Wi-fi has become a way of life — accepted, convenient and fundamental to how we live.

A type of electromagnetic radiation — the same as emitted from mobile phones — wi-fi, shorthand for “wireless fidelity”, is a means for computers, smart phones and other devices to wirelessly connect to the internet or communicate with each other. Data is transferred via radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) instead of through wires. Wi-fi has the same frequency and wavelength as the microwaves used in ovens, but is not contained within a closed unit, routers are usually permanently switched on, and they have a range of 30 metres or more.

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The technology, which took hold in the early 2000s, is now widely seen as integral to education. All Queensland state schools have wi-fi access and there is a widespread rollout across schools of Bring Your Own Device schemes, starting in many primary schools from grade four.

But a growing body of researchers, educators and parents is concerned about the future effects of exposing children to long hours of wi-fi. In 2011, RF-EMF were classified by the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer as a 2B carcinogen, or “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, placing them in the same category as lead and diesel engine exhaust. And the Australian Radiation Protection And Nuclear Safety Agency, the federal government body responsible for setting safe exposure standards, says a lack of research means “it’s impossible to be completely sure there isn’t some risk” — particularly to children.

Professor Ian Lowe, a member of the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council that advises ARPANSA, says current standards do not distinguish between adults and children and are under review. “There’s absolutely no doubt we should have different standards for children than those for adults,” says Lowe, who is also emeritus professor at Griffith University’s School of Natural Sciences. “Children are potentially more sensitive than adults to any form of radiation because their bodies are smaller and their bones are thinner and more plastic.”

American scientist Dr Devra Davis, an outspoken critic of exposing children to wireless radiation, last year co-wrote in the Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure that children are more at risk because “their brain tissues are more absorbent, their skulls are thinner and their relative size is smaller”. “The risk to children and adolescents from exposure to microwave radiating devices is considerable,” Davis’s report warned. “Adults have a smaller but very real risk, as well.”

This year, ARPANSA will review classroom levels of RF-EMF from wi-fi equipment. “We have learnt in other areas of public health that there’s often a long time lag between people being exposed to something that is harmful to their health and the evidence of that becoming apparent. The most obvious example is tobacco,” says Lowe. “The levels of radiation we allow miners (to work in) in uranium mines are much less than what people were exposed to in the 20th century. We allowed solariums until it became apparent that they were causing melanomas. All we can say is that at the moment there is no evidence that (wi-fi) does (harm). Certainly, some people are arguing that if there is even a tiny probability that it might be harmful, then we shouldn’t have wi-fi in schools. You can defend that approach.”

DR MARIE-THERESE GIBSON LOVED HER JOB. For almost two decades she was principal of Tangara School for Girls in Sydney’s northern suburbs and in 2013 won the NSW Parents Council Principal Excellence Award. But Gibson, a life member of the Association of Heads of Independent Girls Schools, gave it all away.

For the past 17 months she has lived in Lismore, in northern NSW, after resigning from her job due to health problems she blames on exposure to wi-fi radiation. “I’d been a very fit person who was full of energy with a lot of drive. In 19 years as principal, I had only ever had six days off sick,” says Gibson, 61, who became ill towards the end of 2011. “I started to get very tired and I just couldn’t get to sleep at night. I got headaches and felt nauseous. I had a pulsing sensation in my neck and my legs were swollen. It got to the point where the fatigue was so bad that I had trouble getting up stairs. I knew something was terribly wrong.”

Gibson says a friend first suggested that wi-fi, which had been installed at Tangara in 2011, might be playing a part. “I hadn’t heard of anyone being sensitive to that before,” she says. “I had a 4G mobile phone when they first came out. I had a small wi-fi router in my home. I had an iPad. I’m not anti-technology. I didn’t know it could be a problem. But I turned the wi-fi router off at home and I started to sleep. Every second Wednesday, at the heads of department meeting at school, I could never work out why I’d get a shocking headache. Then I noticed there was a (wi-fi) router on the wall. The symptoms were physical. I knew I wasn’t going crazy.”

