US parents sue over WLAN school fears
Could 'permit toxic proteins to invade the brain'
Posted in Wireless, 8th October 2003 14:42 GMT
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Parents in Oak Park, Illinois, have launched a class action lawsuit against their local school board for allegedly threatening the health of children by installing wireless local area network technology in classrooms.
The lawsuit, reported by Wi-Fi Networking News, alleges that Oak Park Elementary School District 97 has "ignored the substantial body of evidence that high frequency electro-magnetic radiation poses substantial and serious health risks, particularly to growing children".
It accuses school authorities of failing to "adequately examine and assess the potential health risks that wireless LANs pose to humans, particularly children who are still growing".
And there's more. It insists that "there is a substantial and growing body of scientific literature studying and outlining the serious health risks that exposure to low intensity, but high radio frequency (RF) radiation poses to human beings, particularly children...[and that] prolonged exposure to low intensity RF radiation can break down DNA strands, cause chromosome aberrations and break down the blood-brain barrier, thereby permitting toxic proteins to invade the brain."
A spokesman for Chicago-based attorneys, Buehler Reed & Williams, confirmed the class action was active.
No one representing the plaintiffs was available for comment at the time of writing.
Earlier this year Somerset County Council (SCC) advised its employees not to install wireless networks in the county's schools and offices until it had carried out a full investigation into the safety of the technology.
The County Council was looking into the risks of wireless network technology. ®
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