In response to the recent panic about Wi-Fi in schools, the UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA) last Friday announced plans to "carry out a systematic programme of research into wireless local area networks (WLANs) and their use."

And their attitude toward the planned study seems pretty rational. "There is no scientific evidence to date that Wi-Fi and WLANs adversely affect the health of the general population," says HPA chief executive Pat Troop. "The signals are very low power, typically 0.1 watt (100 milliwatts) in both the computer and the router (access point) and the results so far show exposures are well within ICNIRP guidelines. Given this, there is no particular reason why schools and others should not continue to use Wi-Fi or other wireless networks. However, there has not been extensive research into what people's exposures actually are to this new technology, and that is why we are initiating this new programme of research and analyses. We have good scientific reasons to expect the results to be re-assuring and we will publish our findings."

More here from VNUnet ... more here from ZDNet UK ... more here from ITPro ... more here from the Independent ... and the press release is here.