By the beginning of the 2013 school year, with a letter from her doctor supporting her sensitivity to electromagnetic radiation, the wi-fi was shut down in Gibson’s building at Tangara. Visitors were asked to turn off their mobile phones. But, with wi-fi still in parts of the school, Gibson felt it was “untenable” to continue and resigned in July 2013. By then, she says, her condition was so severe she could not tolerate the radiation emitted from phone towers near her home on Sydney’s densely populated North Shore. In September that year, she packed her car and drove 11 hours north to her sister’s home in Lismore, where she has lived since.

Meanwhile in Brisbane, accountant Louise Brosnan claims wi-fi technology left her with debilitating dizziness, vomiting and headaches after wi-fi was installed at her workplace and she began working closely with website developers on iPads. She also had wi-fi installed in her home and her children had iPads. “I got sicker and sicker and then my GP suggested I look at the level of radiation in my home,” Brosnan says. “I got rid of all the wireless devices — the wi-fi, the cordless phone, the kids’ iPads.”

The 50-year-old finance and strategy director for Brosnan Golf, which owns 21 Golf World retail stores nationally, moved her sons out of a fully wi-fi-enabled school after her own experience. Sons John, 12, and Peter, 10 now attend an independent Catholic school at Logan, south of Brisbane. “Their former school just installed wi-fi,” Brosnan says. “My husband and I were asked in writing to consent to our kids being in the wi-fi (environment). Given my experience with it, we couldn’t, in good conscience, do that.”

Brosnan, of New Farm in Brisbane’s inner north, says her children’s present school, which her daughter, Zara, 6, also now attends, has wi-fi access but it’s for teacher use, and it does not have routers in every classroom. Brosnan’s workplace, the company’s head office in the northern suburb of Banyo, has had its wi-fi disabled, with computers and landlines hardwired instead. About 50 employees turn off their mobiles and other devices when they arrive at work. “There’s no wi-fi at work but there’s no loss of capacity,” Brosnan says. “Now, I’m immensely better but I’m very careful about the environment I put myself in.”

Taking on board concerns of parents, Ananda Marga River School at Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, only turns its routers on when wi-fi is required. Principal Jenny Oakley says while the “jury is out” on the potential risks of wireless technology, she is erring on the side of caution. “In 20 years’ time if we find out wi-fi is 100 per cent safe, then that’s great. But if we find it is dangerous, I’ll be glad our school took the measures we did.”

Queensland Teachers Union president Kevin Bates says wi-fi is the cheapest and most efficient way to ensure students have access to the internet. There is no official union stance on the issue, but Bates agrees there is “some concern” about wi-fi exposure. “There is an alternative,” he says, “but it’s an expensive option — which is hardwiring all computers. If children’s safety is at risk, then it’s about governments committing the resources to ensure the appropriate content access can be delivered in an alternate way.”

Cost of hardwiring varies widely depending on buildings and other variables, but Dan Perowne, a director of Gold Coast-based business wi-fi solutions group GOCONET, says that hardwiring would be about three times more expensive than wi-fi.

Lismore Public School has also opted for a play-it-safe approach. Principal Martin Gill says most of his school’s computers are hardwired with portable wi-fi routers used as needed. “Wi-fi is a really useful technology for schools but I am aware of concerns across Australia and the world about the possible effects,” Gill says. “While the science is out, I would be minimising exposure.”

In South Australia, one school has declared itself “wi-fi-free”. At Upper Sturt Primary School in the Adelaide Hills, wired computers, smartboards and telephones are installed. The wi-fi policy states parents are to “limit use of mobile phone and wireless devices on school grounds” and must “turn off mobile phones or switch to aeroplane mode if spending extended time at school near children”.

