The town that banned Wi-Fi

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/21/the-town-that-banned-wi-fi

by edward • 11 years ago

117 90 11 years ago

protomyth• 11 years ago

"She felt the hostility was best explained as a kind of conspiracy between the ill-informed and Big Telephony."

or, just maybe, people don't like people who show up and demand everyone change for their sake - see any entertainment venue / farmer that has a new housing development show up in the next property over

anti-shill4• 11 years ago

I wonder whether any of these nonprofit organizations that publicize the problems of ‘Electrosensitive’ people are funded by cable and internet companies.

vidarh• 11 years ago

Probably very few given that pretty much all ISPs these days assume that everyone wants wifi routers.

anti-shill4• 11 years ago

you are not getting me...back when it looked like cities might be using powerlines to build their own internet infrastructure in combination with wireless, there was a sudden burst of concern about wireless causing health problems. Then for some reason the possibility of such networks went away. And at the same time, the complaints about wireless went away. It seemed to me that such networks were a threat to companies such as comcast, time warner.

So, I wondered whether time warner, comcast et al, were funding these complaints via nonprofit foundations.

1ris• 11 years ago

In Germany there is connection between electrosmog advocates and the tobacco industry in the person of Franz Adlkofer, Mersch-Sundermann and others. Here is a german-language text that deals with that connection: https://www.psiram.com/ge/index.php/Elektrosmog

assface• 11 years ago

"People come here because they say they can hear the electrics"

That phrase is straight out of a Deliverance-like horror film.

javajosh2• 11 years ago

I can hear CRTs and some lighting fixtures. It's a super high pitch. Not painful - and is only useful to verify that a CRT is getting power on powerup, before it's display turns on.

I hypothesize that if these people had some unusually high metallic content in the skin/bone in/around their inner ear that moves slightly in response to EMR then that might actually do something to them, like trigger complex migraines. You'd need two highly unlikely (and unlucky) problems for this to be real, but it's not exactly the same as Morgellons[1]. Also, tooth fillings + bone conduction can pick up radio signals, so I'm not sure why these people are being dismissed so quickly as psychiatric cases.

Diane's demanding nature sounds like it caused more problems for her than her condition.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgellons

geon• 11 years ago

I can also hear some CRT TVs. I have never heard any other type of CRT, though.

Are you sure they don't simply emit 20+ kHz sound?

DanBC• 11 years ago

People with Morgellons actually have an itch, we just don't know what the cause is or how to stop it; and they are resistant to any psychological treatment that aims to reduce the itch because they think you're accusing them of making it up. We do know that Morgellons is not any insect or alien creature.

I have more sympathy for people with Morgellons than for the electro-sensitives (apart from the fantastic amounts of stigma about mental illness they generate - both from people looking in but also from themselves.)

dedward• 11 years ago

What you are hearing is plain old sound - higher frequency, in the ranges we tend to lose first with time and age. In both the TV and light fixtures, you are hearing the transformer coils physically shifting.

I hear them too.

Tooth fillings and bone conduction could pick up AM signals, because of the nature of AM.

phonon• 11 years ago

It's the fly-back transformer. For TV CRT's it's around 15kHz, monitor CRT's are higher. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyback_transformer.

ultimape• 11 years ago

Yeah I can hear CRTs anywhere in the house. Drives me crazy how loud they are. CFLS can be pretty bad too.

I go out of my way to find amperage controlled LED fixtures because they seem to be the only light source that doesn't hum.

Worse are those ultrasonic occupancy sensors. In some spots i the room I can hear a really high pitched buzzing noise. I think it has to with beat frequencies and the caps they use to step up the frequency internally.

plorkyeran• 11 years ago

I never thought I could be happy about hearing loss as I got older until I realized that I could no longer hear CRTs. A muted TV in a quiet room was incredibly annoying for me.

espes• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_auditory_effect

cmdrfred• 11 years ago

This should be an easy condition to prove with a trial. Get two shoe boxes and place them on them in two rooms, get two 'electrosentives' and place one in each room. One of the shoeboxes has a WiFi router in it. Do this a bunch of times and see if its any better than random chance.

zalzane• 11 years ago

in the article it says they don't want to submit to testing

None of which gets round the core issue: if EHS is real, I asked Diane, then why has it not shown up in formal experiments? “I encourage scientists to go to where we are and measure the environment,” she replied. “Don’t try to pretend that you’re God and expose us to different frequencies in a lab. That’s like taking someone and breaking their legs and asking how much it hurts.”

emiliobumachar• 11 years ago

Their should be a signal intensity level high enough to be distinguishable from nothing but still low enough to cause slight annoyance rather than traumatic agony over a short period.

superskierpat• 11 years ago

Well breaking someones legs with a tire iron is an efficient way of proving they are vulnerable to them.. nonetheless, I dont see how getting your legs broken is similar to a headache and a few rashes

johnchristopher• 11 years ago

Ah, I remember one documentary/subject in the news on the TV and technicians came to measure things then they found out the cell tower was not connected yet. Not connected as in not even powered on and no electricity running through its systems.

