Arthur Firstenberg of Santa Fe, NM says he’s allergic to WiFi. “If I walk into a room of a building that has Wi-Fi, my most immediate sign is that the front of my right thigh goes numb. If I don’t leave, I’ll get short of breath, chest pains and the numbness will spread.” Apparently, he’s not alone in this claim and he and other “wireless sensitives” are banding together to stop Santa Fe from putting WiFi hotspots in public places.

The science behind this phenomenon isn’t really there. There have been countless studies on “cell phone sensitivity” showed no relationship to cell phone use and health problems, in spite of the fact that cell phones are held so close to the head that any radiation would be far more concentrated than from a WiFi hotspot. Also, as Jonathan Gitlin of Ars Technica notes, WiFi devices run at either 2.4 Ghz or 5 Ghz, and the 2.4 Ghz is the same as many cordless phones, and there hasn’t been any report of the WiFi sufferers also being allergic to cordless phones.

Firstenberg is fighting the hotspot proposal by invoking the Americans With Disabilities Act, designed to make discrimination of persons with disability illegal. By this law, according to Firstenberg, wireless sensitives would be prevented from using public buildings, parks, streets, etc. because of the debilitating nature of WiFi.

I think the World Health Organization put it in its most likely context: “There are also some indications that these symptoms may be due to pre-existing psychiatric conditions as well as stress reactions as a result of worrying about EMF health effects, rather than EMF exposure itself.”

Thanks to Jonathan Gitlin at Ars Technica and Andrew Hickey at ChannelWeb.

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