Week 5- Erin Yen

This week’s topic is about “Rethinking the Western Health Services.” After reading the two articles “Is Wi-Fi in Schools Safe?” by Brian Spero and “Wi-Fi in schools” by Cindy Russell I have lots of thoughts about how electro-magnetic field (EMF). Because it has been a big issue whether EMF would harm our bodies as we live with and all have big usage on Wi-Fi in our daily lives.

As I have read some medical articles about EMF, most of the researches performed in advanced countries seem to be unable to prove negative health effect caused by EMF. One of the main reasons of this is that big-scale long-term research of low-magnitude EMF, such as WIFI, under long-term contact is extremely difficult to conduct and extract statistically meaningful result. There are too many factors that play into accounts of people’s daily life. This is also why W.H.O. only listed EMF as possibly carcinogenic to humans.

Technology advances so fast that it is impossible for governments, health institutes, or law makers to follow up or even perform big-scale meaningful assessment of health risk. When a technology is known for a negative effect on health, it was usually already used by billions of people around the globe. This is related to what the class discussed what we should do to change our world.

Question: Is it a good thing that we live in an era of extremely fast-evolving world while living under uncertainty?