cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/7625705
According to the linked article, 72 studies suggest that wi-fi radiation harms/kills #bees – and by some claims is a threat to their continued existence. I suppose if extinction were really a likely risk there would be widespread outrage and bee conservationists taking actions. It seems there is a lack of chatter about this. This thread also somewhat implies disinterest in even having wi-fi alternatives.
In any case, does anyone think this is a battle worth fighting? Some possible off-the-cuff actions that come to mind:
- ban the sale of wi-fi devices bigger than a phone in Europe¹ if they do not also comply with these conditions:
- include an ethernet port as well. So e.g. macbooks would either have to bring back the ethernet port or nix wi-fi (and obviously Apple wouldn’t nix Wi-Fi).
- have a physical wi-fi toggle switch on the chassis (like Thinkpads have)
- force public libraries with Wi-Fi to give an ethernet port option so library users at least have the option of turning off their own wi-fi emissions.
- ban the sale of Wi-Fi APs that do not have:
- a configurable variable power setting that is easily tunable by the user; maybe even require a knob or slider on the chassis.
- bluetooth that is internet-capable
- force phones that include wi-fi to also include bluetooth as well as the programming to use bluetooth for internet. Bluetooth routers have existed for over a decade but they are quite rare… cannot be found in a common electronics shop.
Regarding bluetooth, it is much slower than wi-fi, lower range, and probably harder to secure. But nonetheless people should have this option for situations where they don’t need wi-fi capability. E.g. when a phone is just sitting idle it could turn off wi-fi and listen over bluetooth for notifications.
I suspect the 1st part of this quote from the article explains the lack of concern:
“The subject is uncomfortable for many of us because it interferes with our daily habits and there are powerful economic interests behind mobile communication technology.”
- I say /Europe/ because it’s perhaps the only place where enough people would be concerned and where you also have the greatest chance of passing pro-humanity legislation (no “Citizens United” that human needs have to compete with).
The document is not about WiFi, but rather about the effect of electromagnetic waves in the Hz - GHz region more generally. Currently the most common WiFi frequency is 2.4 GHz.
Looking at tables 2 - 5 from the original document, the articles that I can see that looked at 2.4 GHz are:
They observe normal development and normal foraging after long exposure to 2.4 GHz
Very low absorption of energy at 2.4 GHz, as the wavelength (12.5 cm) is larger than the insects studied (and bees). Above 6 GHz the absorbance begins to increase as the wavelength becomes closer to an insect’s size.
I am not sure if they used 2.4 GHz as I can’t access this article. From the abstract, I can see that when they place bees inside a Faraday cage for 24 hours with a WiFi router on, their short-term memory and food excitability decreases but their long-term memory increases. I can’t comment much on this as I can’t find an open PDF copy.
In this paper they observe that very low power of 2.4 GHz has a strong effect on the fecundity of flies with absurdly significant values. I think that, if the effect is as strong as they claim, it would be extremely easy to observe and we would have massive amounts of evidence for this. I mean that science-fair level experiments (place a WiFi connected phone next to a container with mashed bananas inocculated with a known amount of fruitflies) would be enough to easily replicate this effect. I am… skeptical.
I think that 2.4 GHz is actually rather harmless because it has a relatively small penetrating power through walls and is unlikely to travel very far, its wavelength is larger than bees, and its period of 416 ps is way too fast to interfere with EM-field perception. I think that much lower frequency fields (Hz - KHz) are more likely to interfere with navigation. Even if the higher GHz frequencies are absorbed more strongly, you still might need to have a significantly strong field before it becomes a problem.
I think you are correct here, Eskov’s monographies often mention response of bees to electromagnetic field; almost all effects fade above 1kHz it seems - below this value lies eigenfrequencies of their body hair that are often electrostatically charged, it was indeed possible to agitate bees with ~500Hz AC field by literally rubbing their bellies remotely.
This charge detection actually plays important role in bees colony, as other bees can sense surveying bee returning from the flight and being more charged after interacting with environment outside of beehive; in fact, they’ve made experiments with charged bee-shaped doll that other bees were responding to, only if it was charged, from quite large distances in the hive.
But at higher frequencies, nothing really interacted with them. I was looking into designing radio probe to talk to them through the wood - doesn’t seem feasible.
(I fail to find the links, as I’ve read this research in original language, and it’s quite old, 70-90s. There were some absolutely mad tests, like placing 500V capacitor at hive entry - bees merely slowed down to charge and discharge and proceeded normally. Of course, there was lots of dissection and electrode sticking too, soviet scientists had little mercy for insects).
But this review seems to be just mixing together irrelevant facts from different research that are not really connected. The claim is hot and clickbait, but evidence is not building the story indeed.
Once I had a (paid) task to look for chemical processes that are proven to be stimulated or retarded by microwaves, but not through simple heating. It was a hard task, due to publications like this one lumping together cause and effect at different wavelengths and different irradiation setups. I found none, and to date I keep coming back to this puzzle and there is still nothing. I do not think there is anything there, we should’ve found it by now. I began to understand just why (anything molecular-size is within near field of MW and any scattering would inevitably be nonlocal on molecular level). There could be structural effects, like resonating on insect’s frame, but, as you mention, bees are too small for WiFi range.
Finally, I must say that I’m building a sensor array in beehives, it’s wireless and uses LoRa, throwing packets from the frames; bees are not impressed at all. In fact, few families made clubs just around the sensors this winter and survived; if they can tolerate the field from within millimeters away from antenna that shoots over few km, they should not care about our feeble wifi.
I think the world’s already fucked to death. We are figuratively in hospice.
People don’t care about anything unless it immediately and directly effects them.
Meant to reply to the main post and not you but I’m too lazy to fix it so I instead spent more time explaining myself.
