http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece  

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? 

Scientists claim  radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious  
'colony 
collapse'  of bees 

By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross 

Published: 15  April 2007 

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror  film. But 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 homeloving 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, like so 
many  
apian Mary  Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die  
singly  far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally 
raid   
the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere  
near 
the abandoned hives.

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."

The implications of the spread  are alarming. Most of the world's crops  
depend on pollination by bees.  Albert Einstein once said that if the bees  
disappeared, "man would  have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening.  Theories involving mites, pesticides,  
global warming and GM crops have  been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown  that bees' behaviour changes near power  
lines.

Now 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."

The case  against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is  increasing. But proof  
is 
still lacking, largely because many of the  biggest perils, such as cancer,  
take decades to show up.

Most  research on cancer 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.  


I received  the above from the UK
 
Walter
Ontario






   

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