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Wi-Fi Plan Opposed By 'Electrically Sensitive'

SANTA FE, NM (AP) - Camp out in a coffee shop or hole up in a hotel, but don’t bother lugging your laptop to the library.

A proposal to put free wireless Internet service in public libraries and a handfull of other buildings in Santa Fe has been delayed by objections from residents who say they are electrically sensitive.

“ These are our last refuges,” complained Arthur Firstenberg, a leading opponent of the Wi-Fi plan.

Firstenberg, who contends Earth is being engulfed in electromagnetic pollution - “electrosmog” - says he suffers headaches, nausea, discomfort in his chest and difficulty breathing when he encounters cell phones and other wireless technology.

Putting wireless in city buildings - only one area of City Hall has it now - amounts to installing barriers for him and others who are electrically sensitive, he argues.

The City Council asked the city attorney to research whether the opponents are covered by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. He concluded no: There’s no legal case in which electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, has been found to be a disability, and no case in which WiFi has been identified as the cause of EHS.

The council is expected to consider that report, and Councilor Ronald Trujillo hopes it will put an end to the debate that has been lingering for a couple of years.

Trujillo, a co-sponsor of the Wi-Fi plan, says he sometimes feels the nearly 400-year-old city “is a little behind the times.”

“ It’s not 1692. It’s 2008,” he said. “Santa Fe needs to embrace this technology. It’s here, and it’s not going away.”

Santa Fe’s public libraries log more than 870,000 visits a year in a city of about 60,000. The 15 or so hard-wired computers at each location are in use “every minute we are open” and patrons seeking computer time must be turned away, said Pat Hodapp, the city’s director of libraries.

Hodapp said an informal survey shows that since January, about 150 patrons a month have inquired about wireless.

“ We have to inform them we don’t have that available. They’re astonished,” added Hodapp, who first proposed the wireless plan to the city after a benefactor gave the library about $20,000 - which remains unspent - to buy laptops.

Public libraries are the number one point of online access for people who don’t have the Internet at home, work, or school, according to the American Library Association. Nearly two-thirds of public libraries in the U.S. now offer free wireless access, the ALA says.

In Santa Fe, a town heavily dependent on tourism, library patrons also include many out-of-towners who want to check e-mail, secure boarding passes, and get tips on what to see while they’re here, Hodapp said.

A new downtown convention center will open this fall and convention-goers will expect Wi-Fi in the building, said Simon Brackley, president of the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce, which has lobbied for the proposal.

“ We would be irrationally unique not to have it available,” Brackley said.

Actually, Santa Fe would be following the lead of the small northern California community of Sebastopol, where the city council voted to rescind an agreement made last year to allow a Santa Rosa-based company to provide free WiFi throughout the town.

The Sebastopol mayor cited concerns from citizens about possible health hazards.

Not all libraries in Santa Fe are on board with the proposal: In a letter to a local newspaper, six of them suggested Wi-Fi would preclude access for library users - including epileptics - who are adversely affected by electromagnetic fields. And they said it would be a boon only to those who can afford to buy laptops.

Proponents of Wi-Fi say there is no credible, verified link between the medical complaints and wireless technology. They point to a 2005 World Health Organization fact sheet on electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, that says while the symptoms of EHS “are certainly real” and can be disabling for those affected, “there is no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF (electromagnetic field) exposure.”

Firstenberg, who says his medical career was derailed 26 years ago by his electrical sensitivity and who now lives on Social Security disability payments, founded the Cellular Phone Task Force in 1996 to fight the proliferation of cell phone technology. He left his home in Mendocino, CA, in 2004 to try to escape the bombardment of wireless.

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