Of course it's just one data point and it doesn't prove people aren't suffering.

jotux• 11 years ago

60 “sensitive” people who reported often getting headache-like symptoms within 20 minutes of using a global system for mobile communication (GSM) mobile phone and 60 “control” participants who did not report any such symptoms.
Participants were exposed to three conditions: a 900 MHz GSM mobile phone signal, a non-pulsing carrier wave signal, and a sham condition with no signal present. Each exposure lasted for 50 minutes.
Headache severity increased during exposure and decreased immediately afterwards. However, no strong evidence was found of any difference between the conditions in terms of symptom severity. Nor did evidence of any differential effect of condition between the two groups exist. The proportion of sensitive participants who believed a signal was present during GSM exposure (60%) was similar to the proportion who believed one was present during sham exposure (63%).

fragsworth• 11 years ago

Of hundreds of millions of people who suffer migraines or other common headaches, some small percentage of them will notice a strong correlation between their headaches and being near electronics. I can see how they can convince themselves that this is the cause.

steckerbrett• 11 years ago

It's easily disproved by the fact that they think they are escaping it by simply moving away from WiFi. The 2.4GHz band is swamped in most consumer settings by remote controls, doorbells, video systems, remote control cars.

Beyond that (imagining you somehow eliminated all of those) the biggest source of radio frequency garbage is going to be from space rather than a consumer grade <1W transmitter, the atmosphere is pretty opaque to 2.4GHz. Somewhat coincidentally the cosmic noise we can hear from earth is mostly in the microwave range.

Maybe if people's skulls started vibrating in time with the woodpecker [0] or something I'd believe it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga-3

hannob• 11 years ago

Such studies have been done numerous times. You need to consider proper blinding to get it right, but it's not too hard.

But if you have people who will claim that every study contradicting their belief is a conspiracy by the phone industry that doesn't help a lot.

It's like homeopathy: You can throw as many studies as you want at the believers. They don't believe in science, therefore it's not working.

beloch2• 11 years ago

Wifi signals actually create fairly complex regions of nodes and nulls in most rooms. There might not be a simple gradient between the two rooms in this setup, so it could be difficult even if people really were "sensitive" to those signals. It would be more reliable to just turn the router on and off and (in a double blind test) ask "sensitives" to tell you if the router is on or off.

That being said, blind-folding a bunch of these people and asking them to simultaneously stumble around and find the router would be pretty hilarious.

tomohawk• 11 years ago

If 'sensitives' are so impacted by this, perhaps they should buy up a bunch of land in a valley in the boonies somewhere and create their own community? Probably get better results than moving into an existing community and trying to coerce people to change their ways.

batou2• 11 years ago

They aren't the most logical bunch.

My father is allergic to poultry apparently yet chows down on hot dogs made mostly from turkey. Same level of batshit.

nitrogen• 11 years ago

There was an episode of some TV show where someone thought they were allergic to poultry but it was actually an allergy to the antibiotics in the poultry. Maybe the parts of turkey or the processing methods used for hot dogs contain less antibiotic residue?

jschwartzi• 11 years ago

I think it's less of an actual medical problem and more of an attention-seeking behavior. If you actually try to propose solutions, there's always a reason why they won't work. If something actually did work, then they would lose all of the attention they get for their "illness."

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

It's silly, but I don't think they're lying for attention, more likely deluded.

pbiggar• 11 years ago

If they decided to do it, is there a (legal) way for Green Bank to prevent electrosensitive people from moving there?

rblatz• 11 years ago

Put up city-wide wifi.

cwyers3• 11 years ago

Well, they can't -- the law requires the town not interfere with the radio telescope there.

mistercow• 11 years ago

He held a meeting with some electrosensitives, and didn’t tell them he had a mobile phone in his pocket. “They noticed at once. After that I was convinced.

Ah the good ol' base rate fallacy.

I can predict with around 90% accuracy whether a given American adult has a cellphone on their person, simply by always answering "yes".

But I doubt you'd be impressed if I pointed at a random stranger and said "That guy has a cell phone".

daemin• 11 years ago

It's also likely that the electrosensitives have had this test run on them so many times by ordinary people where "I'll just hide this radio device here somewhere and see if they pick it up", that they get attuned to finding out the hidden object, rather than actual sensitivity.

It would have been more amusing if he had the phone switched off already or no phone at all and they asked him to switch it off.

cwyers3• 11 years ago

None of which gets round the core issue: if EHS is real, I asked Diane, then why has it not shown up in formal experiments? “I encourage scientists to go to where we are and measure the environment,” she replied. “Don’t try to pretend that you’re God and expose us to different frequencies in a lab. That’s like taking someone and breaking their legs and asking how much it hurts.”

