Green Party candidate Jill Stein goes on a weird rant about wi-fi in schools

Jill Stein and wi-fi. What could go wrong?

She’s a medical doctor turned activist who is now the presumptive Green Party candidate for president. Stein is seen as the only viable alternative to choosing between casting your vote for Clinton or Trump (despite the abysmal record third party candidates have had in the US).

There were concerns that Stein was an anti-vaxxer when she said people had “real questions” regarding vaccines, but these concerns have subsided (sort of?). The concern that she panders to anti-vaxxers has not, however.

Stein is also anti-science, fear mongering against Monsanto and “Big Pharma.”

A video was recently posted by the YouTube channel “Safe Tech For Schools” featuring Stein discussing things she considers to be health issues.

Pandermonium

In the video, Stein says:

But to be staring at screens… we already know that kids who get put in front of TVs instead of interacting, this is not good in all kinds of ways. And it’s just not good for their cognitive development, it’s not good for their social development, I mean, that is incredible that kids in kindergarten… We should be moving away from screens at all levels of education, not moving into them.

And this is another corporate ruse, you know. This is another gimmick to try to make a buck. To make big bucks in fact. And education, and teachers, and communities suffer. So we need to stand up to that. Thank you.

Of course children shouldn’t just sit in front of a television all day at school. I’m unaware of anyone that is advocating for that or endorses that form of education. But I’m a bit confused where the “corporate ruse” comes into the equation here, and who specifically Stein thinks is making “big bucks” off of this strawman argument. What she’s saying here is that teachers are powerless to stop the children they’re instructing from sitting in front of a TV all day, which just doesn’t make any sense.

Wi-fi

Stein was then asked “what about the wireless?” from someone in the crowd. Her response was… Well, uh, weird.

We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that. And, you know, we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless, maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. And this is like the paradigm for how public health works in this country and it’s outrageous, you know.

Stein then spins this into a rant against the current state of public healthcare, Big Pharma, electronic device manufacturers (???), and speaks against our regulatory agencies (such as the FDA). After all, how can we trust someone who worked for Monsanto for just over a year prior to spending 35 years as a public official and college professor? The fact of the matter is we need people who have field experience making informed regulatory and policy decisions (read: not Donald Trump).

This is consistent with Stein’s pandering to conspiracy theorists, like anti-vaxxers. Stein is demonstrating a basic lack of understanding of ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation.

Radiation

Ionizing radiation consists of everything that carries enough energy to free an electron from an atom, which is more energetic than visible light. This includes x-rays, gamma rays, and some UV light. Non-ionizing radiation does not have enough energy to disturb an electron. It absolutely positively 100% cannot free an electron from an atom, meaning it’s incapable of a chemical change. Wi-fi falls under the category of non-ionizing radiation.

Microwaves are an example of non-ionizing radiation, but they only cause chemical changes by heating things, rather than freeing an electron. This is why your cell phone will not give you brain cancer and your hot pocket will not give you cancer.

This means unless the wi-fi in your home, school, or Starbucks is strong enough to make you sweat, you’ll be just fine. Anyone that says otherwise doesn’t understand radiation and is fear mongering.