Are cell phones more dangerous than terrorists? Is there a connection between cell phones, bees and global food security? (By Zafar Anjum -17 Mar 2010) The cell phone and bees? What’s the connection, you might ask.
If you already know the connection, you are welcome to waste your time somewhere else.
If you don’t, like I didn’t, then read on. My thanks in advance for reading this piece. And apologies to those who work for mobile phone companies, directly or indirectly. Nothing personal here.
Before we explore the connection, first a little backgrounder.
I discovered the connection between the cell phones and bees while watching a Bollywood film, My Name is Khan (MNIK).
I know that sounds weird but please don’t laugh it off.
MNIK is a remarkable film (albeit with typical Bollywood songs) set in the US, kind of India’s Forrest Gump—only here the main character suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. But like in Forrest Gump, this Karan Johar film focuses on an individual character, Rizwan Khan (played by Bollywood superstar Shahrukh Khan) who happens to be a broadminded Muslim. Rizwan, despite his deficiencies, is affable and is a great mechanic, who finds success and happiness in the land of opportunity, that is the US of A. Then 9/11 happens and his life goes topsy turvy just because he happens to have a Muslim name. The Holy Grail that Khan is after in this movie is a meeting with the US President. He wants to tell the President that though his name is Khan, he is not a terrorist.
That is the plot of the film.
But dude, where is the bee in the movie? Where is the cell phone? Good question.
No, I didn’t lose the plot. Here buzzes in the bee. In one of the scenes of the film, Khan asks another character not to use her cell phone while jogging in a park. Horrified, she asks why. Because the cell phone’s signals (radiation) confuse the bees, they forget their way back to their beehives and they die. Then he says, Albert Einstein once said that if bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left.”
I was stunned to know this. Was Khan joking, trying to impress the girls? Thought that this was a lie, a scriptwriter’s poetic licence.
I came home and googled it. And lo and behold, there it was: “Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?”
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/are-mobile-phones-wiping-out-our-bees-444768.htmlThe story’s standfirst was: Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for the mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees.
I read the report by Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross in The Independent, dated 15 April 2007 (possibly Shibani Bathija, the film’s writer, had read this article too). The facts given in the report startled me. I quote some facts from the report here:
• 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 home-loving 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. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home.
• 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."
• German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.
• 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.”
This was a report published in 2007. If this was true, then in two years, there should be further decline in global honey production. I wanted to find some figures. I found this research paper: “The Global Stock of Domesticated Honey Bees Is Growing Slower Than Agricultural Demand for Pollination.” (
http://www.coloss.org/documents/Aizen-et-al-2009-CurrentBiology.pdf) The language is clever but you can see the implications. There are recent reports that say that disappearance of bees is due to many environmental factors and not just cell phone radiation. Fair enough. All I am asking for is that cell phone companies and government bodies should conduct research into this area as it ties up with our food security.
The health hazards of cell phonesThis brings us to the larger issue of health hazards of cell phones. Now that we have smart phones and we use them for all our telecom needs, we should understand the implications of using them for extended periods of time.
Radiation from cell phones is a known danger, even though governments set the permissible specific radiation levels (SAR) for cell phone manufacturers. According to Tawkon, an Israeli company whose iPhone app to measure radiation level was rejected by Apple (
http://mis-asia.com/news/articles/apple-rejects-iphone-app-that-measures-radiation-levels), a mobile phone emits less radiation when connection quality is good than when it is poor. The proportion of radiation absorbed by the human body when making a call varies according to: The model of mobile phone, conveyed by SAR and the antenna’s proximity from the body.
The Independent report, quoted above, also lists the following hazards for humans:
• Most research on cancer (caused by cell phone radiation) 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.
If you want to read more research on this topic, visit this Bio Electromagnetic Research Initiative (
http://bemri.org/publications/cat_view/2-publications/5-biological-effects-of-non-ionizing-radiation/14-mobile-phones.html). A lot of research can be found there.
The idea of doing this post is not to scare you. I use a cell phone too. The idea is to share a concern that can affect our common future.
Now that you’ve got buzzed about it, do care to pass it on. Or share with me if you know something about this issue.
