[Another organic question here.]
Wow. This sucks:
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world’s harvests fail.They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees’ navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive’s inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London’s biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: “There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK.”
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: “I am convinced the possibility is real.”
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today’s teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of “text thumb”, a form of RSI from constant texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.
I never keep my cell on my person; I try to keep it in a bag and some distance away from me because I’ve read other reports (quickly buried and forgotten) that they aren’t really so safe. Anyone looked at brain and head cancer rates for cell users?
The death of the bee population is a Very Bad Thing.
Front page
Harmonic Planet
This is a great information.You can get more interesting info that medical physicians around the world are saying about the effects of cell phones and electromagnetic frequencies.For more information
http://www.harmonicplanet.com
Moron Americans Love their Cellphones
I curse the day cellphones became so cheap everybody could have one. You’ve got untold #’s of auto accidents because idiots just can’t stay off the friggin’ phone. You walk around supermarkets and see all these zombies wandering around, blue tooth headset sticking out their ears, jabbering away about what to buy (Jesus Christ! How about just making a LIST before going to the store!!). And I don’t give a shit what parents say, kids do not need cellphones, period. It doesn’t surprise me that this would cause environmental damage. Everything humans (and Americans, with their hyperconsumerist culture) do destroys some part of the environment. But good luck sounding the alarm. Hell, scientists can’t even get people to believe that global warming is real.
Fuzzy Thinking Disorder
Dear Lady;
I enjoy your writing, appreciate your intellect, am in awe of your talent and prodigious output, and almost always find myself in general agreement with what you have to say. This is not one of those times.
Sad to see the speed with which this particular falsehood has spread around the intertubes. The whole cell phone - dead bees - brain cancer thing is utter nonsense; there is no connection. None of the “studies” cited in this article are scientifically sound. As a means of understanding what is happening with honeybees, they are worse than useless. The cell phone “connection” is the most specious.
We humans, along with every other living thing on the planet, have evolved (been created, whatever) within the electromagnetic field of a giant dynamo, Terra herself, and under the constant bombardment of radio waves from our Sun. We are biologically adapted not just to resist any such effects but to ignore them. They pass through our bodies with no ill effect whatsoever. Only under hugely artificial circumstances, such as within a microwave oven, can an untoward effect be achieved. Lesson here? Don’t put Fluffy in the microwave.
Are there studies on brain cancer and cell phones? Yes, there are. A 2004 Swedish study suggested a connection between cell phone use and acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor of the auditory nerve. However, a large number of other studies have not shown any connection, and current consensus is that none exists. We saw the same sort of false association made a few years ago with electromagnetic radiation from electric power transmission cables, where ONE study claiming a connection with childhood cancer led to a European panic and implementation of strict and expensive electromagnetic emissions standards that are still in place despite the dozens of follow up studies which showed that in fact there is no such effect.
Why do we fall for these kinds of rumors? Perhaps because electromagnetic waves are invisible, and so at some unconscious level we associate them with magic, with the same sort of inexplicability that leads to belief in witchcraft, voodoo, talismans and religion, the very human need to find order and causation in an apparently random universe. If it makes you feel better to carry your cell phone in a bag, or put a lucky penny in your shoe, or step over sidewalk cracks, or mount a plastic Jesus on your dashboard, by all means feel free, no harm done. But assigning the blame for every ill that befalls us on some “modern” technological effect is the same sort of ignorance-based thinking that led to book burning and witchcraft trials, and is unworthy of an entightened intellect.
Colony Collapse Disorder is a great worry. No one has any idea whatsoever about the cause. A similar event occurred in the 60’s and righted itself without any cause being identified. Commercial honeybees are a borderline genetic monoculture, so any damaging effect tends to be widespread until the genetic weakness gets burned out of the species. Hopefully a cause will be identified soon. When it is, it will not be cell phones or genetically modified crops or Karl Rove or any of the usual suspects. A whole lot of really smart people are on it, and until they get things sorted out it behooves the rest of us to avoid hysteria, pay no attention to woo-woo pseudoscience claims and refrain from the spreading of baseless rumors.
With great respect and affection, Dear Ms. ChiDy, reality-based thinking is always the key. Other than their annoyance factor, cell phones are entirely benign.
Further learning opportunities:
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/FAQ/FAQCC…
http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/geolog…
http://www.crystalinks.com/earthsmagneti…
http://www.greenfacts.org/power-lines/l-…
http://www.fda.gov/cellphones/qa.html
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/documents/bu…
http://www.fcc.gov/oet/info/documents/bu…
http://www.who.int/peh-emf/about/WhatisE…
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/facts…
http://space.mit.edu/home/jck/mwa_files/…
bringiton, i still have some measure of respect for the brit
press. so i’m not ashamed to have put this up, even if what you’re saying is true. and i’m not sure it is. forgive me if i have to automatically discount any american gov’t links from the last six years, but i no longer trust my gov’t to tell me what is right and good, when corporate money is at stake.
i have no link for it, but some time ago i read that the chinese, the chinese fucking commies, had higher standards for cell phone shielding than we do and don’t consider what we use safe. this is not a compelling issue for me right now, so i’m not going to research it, but i will say that time will tell who is right and who is not, and in the meantime, i won’t keep my cell phone in my pocket if i don’t have to.
i have a personal medical reason not to trust phones, i can’t discuss it here but let’s just say something happened that shouldn’t have, and hasn’t happened to any other woman of my family, and it happened after a year of wearing my cell phone almost constantly in the same place.