That would in fact let you determine if breaking someone's leg caused them pain, though.

SomeStupidPoint• 11 years ago

Also, we have probably tens of thousands of records of times that we either intentionally or accidentally, but under heavy observation broke someone's leg, and they seem to pretty reliably be disturbed by the incident. (We actually have effectively done controlled experiments on leg breaking during various times we used torture methods to kill people, and as you say, it turns out that it hurt them.)

If the EMF people had a fraction of that evidence, everyone would take them much more seriously.

saalweachter• 11 years ago

We do break people's bones pretty regularly as part of a medical intervention. The simplest case is just resetting a bone that healed crooked, but there are countless other ways, like in open-heart surgery or an orthodontic procedure that involves breaking the upper or lower jaw.

Retra• 11 years ago

Hey, it's more important that they don't suffer at all than it is to actually understand what's going on and help people.

It's like these free energy guys who give the whole thing up after a run in with a black van and some suits in sunglasses: never-mind that it would completely change the world and solve untold problems. There was a black van and vague threats.

beloch2• 11 years ago

"None of which gets round the core issue: if EHS is real, I asked Diane, then why has it not shown up in formal experiments? “I encourage scientists to go to where we are and measure the environment,” she replied. “Don’t try to pretend that you’re God and expose us to different frequencies in a lab. That’s like taking someone and breaking their legs and asking how much it hurts.”"

Right, so we can't actually test your crippling sensitivity to EMF in a lab even though, if it's as bad as you say it is, a double blind test to see if you could reliably tell when a radio in a shoe-box is switched on ought to be good enough.

---

"the lack of proof from major studies is merely evidence of a conspiracy between interested parties. “Conventional government-funded science isn’t a reliable indicator of health defects,” she told me. “There’s a vested interest in keeping the truth out of circulation."

So, beyond the fact that willing test subjects are hard to find, there's a conspiracy to cover up evidence showing people really are "sensitives".

---

"Like Meckna, Dacre felt that there were people claiming to be electrosensitive who were nothing of the sort, who were queering the pitch for the others: “You can tell at once who is just pretending,” she said. "

Even better, the test subjects we can round up are likely fakers!

---

"“See those?” he asked.

“Aeroplane trails?”

“Not contrails – chemtrails,” he said. “The government sprays the air – it gets in the atmosphere.” He paused and looked me in the eye. “The world needs to know what’s happening here.” "

My suspicions about what's really going on here are beginning to coalesce...

scholia2• 11 years ago

Given that hundreds of millions of people live in cities like London, New York, Tokyo etc that are completely covered with thousands of mobile phone towers and thousands more Wi-Fi networks -- not to mention radio controlled cars, baby monitors and all the other things that use the same frequencies as Wi-Fi -- EHS is remarkably rare.

Really, Starbucks baristas should be dropping like flies.

However, the reality is that Wi-Fi sickness or EHS is not caused by Wi-Fi, it is caused by stories about Wi-Fi. It is a Mass psychogenic illness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

It's like a placebo effect, where fake pills can actually cure sick people (if they believe that they will). However, because it's the opposite effect to a placebo, it's called a nocebo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo

People really do get sick, even though there is no biological reason for them to get sick.

Fortunately, most EHS victims just get the symptoms that are common to all mass psychogenic illnesses, regardless of the imagined cause: headaches (67%), dizziness or light-headedness (46%), nausea (41%) and so on. However. some nocebo's can be fatal, eg witch-doctors.

Journalist training should really include information about nocebos because writing or broadcasting about psychogenic illnesses can cause psychogenic illnesses.

As it is, however, almost all today's EHS sickness is most likely caused by the people who are campaigning about EHS.

reagency• 11 years ago

Placebos can only affect psych/neuro (and possibly hormonal) conditions, which is the brain is biologically capable of changing things. Not all illnesses are susceptible to placebo.

reillyse• 11 years ago

From reading the article. Turns out they didn't actually ban wifi. It's just not very prevalent in the town. It's not illegal but the observatory might ask you to stop.

rdc12• 11 years ago

The more intersting part is the cause and effect. A perfectly sane and techincal reason for the restriction of wifi, and the effect being people turning up for that reason.

