Wi-Fi Makes Trees Sick, Study Says
pcworld.com
pcworld.com
A TNO researcher was involved in several discussions during the project but the organisation 'emphatically distances itself from the conclusions about the relationship between wifi and plant growth', the statement said.
There are no details about the research on the Wageningen University website."
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2010/11/mobile_interne...
Sure seems like the evidence is a long ways from being able to make statements like:
Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees and All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected
I'm as tree-hugging as the next bleeding heart liberal, but this article is ridiculous.
Why? Because the assumption that everyone makes here is that the only cause of this damage is from heat/high energy, and that could be wrong. I think the more troubling possible danger (to trees, or humans) is _interference_. Living things are complex systems that use low energy electric signals throughout. If some radiation were able to interfere with one of this processes, even at very low energy level, it could do far more damage than something with higher energy.
I'm not claiming to say any of these threats are real, or the science is good, just that we shouldn't dismiss concerns about X because it's less energy than Y, and Y seems to be safe.
We have to learn more about how the things we're trying to protect work, and particularly what types of radiation we should avoid.
For example, here's a PDF talking about the potential risks of low energy radiation on human cells. http://ec.europa.eu/research/environment/pdf/env_health_proj...
And a longer article about some possible dangers of electromagnetic radiation: http://www2.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/EMF-Hazards.html
I'm also in the military and see plenty of old retirees who were exposed to huge amounts of radio-length radiation compared to the average human (mainly from shipboard radar sidelobes, ELF from living among the power cables, and numerous shipboard radio comms systems). I haven't seen any case that suggested to me that their exposure such non-ionizing radiation has changed their risk of any disease or increased their all-cause mortality.
Here's a nice summary of the evidence:
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/m...
I think particle pollution is a much more plausible answer because the radiated power emitted by WiFi and cell phones is so minuscule.
The study exposed 20 ash trees to various radiation sources for a period of three months. Trees placed closest to the Wi-Fi radio demonstrated a "lead-like shine" on their leaves that was caused by the dying of the upper and lower epidermis of the leaves. This would eventually result in the death of parts of the leaves. The study also found that Wi-Fi radiation could inhibit the growth of corn cobs.
Where can we find this study? Was a peer reviewed study? There isn't a single damn reference in this article other than "according to a recent study in the Netherlands". They only make reference to "the researchers".
Why does science reporting suck so much?
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...
so the researcher would be, Dr. AAM van Lammeren - andre.vanlammeren <at> wur.nl
The second one, at least, refers to a control group. The first suggests contacting the author for further details. I think it is a case where the news value of a piece of research outruns the peer review and publication process. For all we know the author thinks a lot more research is needed before he can publish anything.
Translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...
Very poor on details. Were there any control groups? Why does the observed effects in the test vary from the ones in the trees?
The old saying of "absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence" comes to mind. I would personally not be surprised if these suspicions were found to be true further down the road. The crowd that blatantly laughs and goes "oh boy!" at the claims come out as nothing less than ignorant fools, and the crowd of suspicious paranoiacs comes out as, well, uh, a wee bit paranoid. Both camps would probably benefit by keeping their noise down a bit until we have had enough time to let our studies' output grow, and given our statistics time to mature and settle.
Anyone who took high school physics learned about the photoelectric effect - if a single photon does not contain the ionization energy, no ionization occurs [1]. This is supported by a huge number of experiments and is a generic conclusion of quantum mechanics.
The only effect wifi can have on trees, people, etc, is the generation of a tiny amount of heat. If you can disprove this, you will get a Nobel prize in physics.
I wrote a paper on the topic, see the citations for a lot of background material (my paper is just math, don't bother with it): http://cims.nyu.edu/~stucchio/pubs/dipole_delta.pdf
[1] Not true at high intensity, i.e. in a high powered laser beam or microwave resonating cavity.
This is a very bold claim. People said something just as harmless about x-rays in its heyday, too. Today we know it has absolutely profound effects on living cells even at moderate power, and we know it indeed also has an effect of the negative kind at low power given proper time and exposure. How can you be so sure that the GHz spectrum of EMR happen to be as harmless as you imply?
That's a ridiculous statement. Before understanding QM, no reasonable person would make any such claims.
Anyone who claimed that these "x-rays" (named "x" because we didn't know what they were) had no effect on matter, except to be absorbed by it, was a moron. I don't think any credible scientist made this claim, but feel free to cite one. Once we understood they were EM waves at higher frequency than UV light, it is very simple to deduce they might cause ionization.
Once we developed quantum mechanics and time-dependent perturbation theory, it was just a matter chugging through the calculations. Literally millions of experiments have confirmed that QM works really fucking well. If Ephoton > Ebond, you get O(I) ionization. If Ephoton < Ebond you get O(I^2) ionization, which is really small (unless I is huge).
I stand by my statement: if you disprove this, you will overturn the past 100 years of physics. We will need to throw away every single QM textbook written since the 50's. You will receive the next Nobel prize. Future textbooks will forever refer to "Newton, Einstein, and hackermom."
2.4Ghz is great for heating things at high power (my microwave outputs at 1200 watts), but the most powerful home routers only do about 0.2 watts. Cell phones can do about 1 watt, and you hold those up to your ear. In fact, it's been calculated that a year of wifi exposure is about the same as 20 minutes on a cell phone.[1]
And if non-ionizing radiation is anything to fear, you should be really afraid of the sun, which pumps it out at about 1000W per square meter[2].
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation
[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/featu...