British blog on the subject
bringiton your comment chimes into this post by British blogger, the Yorkshire Ranter - The Rays from Outer Space Strike Canary Wharf :)
Ah Yes, the Ever-Reliable Brit Press,
for whom I wouldn’t give a farthing more than for our own MSM print whores. Journalistic sensationalism knows no political boundaries. Please don’t bring in shame, no place for it in an open and free discussion, modern times, we’re beyond all that, I have none and neither should you.
Some of the info I appended is from more than six years ago, as are data from the long-term exposure studies. I’m not at all in agreement that there is a magical corporate influence cutoff line between Bush/Clinton/Bush. On the other hand, I’m a big fan of and have great trust in FDA, they do a consistently credible job in a difficult situation, as independent as can be expected for humans.
The point really is that changing cell phone position, distance or usage won’t have any health benefit because there never were any negative heath effects to begin with, none whatsoever. I am truly so sorry that you’ve had an untoward event but it wasn’t from your cell phone. Sometimes stuff just happens and we don’t know why. It is this indeterminacy, this mystery, which leads us to grasp for rationale, for causation, for linkage where none exists, for explication of the inexplicable. It’s a normal thing, essentially human; we all do it one way or another.
As for the, ahh, umm, as you so pithily phrased it, Chinese-Fucking-Commies; well, not to be racist or xeno-denigrative or Imus-ish or anything but really, not my current go-to reference point for rational regulatory judgment. Some years back there was this huge kerfuffle over EMF (ElectroMagnetic Frequency) effects because of a “study” purportedly showing that power lines caused childhood cancer. The EU was just coming into power and their bureaucrats seized the moment, wrote lots and lots of regulations and then the Chinese and Russian bureaucrats, not wanting to appear less au currant, jumped on the bandwagon. With BushCo it is always tempting to go with malice and incompetence as the default behavioral options; sometimes other autocrats screw up too. Turns out, as any biologist worth their salt can tell you, there are no power line EMF health effects, none at all. Big flap over nothing. Same with cell phones. No effects on humans and no effects on bees.
My choosing to write was not a personal attack on you, dear heart; you are so clearly a kind, gentle, smart and upright person. It is, for me, a point of some interest, this demonization of modernity. I am bewildered at the apparent cognitive dissonance presenting in sociologically progressive thinkers who simultaneously condemn technological advances so clearly beneficial to the masses. I note other commentaries of yours in this vein. Myself, I am more of an Epicure than an Ascetic. Perhaps, if things go well, we will have an opportunity in the future to revisit this topic for discussion. I do look forward to a mutual enlightenment. Midnight here; I am now a pumpkin.
not trying to be racist, bringiton
but rather sarcastically emphasizing the fact that the “chi-coms” as they are derisively named by wingnuts here, who are also famous for not having environmental or health standards of any significance, picked up on this and rejected our phones. you are telling me that it was more of a political decision than a scientific one, and again, i can only go with personal experience. i am a cynic, and i wear the foil proudly, and above all i know that arrogance is a human failing that has caused much damage in our world. from dodos to the rainforests, from x-rays to estrogen supplements, the conventional wisdom and research have proven to be mutable things over time.
but i’m being silly here most likely, and so i’ll just defer to your superior knowledge, while keeping my phone at a distance. it can’t hurt anything to do so, and it will make me feel better. and i won’t sick my black cat on you the next time you’re standing on a ladder. ;-)
One More Comment ChiDy and We Can Tie a Bow on This
Wasn’t suggesting you were racist, heavens, just trying to ensure I wasn’t seen as one, touchy times these days.
Nothing wrong with healthy cynicism, especially regarding human motivation. Pretty frequently when I’ve decided to be less cynical it turned out later that I should have been more so. Sigh. Still, life without any optimism is just too dark to be worth living.
Science is mutable, a human endeavor so errors abound, but that mutability is its strength and our salvation. Net-net, humanity has benefited from increasing technological sophistication by a factor of, oh I dunno, maybe 10,000 fold over the ill effects. I am not a technojunky but I do love my morning latte and rejoice in the extinction of smallpox in the wild.
You just keep on deferring to my superior knowledge and keep your cat away, we’ll get along fine (wry on wry). Nice talking to you.
i dont get it its
i dont get it its conffusing ???? mmmmmmmm late!!