My war on electrosmog: Julia Stephenson sets out to clear the airwaves

OMG.

I wrote to the Independent about this…

Sir

As a science teacher, I was stunned by the pseudo ‘science’ that Julia Stephenson was allowed to promote (My war on electrosmog: Julia Stephenson sets out to clear the airwaves). We do live in an electrosmog. Indeed we have evolved from the primordial soup in an electrosmog and those electromagnetic waves (light, microwaves, radio-waves etc.) continue to inform us about the origins of the Universe. As for an electromagnetic waves making someone ‘radioactive’ I would hope that most of my mixed ability Year 10 students could point out the idiocy of that statement.

A Wi-Fi transmitter operates at less than 1 watt. The Crystal Palace transmitter works at many thousands of watts but I don’t remember South London’s plants wilting when that started transmitting digital TV signals in the mid-nineties.

We keep being told that there is a crisis in science education in this country. Perhaps this sort of staggering scaremongering is evidence of that Either way it has given me a great piece of material to use in class as an example of how scientific ignorance can lead to fear and the purchase of expensive trinkets with no proven effect.