From the headline I was expecting some woo people, had managed to ban wifi in a town. (reversed cause and effect)

kalleboo• 11 years ago

WiFi iZ banned in the area by law, and the FCC can fine violators, it's just there's nobody nearby with the authority to enforce the ban https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio...

sxcurry• 11 years ago

I live near a town (Ashland OR) full of wingnuts who are worried about EMF, chem trails, and vaccinations. My question: with so many real things to worry about, why focus on false ones?

girvo2• 11 years ago

It helps them feel special, and that they know things that everyone doesn't.

danmaz74• 11 years ago

US Cellular was the brand – I didn’t react to AT&T, Spring or Cellular One towers

...

busterarm• 11 years ago

I thought when NAS came around we were gonna get cool, drug-addict symptoms like the black shakes...but headaches and skin-rashes?

Lame.

bitwize• 11 years ago

Fun fact: Gibson got the idea for NAS from Pana Wave, a Japanese cult whose members believe that ordinary radio waves are harmful and go around in white sheets or something.

morgante• 11 years ago

US Cellular was the brand – I didn’t react to AT&T, Spring or Cellular One towers.

That's where I stopped reading.

Shame on the Guardian for giving these anti-science reactionaries the platform for seeking the attention they so desperately crave.

wiredfool• 11 years ago

It was the underground tower for me.

kw713• 11 years ago

I think the article is pretty good because they didn't filter out any of the silliness on the part of some of these people. It really shines through to us rational types and this piece gave me the biggest laughs I had today.

Also I don't know the details (the year and more details about the location would help) but there is the chance that that one carrier used different frequencies to the others. People, their dental works and medical implants will all resonate at different frequencies. However if it turns out she was reacting to only one carrier's AMPS towers (all US AMPS ran on 806-896 MHz) it's total BS.

jpatokal• 11 years ago

Keep reading. The article doesn't even come close to endorsing the people interviewed, and if you read between the lines it's pretty clear the author thinks they're all nuts.

sean-duffy• 11 years ago

A pretty good treatment of the whole idea of 'EHS' in a fictional context can be seen in the Breaking Bad spin-off Better Caul Saul, where the main character has to care to his brother, who claims to have EHS.

JohnTHaller• 11 years ago

EHS always reminds me of the town in South Africa whose residents swore that a broadband internet tower was causing headaches, skin rashes, tinnitus, and all manner of maladies. They claimed it would take hours after they left the town for their symptoms to subside, sometimes up to a couple days. While they were continuing to complain at a town meeting, they did not know that the tower had already been off weeks ago and yet they continued to complain about it causing EHS symptoms. Even after learning they were wrong, they just kept fighting.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/wireless/11099-massive-revelat...

bane2• 11 years ago

Ignoring the crazy people in the article, I've driven through Greenbank a number of times on the way to-from skiing in the region. There's not much of a town there, it really is out in the middle of nowhere, down in a valley. You'll be driving along not having passed another car in the last hour and suddenly there's a massive massive radio telescope sitting out in the middle of what would probably be a farmer's field.

The town is more like a few houses dotted along a major road and a couple of turn-offs with a few bunched up houses. My wife and I usually comment while driving through something about how it must suck to be an engineer working on the telescope and living there. I always wondered what sort of folks live there and now I know.

This is the area if anybody's interested https://www.google.com/maps/place/Green+Bank+Telescope/@38.4...

You can get tours https://public.nrao.edu/tours/visitgbt

jimminy• 11 years ago

I'm from the area, a little town about 35 miles away, but living in the Bay Area. The article doesn't really tell a good story about the folks living there. Just the ecentric people that have started showing up relatively recently.

Maybe growing up there, but I actually prefer the solitude. The interesting thing about those few small houses is that you end up getting to know the people in your area and around you pretty well. Nearly everyone. So I wouldn't make the assumption that "it must suck".

I could make the same assumption about any over populated area, like the Bay Area, because it's nearly impossible to really know your community and traffic is horrible. Ugh, it must suck to be an engineer working on some startup and living there.

bane2• 11 years ago

Yeah that's true.

I guess I should qualify my comment. I mean "it must suck" being in a technical field, but in a real sense quite cut off from interaction with your peers. It's actually a beautiful area, but I can't help but feel that people could very easily feel out of their milieu there.

unsignedint• 11 years ago

Looks like Google's Street View car ran through this area. I'd wonder what their Wi-fi log looked like around there...

unoti• 11 years ago

I learned a little about Green Bank because it's on the test for the Ham Radio Extra exam:

E1F06 [97.3]

What is the National Radio Quiet Zone?

An area surrounding the National Radio Astronomy Observatory The National Radio Astronomy Observatory sites are located in Green Bank West Virginia, Socorro New Mexico, and Charlottesville NC.

tzs2• 11 years ago

E1F06 [97.3]

Ok, I recognize the E as meaning this is from the Extra class question pool, The 1 as meaning it is from sub element 1 of those questions (Commission's Rules), and F06 meaning it is question 6 in the group F subset of sub element 1 questions.

The [97.3] completely mystifies me. What is it?

There are quite a few hams on HN. Many checked in here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9445123

The town that banned Wi-Fi

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