It is also written into the school policy that any new building that requires internet access must include infrastructure for hardwired computers. “The risks are significant enough for us to have no wi-fi,” says principal Barb Jones, who researched the issue after parents expressed concern. “Most people just go with the flow because it’s all a bit too hard to think about, but it needs to be taken seriously.”

Just last week in France, legislation was passed banning wi-fi in nursery schools, and it must be turned off in elementary schools when not in use. The French National Library and other libraries in Paris have removed wi-fi networks. Schools in Frankfurt, in Germany, and Salzburg, in Austria, are also free of wireless networks.

“WHEN I SEE A CHILD PLAYING WITH AN iPAD or iPhone, I feel like they are smoking a cigarette,” says Australian scientist Dr Priyanka Bandara, a former academic clinical researcher for the University of Sydney’s faculty of medicine. “I feel really sorry for the child and I feel sorry for the parents because they don’t know. People say we’ve used radio waves in TVs and radios for a long time, so it is safe. But your TV or radio is receiving signals, not transmitting them. Humans are made of up of various electrical networks such as the heart and brain, and exposure with this type of radiation can disturb the natural electrical balance in the body.”

Bandara is concerned Australia’s exposure standards are not safe enough. ARPANSA bases its safety standards on the International Commission on Non-Iodising Radiation 1998 exposure guidelines that are also followed by countries such as Britain and New Zealand. These standards have been criticised for being outdated, not distinguishing between adults and children and only taking into account thermal or heating effects of radiation, and not any potential biological effects. “I’m not trying to be an alarmist,” Bandara says, “but I won’t take the chance with my children.”

Australian neurosurgeon Dr Vini Khurana was one of dozens of scientists and medical doctors who supported a precautionary approach to wi-fi in schools in an online Safe Schools 2012 report, authored by British environmental scientist Dr Isaac Jamieson. “There are good grounds for adopting such an approach in children, who may be more susceptible to any adverse health effects owing to their thinner scalp and skull, increased brain water content, lower brain volume and rapidly developing neural connections,” Jamieson wrote.

Other international experts urging caution include American paediatric neurologist Dr Martha Herbert, Canadian scientist Dr Magda Havas and Swedish neuroscientist Professor Olle Johansson. However, Australia’s Professor Rodney Croft has no problem with his children being exposed to RF-EMF emissions “hundreds of times higher than what you would get from wi-fi”. As director of the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research at the University of Wollongong, NSW, Croft insists there is “no evidence of harm” from wi-fi. “We’ve looked over entire lifespans at mostly rats and mice. They live for a few years,” he says. “It’s certainly true we’ll never have one study which is as conclusive as putting a child in a cage for 40 years. From a scientific perspective, there’s really no research showing there’s a problem.”

Croft says people who claim sensitivity to wi-fi and other RF-EMF do have real symptoms, but they are not caused by radiation. Others such as Havas say some people suffer sensitivity to EMF while others do not, in much the same way as only some people are sensitive or allergic to foods.

Croft also sits on the board of ICNIRP and says its standards are under review. “The ICNIRP standards are based on exposure 50 times lower than the lowest level where harm has been found (in laboratory experiments). The people arguing it’s unsafe … I just don’t see a strong argument.”

THESE DAYS, MARIE-THERESE GIBSON SLEEPS under a mosquito-like net made from silver mesh, designed to shield her from radiation at night. In a bid to avoid radiation from wireless devices, she avoids crowds. She shops at off-peak times, attends church alone in a corner of the cathedral, doesn’t catch public transport or go to the movies. “I can never live in a big city again,” Gibson says. “I take a (handheld) meter wherever I go. People have their EpiPen … I have my radiation meter.”

She baulks at the suggestion her symptoms are psychosomatic. “I didn’t read myself into this. I didn’t know anything at all about radiation before I became sick,” she says. “People can believe it or not, but for me, it couldn’t be more obvious. I can’t tell you how much it pains me to see wi-fi in classrooms and kids sitting with iPads on their laps.

“The scary thing is that most people don’t know anything about it.”