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W.E.E.P. News
Wireless Electrical and Electromagnetic Pollution News
5 January 2011
EMF News from Finland
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State Rep. Andrea Boland introduced the Children's Wireless Protection Act last winter, which would have placed warning labels on cell phones. Experts from around the world testified in favor of Boland's bill, including Dr. Devra Davis, the author of "Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Has Done To Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family." Scientists, doctors, and nurses were all supporters for the bill.
On June 15, San Francisco passed a right-to-know ordinance, making it the first city in the nation to require cell phone radiation disclosure at the point of sale. On June 30, Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich announced his intent to introduce a bill requiring warning labels on cell phones.
After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, I learned that cell phone manuals come with warnings that are being buried in fine print, which nobody reads. I sure didn't. I was shocked to learn that the manual of the BlackBerry Torch warns "Keep the BlackBerry device at least 0.98 inches from your body, including the abdomen of pregnant women and the lower abdomen of teenagers."
I am happy to announce that Portland's mayor, Nicholas Mavodones Jr., has declared October as Cell Phone Awareness Month. To learn more information about safer cell phone use go to Campaign For Safer Cell Phones on the Web. Please protect the brain of you and your family.
Bumblebees are important pollinators of wild plants and agricultural crops around the world. Photograph: RSPB/PA
The abundance of four common species of bumblebees in the US has dropped by 96% in just the past few decades, according to the most comprehensive national census of the insects. Scientists said the alarming decline, which could have devastating implications for the pollination of both wild and farmed plants, was likely to be a result of disease and inbreeding.
Bumble bees are important pollinators of wild plants and agricultural crops around the world including tomatoes and berries thanks to their large body size, long tongues, and high-frequency buzzing, which helps release pollen from flowers.
Bees in general pollinate some 90% of the world's commercial plants, including most fruits, vegetables and nuts. Coffee, soya beans and cotton are all dependent on pollination by bees to increase yields. It is the start of a food chain that also sustains wild birds and animals.
But the insects, along with other crucial pollinators such as moths and hoverflies, have been in serious decline around the world since the last few decades of the 20th century. It is unclear why, but scientists think it is from a combination of new diseases, changing habitats around cities, and increasing use of pesticides.
Sydney Cameron, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, led a team on a three-year study of the changing distribution, genetic diversity and pathogens in eight species of bumblebees in the US.
By comparing his results with those in museum records of bee populations, he showed that the relative abundance of four of the sampled species (Bombus occidentalis, B pensylvanicus, B affinis and B terricola) had declined by up to 96% and that their geographic ranges had contracted by 23% to 87%, some within just the past two decades.
Cameron's findings reflect similar studies across the world. According to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, three of the 25 British species of bumblebees are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70%, since around the 1970s. Last year, scientists inaugurated a £10m programme, called the Insect Pollinators Initiative, to look at the reasons behind the devastation in the insect population.
Cameron's team also showed that declining species of bees had higher infection levels of a pathogen called Nosema bombi and lower genetic diversity compared with the four species of bees that were not in decline – B bifarius, B vosnesenskii, B impatiens and B bimaculatus.
The N bombi pathogen is commonly found in bumblebees throughout Europe but until now has been largely unstudied in north America. The infection reduces the lifespans of individual bees and also results in smaller colony sizes.
The reduction in genetic diversity seen in the declining bees means that they are less able to fight off any new pathogens or resist pollution or predators. "Higher pathogen prevalence and reduced genetic diversity are, thus, realistic predictors of these alarming patterns of decline in north America, although cause and effect remain uncertain," Cameron wrote today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Insects such as bees, moths and hoverflies pollinate around a third of the agricultural crops grown worldwide. If all of the UK's insect pollinators were wiped out, the drop in crop production would cost the UK economy up to £440m a year, equivalent to around 13% of the UK's income from farming.
The collapse in the global bee population is a major threat to crops.
It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon pollination by bees, which means they contribute some £26bn to the global economy. Other identified causes of bee decline include parasites such as the bloodsucking varroa mite and viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods.
"Pollinator decline has become a worldwide issue, raising increasing concerns over impacts on global food production, stability of pollination services, and disruption of plant-pollinator networks," wrote Cameron. "In accordance with the goals of the United Nations convention on biological diversity to reduce the rate of species loss by 2010, such efforts to elucidate the causes and ecological impacts of bumble bee decline, in co-ordination with informed conservation strategies, will go a long way to mitigating further losses."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Head and neck cancers in young women
This story mentions cell death, but maybe it should be mentioning cell-phone? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12098317
At this meeting, concerned parents learned that the claims made for the safety of wireless Internet technology are unproven. We learned that children with electromagnet hypersensitivity are getting sick in WiFi equipped schools, that prolonged radio frequency exposure is potentially injurious to human growth in the early years of development and of a fetus in utero, and we learned that the electromagnet field (EMF) surrounding each student working at banks of wireless computers exceeds what is currently deemed to be safe and poses a serious health risk.
I am certain that the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board wants only the most progressive and safest environment for our students. They would not want to implement any technology that would in any way risk student health. At present there is not conclusive medical proof that putting children in an environment of industrial strength EMFs for six to eight hours a day is harmful. There is no proof that it is not. We won't know this for at least 10 or more years. We do have evidence that it is harmful. Sensitive children, who during the school year develop unexplained headaches, increased heart rate, fatigue, and dizziness suddenly improve when removed from a WiFi school.
There is no doubt the school board is under pressure to adopt wireless technology. The board doesn't want to be left standing at the station as the high tech train streaks by. The high tech lobby is one of the most powerful lobby groups in industry today. Kids are a huge market with the possibility of a laptop in every backpack, an ear-bud in every ear. Why do we have to buy into this powerful marketing scheme? First they will sell us routers (transmitters), then the supporting software and maintenance. We already have high-speed fibre optic cable in our schools. As it is, kids can get on the Internet as much as they want. The World Wide Web is essential for learning and communication; the important point is that schools should be islands of safety from the WiFi electromagnetic radiation that is virtually everywhere
Why is it that Switzerland, France and Germany are advising against WiFi or actively removing wireless technology from their schools? We have to find out why. We need a moratorium on the installation of WiFi until we have all the answers.
If in the next decade, the research shows it is harmful, then KPRDSB's decision to not install WiFi will confirm the strong leadership role our school board has taken in resisting this powerful, persuasive lobby group. We will have protected our young children. Being left standing at the station as the WiFi train streaks by may just be the wisest (and safest) place to be.
Lucille Strath is a high-speed wireless user, a mother, grandmother and former Trent University teacher who is deeply concerned about the health of young children.
