Hippies revolt over Wi-Fi network
Published 15 January, 2009, 13:52
Residents of the UK town of Glastonbury are claiming that a Wi-Fi network is responsible for a spate of health problems they are suffering from.
The town, which hosts the eponymous world famous music festival, is a Mecca for hippies and new-age travellers who believe it is a place of great healing and spiritual energies. Those energies may now have been tampered with – claim the locals.
Peaceful karma and calm chakras have been replaced by “headaches, dizziness, nausea, severe tiredness, brain fog, disorientation and loss of appetite, loss of balance, inability to concentrate and… loss of creativity”. The town, home to around 9,000 inhabitants, is long thought to be the burial place of the mythical King Arthur, and attracts new-age type travellers and others who prefer a more sedate way of life.
One such person is Natalie Fee, a 30-year-old writer and mother of one, who moved to Glastonbury two years ago because of its spiritual and alternative nature. However, the results of the move are no laughing matter: “About 6 months after I moved in, I started experiencing a contraction in my solar-plexus area, like a nervous feeling in my stomach. I lost my appetite, and I starting experiencing writers block – which has never happened before – the people living opposite me have also started experiencing similar things.”
That neighbour, Stephen Kane, reveals his symptoms too: “I had splitting headaches, nausea, insomnia, dripping sweats, a sense of needles in my eyes and my wife was similar – she thought her menopause was coming back.”
Natalie was determined to get to the source of her ailments and that’s when she discovered a new Wi-Fi mesh had been built around the town: “The mast was 30 feet from our house, I could see it from my son’s bedroom, I had an independent inspector over to measure the EMF (electro magnetic field) in the house and then I started researching the safety issues behind Wi-Fi. The more I found out the more it worried me.”
Natalie had been using Wi-Fi herself in the house but upon reading the concerns about Wi-Fi and that research in Sweden had stated up to ten percent of the population could be described as ‘electro-sensitive’ she switched it off immediately: “My concern was really when I discovered that children absorbed three times as much radiation as adults due to the thinness of their skulls.” This was enough for Natalie and, although she liked her new home, she has moved out of the Wi-Fi zone.
Natalie and Stephen were not alone in their distress. As many as 400 other Glastonbury residents signed a petition to remove the mesh, of those, about 40 claimed to have experienced similar symptoms – brain fog, confusion, loss of concentration and appetite, and palpitations.
The situation became more political and a town meeting was held. Despite the fact that only one of the attendees at the meeting was in favour of Wi-Fi the group met resistance from the town council. According to the group, the County Councils' own user figures back up the fact that the service is not needed. Only 107 people paid for the service in the first 5 months and of that 61 only paid for an hour. Yet despite this their local county councillor paid for three years of the service upfront. As Stephen explains, there doesn’t seem to be the will to listen to their concerns at all: “Even the request to turn it off at night to allow people undisturbed sleep – and when the human brain is most vulnerable to damage from pulsed microwave radiation – has been met with silence or mockery,” he lamented.
It’s an attitude that has affected their campaign – the inability of some to take the matter seriously. Another member of the group, Jane Sanders, described some of the negative comments they have received: “It has even been said that we should be grateful to the council for giving us similar affects that one would get from cannabis! Although we have a good sense of humour – enough is enough!”
A decision on the future of the mesh is currently under review but the people of Glastonbury have raised serious concerns over the safety of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). The European Environment Agency recently announced that current Wi-Fi safety limits are several thousand times too high. Belgium, Italy and Austria have already severely limited the maximum allowable limits to Wi-Fi emissions and in Germany the government is advising people to turn back to wired broadband.
The people of Glastonbury may be easy targets for ridicule but their symptoms are serious and their campaign is based on natural fears for the health and welfare of themselves and their families. They have support elsewhere too, the town of Sebastopol in San Francisco and a town in Connecticut – also called Glastonbury, bizarrely – are sharing support and information with Jane, Natalie and Stephen.
Perhaps there is something in the air there, after all.
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