re: Danger of wifi/router to a baby...

So as everyone has been saying, the science is out.

But the big hangup scientists have about cell phones and kids is that children's skulls are not as thick as adults, so they don't know how bad that is for their brains. More radiation gets through their skulls than do adults. Hence they err on the side of caution and advise keeping kids away from radiation sources.

I would too.

Routers emit RF in the 2.4GHZ, or 5GHZ range, same as current cell phones, while there is currently no study showing a conclusive link between cell phone usage and health issues there is enough correlation that the research is ongoing. Your child will be in the crib for a large part of his day, that is a lot of exposure, why not move the router and not have to worry about it. I am board certified medical physicist, most of my work has involved the interaction of tissue with RF energy.

I would personally never put any devices capable of generating electromagnetic waves near toddlers. The effects of higher frequency EMF on our bodies are not very clearly understood, and some of these effects take a long time to manifest. I do not believe we have done enough longitudinal studies to understand their effects. And no, a 100MHz FM transmitter 10 miles away and a 2.4GHz transmitter 10 ft (even thought transmitting at 1mw) are not the same.

LINK

At our house, the WiFi transmitter is at the highest point in the house, is switched off at night, and the transmit power is set such that we optimally cover the whole house and not more. Similarly we do not place cellphones or cordless phones by the bed (they are away - also helps with the alarms as one has to walk up to switch them off and cannot just snooze), and try to use a Bluetooth headset instead of putting the phone directly on our ears (much much lesser power). If all these precautions are paying off, only time will tell. But I would rather be careful than sorry when I know our knowledge in this area is full of holes and is not well understood.

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it. I am board certified medical physicist, most of my work has involved the interaction of tissue with RF energy.

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You may appreciate this story...I will try to be brief, with detail.


So, I had a structural engineer on a rooftop in NOLA about 10-15 years ago. We were analyzing the roof capacity for expanding equipment for the 3G outlay. It was a "hot roof" so there was plenty of RF, cell and microwave plus whatever you can imagine. I gave him the talk about being quick and notice if his mouth become dry or fillings started to hurt.

Anyway, I turn and takey measurements or look at coed's, whatever I normally frick off and do. I turn around and he is leaned over a microwave antenna (big bass drum looking thing) sketching out notes. I just walked over and asked him if he remembered our conversation and asked if his mouth seemed a little dry. Then had to explain that we don't STAND IN FRONT OF frickING ANTENNAS.

For as smart as he was, he was still an engineer at heart.

Yes

Fwiw, as someone else posted, I only turn on my power strip with all that crap when I actually need it. I've seen the studies you referred to, and I don't know if they are legit or not.

Either way, I'll never understand why people plug that shite in 24/7. We have a need for ours maybe 3hrs a day.

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If it was any one of the ones with a broadcast tower on it, I have been on the same roof. Up to 100 KW power coming off of our antennas. Good times, and the best views in the world.

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I have been on the top of almost every major rooftop downtown. I would imagine a 100kw rooftop would be time limited for exposure.

This particular one was at Tulane, but was beaming directly into downtown.

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So if the only Internet cable hook up is in that room how would I go about adding a new one?

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I would suggest you do this - in the internet hook up that you have in the baby's room - turn off the wiFi feature. You will make it just a wired router. Now you add one of those cheap Wireless routers as an access-point and connect it to the wired router in the baby's room. This connection can either be done using a regular CAT5/6 cable if you can or use a Powerline Ethernet setup. Here are the links of tech that will work for you. I am not sure how big of a house you have and what the layout is, and what kind of basic internet system (the router+modem) you have, so these may have to be refined depending on your system ...

TP-Link:
LINK

Refub Netgeat:
LINK

The above routers are cheap enough to be purchased for acting as just access-points. You can even switch these off at night when no one is using wireless.

If you have a small sized house, even these may work -

LINK

LINK

LINK

LINK

And now to extend the internet connection to the above wireless points you can either run a regular CAT5/6 or use the powerline as a path for CAT5/6 using these -

LINK


So tersely -

1. The Internet endpoint in the baby's room is just a wired router (plus modem). It does not radiate any EM waves. It however does DHCP and assigns addresses to all the devices at home.

2. A CAT5/6 Cable or PLC (power line communication) kit connects a separate AP to the router above.

3. An AP that is strong enough for your house acts as the source for WiFi signal, and is placed centrally in the house, at about 8-10 ft off the ground (ours is on a wooden shelf). This AP acts as a conduit between Wireless clients and the wired-ethernet router. You may choose to switch this off without disturbing any wired clients at any time.

If you need, I would be more than happy to walk you through the setup process to make all of this come together.


(By the way, I am copy-pasting from the tech-board, just in case...)

randy....I dunno.


but I say, let your conscience be your guide.