We last touched on this issue in April, and now it's baaack -- CIO News picks up on a story by Rosie Lombardi that looks at the health effects of Wi-Fi hotzones.

The Toronto Board of Health, Lombardi notes, is conducting a study of the potential health risks posed by Toronto Hydro Telecom's citywide Wi-Fi plans.

Ronald MacFarlane, supervisor of environmental health assessment and policy at Toronto Public Health, says he is reviewing research conducted in Switzerland that seems to offer evidence of a link between RF emissions and sleep disturbances.

"This is something we see quite often in the literature: the RF impact on sleep," MacFarlane says. "The Swiss changed their laws regulating RF emissions based on that study."

Tony Muc, a physicist and professor at the University of Toronto's department of public health sciences, says Wi-Fi is not worth worrying about. "People have exploited radio waves since Marconi's time," he says. "And historically, natural electromagnetic phenomena have occurred as well. Biological entities have been exposed to them forever."

But Dr. Fred Gilbert, president of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where Wi-Fi is banned on campus, insists there is reason to worry. "Some of the evidence provided to me has been shocking from individuals who have electrosensitivity, who've been able to demonstrate their case and who've suffered abuse in trying to indicate to health professionals what they're dealing with is real," he says.