WORCESTER – The family of a
student at the Fay School in Southboro has filed a lawsuit claiming the
school’s strong Wi-Fi signal caused the boy to become ill.
The
unidentified plaintiffs, referred to as “Mother” and “Father” in the
complaint, said their 12-year-old son, “G,” suffers from Electromagnetic
Hypersensitivity Syndrome, a condition that is aggravated by
electromagnetic radiation. The boy was diagnosed after he frequently
experienced headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, and other symptoms while
sitting in class after the school installed a new, more powerful
wireless Internet system in 2013, the suit says.
The
school has said in response that its Wi-Fi signals were found in a
recent investigation to be well below the levels required by federal
safety standards.
The family is asking for an
injunction from U.S. District Court that would require the Fay School to
either switch to Ethernet cable Internet, turn down the Wi-Fi signal in
G’s classroom, or make some other accommodation, which they say the
school has refused to do to date. The suit also seeks $250,000 in
damages, court records show.
G’s family’s
lawyer, John J.E. Markham, II, of Boston law firm Markham & Read, on
Monday said their top priority is to have the boy, a day student at the
school, be able to attend Fay once classes resume Sept. 9. The judge
overseeing the case, District Judge Timothy S. Hillman, last Friday
scheduled a hearing for Sept. 4 in Worcester for their motion for a
preliminary injunction and request for an expedited hearing.
“We’re
trying to work with the school,” said Mr. Markham, who declined to
reveal any personal details about his clients for privacy reasons.
“We’re still hoping to reach a resolution that will allow him to safely
be in those classrooms.”
The family says in the
lawsuit they would have to withdraw G if the school does not provide
their requested accommodations, however – something they don’t want to
do, given that G is in the middle of a nine-year plan at Fay that would
be interrupted as a result.
Mr. Markham said he
wasn't sure if G would suffer long-term damage if he continued to sit in
the school's Wi-Fi-equipped classrooms, but said the effects of his EHS
are already a painful distraction that "has affected his ability to do
well in class."
Along with the complaint, the
plaintiffs submitted to the court several letters from doctors
confirming the adverse health effects the school’s Wi-Fi, which the
family says “emits substantially greater radiofrequency/microwave
emissions than … more low-grade systems used in most homes,” could be
causing illness in a sufferer of EHS.
But
whether EHS is a real condition is debatable in the wider medical
community; the World Health Organization, for instance, acknowledges the
existence of EHS, but clarifies it “is not a medical diagnosis, nor is
it clear that it represents a single medical problem.”
In
a statement released Monday, the Fay School said after hearing the
family’s concerns about its Wi-Fi, it hired a company called Isotrope,
LLC, which specializes in measurement and analysis of radio
communication signals and evaluation of emissions safety compliance, to
perform an analysis in January.
“Isotrope found
that the combined levels of access point emissions, broadcast radio and
television signals, and other RFE emissions on campus ‘were
substantially less than one ten-thousandth (1/10,000th) of the
applicable (FCC) safety limits,’” the statement says.
The
school declined to comment directly on the family’s subsequent lawsuit,
citing its policy “to not offer public comment on pending litigation.”
Dr.
Jeanne Hubbuch, the Watertown physician who diagnosed G with
electromagnetic hypersensitivity, wrote in a letter to the Fay School
last August that there was no other medical explanation for his
symptoms.
“It is know(n) that exposure to WIFI
can have cellular effects. The complete extent of these effects on
people is still unknown,” Dr. Hubbuch wrote. “But it is clear that
children and pregnant women are at the highest risk. This is due to the
brain tissue being more absorbent, their skulls are thinner and their
relative size is small.”
She went on to say that
“due to biochemical individuality some people are more susceptible to
these effects than others,” and advised precautions be taken in the case
of G.
But G’s family says in their complaint
the Fay School and its head of school, Robert Gustavson, refused their
offer to meet and devise a plan to accommodate the boy’s condition. They
also say officials at the school threatened to no longer enroll G, who
has attended Fay since 2009, if his parents talked about the issue to
anyone else at the school.
The family was also
unhappy after officials at Fay asked them to have G see another
physician, who after speaking to G for 10 minutes and not conducting any
tests “pronounced that in his view there was not enough study yet done
to link Wi-Fi emissions to symptoms such as those G is experiencing at
Fay School,” they say in the complaint.
“This doctor stated in essence that he does not believe in EHS,” the lawsuit says. “Yet he made no alternate diagnosis.”
The
family argues the school is in violation of the Americans with
Disabilities Act, as well as its own handbook, which they say promises
reasonable accommodations for students’ disabilities.
The
Fay School is being represented in the case by lawyers Jaimie A. McKean
and Sara G. Schwartz from the law firm of Schwartz Hannum PC in
Andover. The oldest junior boarding school in the country, it enrolls
475 residential and day students at its 48 Main St. campus, according to
the school's website.
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