Canadian parents say WiFi made kids sick

COLLINGWOOD, Ontario, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- Some parents in Ontario, Canada, say they suspect WiFi transmitters at their children's school made them ill.

The group of Simcoe County parents have approached school officials about the issue they believe exists at Mountain View Elementary School in Collingwood, the Toronto Sun reported Wednesday.

One parent, Rodney Palmer, said his children, ages 5 and 9, and others started getting sick last year.

"Six months ago, parents started noticing their kids had chronic headaches, dizziness, insomnia, rashes and other neurological and cardiac symptoms, when their kids came home from school," Palmer said. "But that somehow on the weekends, when they were at home, it would disappear."

The parents started to look at electromagnetic fields produced by wireless Internet transmitters in school classrooms as the culprit, the Sun said. Palmer said they found the microwave signal in his daughter's kindergarten class was four times stronger than the signals found at the base of a cellphone tower.

"Parents raised the concerns about possible medical ill-effects, but to date we have not received any documentation from a doctor saying a child is ill as a result of wireless technology," Simcoe County District School Board Superintendent John Dance told the Sun.

He said the county's Internet equipment meets national safety standards.

Susan Clarke, a former research consultant to the Harvard School of Public Health, said WiFi emits microwave radiation at the same frequency as that of a microwave oven, and can cause neurological and cardiac symptoms.

"A child's brain absorbs this radiation maximally," she said. "Children also absorb microwave radiation more readily than adults because they have thinner skulls."

A Toronto school district spokesman said the board is investigating the issue with a report expected out this fall.