ways to Mobile Phone Masts. They have very similar carrier frequencies and pulsed digital amplitude modulation. The signal strength in a classroom with 15 WiFi enabled laptops will be very similar to the signal strength you would receive from a mobile phone mast 80 to 150 metres away.
There is now considerable research associating serious health effects with living near a phone mast. Indeed the ill health and cancer clusters in the vicinity of phone masts is increasing at an ever alarming rate. If living near to mobile phone masts poses a health risk, then why are we actively putting wireless devices in schools that fill the classrooms with similar levels of pulsing microwave radiation.
But surely such devices are well with in international guidelines so why worry? Well lets examine how these international (ICNIRP) guidelines, which tragically purport to protect the general public, were introduced.

The ICNIRP international guidelines, trumpeted by government and phone operators as providing protection to the general public from microwave radiation emissions, were introduced in 1992 in the technology's infancy. They were introduced not by scientists, but by technicians. They completely ignored researching the most damaging effects to the human body of these radiation emissions, ie measuring the biological, vibrational effects on human DNA and damage to cells. They only researched the thermal (heating) effects. This absurdity is all that stands between us and the risk of life threatening or chronic disease. These (ICNIRP) guidelines as 'protection' are equivalent to a fireguard in front of a defective gas fire that is emitting carbon monoxide - it might stop you getting burned but you might not be alive to care!

J Elliott, Bristol, UK

WiFi is very similar in most ways to Mobile Phone Masts. They have very similar carrier frequencies and pulsed digital amplitude modulation. The signal strength in a classroom with 15 WiFi enabled laptops will be very similar to the signal strength you would receive from a mobile phone mast 80 to 150 metres away.
There is now considerable research associating serious health effects with living near a phone mast. Indeed the ill health and cancer clusters in the vicinity of phone masts is increasing at an ever alarming rate. If living near to mobile phone masts poses a health risk, then why are we actively putting wireless devices in schools that fill the classrooms with similar levels of pulsing microwave radiation?

J Elliott, Bristol, UK

Whilst a great headline, it appears that the BBC programme makers measurement technique used in the making of this documentary were flawed.

Measurements were not made at equal distances from a telephone mast and the Wi-Fi laptop as reported. The comparison was actually based on 1 metre for the laptop against 100 for the mast.

The levels measured by Panorama's team were in fact 600 times lower than that which is recommended by the government whose own Health Protection Agency states that a year spent within the range of a Wi-Fi hotspot is the equivalent of 20 minutes on a mobile phone.

Graham Brown-Martin, London, UK