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November 23, 2010
from
PreventDisease Website
City plants and trees are becoming sick
from wireless radiation from local area networks and mobile phones,
according to a European study.
Radiation from Wi-Fi networks is harmful to trees, causing
significant variations in growth, as well as bleeding and fissures
in the bark, according to a recent study in the Netherlands.
All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to
the study by Wageningen University.
The city of Alphen aan den Rijn ordered the study five years ago
after officials found unexplained abnormalities on trees that
couldn't be ascribed to a virus or bacterial infection.
An early warning radar station was due to be decommissioned at
Skrunda, Latvia after the end of the Cold War. Before it was shut
down, a coordinated effort was made to determine whether the station
had had any environmental effects.
Teams of researchers found such effects
wherever they looked, even at extremely low levels of exposure:
smaller growth rings in trees, premature ageing in pine needles,
chromosome damage in cows, decreased memory, attention, learning,
and pulmonary function in school children, increased white blood
cells in adults, and an altered sex ratio (more girls) in children
born during the years of the radar's operation.
This
experiment with Aspen seedlings in Colorado
pinpoints why the trees in the region have been showing steady death
and decline since 2004.
They put these seedlings inside a Faraday Cage - to shield them from
RF radiation and they looked like healthy, well-formed leaves, with
plenty of leaves per branch.
The seedlings that were not shielded from the radiation were damaged
and stunted.
K. Haggerty stated that,
"Currently a strong human-generated
RF background exists at every point on the earth’s surface,
although radio field strength is relatively greater in the most
populous and urbanized areas.
Globally, the highest field
strengths occur in central Europe, the eastern United States,
and in China (Figure 9).
Forest decline was first recognized
and defined based on observed events in central Europe and the
eastern US, and China, at this time, is experiencing rapid
desertification. [...]
More recently, it has been shown that
mortality rates of all dominant tree species in the western
United States have been doubling every 17-29 years in old growth
forests, and that recruitment of new trees is now occurring at a
lower rate than mortality [35].
Since aspen decline and other tree
decline incidents worldwide have similar symptoms, and since no
definitive explanation has been found for those events, it seems
plausible that their decline may be related to RF exposure.”
Additional testing found the disease to
occur throughout the Western world.
In the Netherlands, about 70
percent of all trees in urban areas show the same symptoms, compared
with only 10 percent five years ago.
Trees in densely forested areas
are hardly affected.
Besides the electromagnetic fields created by mobile-phone networks
and wireless LANs, ultrafine particles emitted by cars and trucks
may also be to blame. These particles are so small they are able to
enter the organisms.
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.
The researchers urged that further studies were needed to confirm
the current results and determine long-term effects of wireless
radiation on trees.
Sources
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