“All deciduous trees in the Western world are affected, according to the study by a group of institutions, including the TU Delft University and Wageningen University,” Schoemaker reports. “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.”
Schoemaker reports, “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.”
Read more in the full article, via Macworld UK, here.
MacDailyNews Take: Uh, great (as we sit here with WiFi streaming all around and, likely, through us – for the last 11+ years, no less).
scary
very scary
This is bad. Really bad.
If its bad for tree, I’m sure it’s bad for animals, including humans.
That’s how nature works and We are all doomed.
Next step: Find the frequency that bad weeds can’t support.
Hmm the tree outside my Airport for the last ten years has gained about 4″ in diameter.
I keep having to prune the damn thing myself so I get some light in my office.
Sure, the radiation might affect tree cells but I trust the Wifi Manufacturers Association’s claims that humans are not affected, and that the recent rise in certain cancers has no relation to the proliferation of wifi. You’d have to be an enviro-wacko to think that.
This is ridiculous. Where is the data to back this up? I’m sure it doesn’t exist. All trees in the western world? Even those hundreds of miles from any wi-fi? I don’t believe it. You shouldn’t either.
Ok, verification study to make sure this is true…
Either way, don’t worry; Kudzu will kill all the trees first.
Gimme a break
Hmmmm…that explains why I have a woodie….
Checking the calendar….nope, not April 1st…. Is this for real? Somebody set a bonsai on their WAP and see if it turns into an Audrey 2. This just sounds too wonky to be real.
And the polar bears are drowning too.
Junk science.
Bullshit. Tree hugging bullshit. Libs as usual.
RTFA for the bad science:
“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.”
Duh? 2.4Ghz is the same frequency your microwave oven uses to boil water. Don’t stare at or leave your naughty bits next to the microwave when cooking.
Seriously, they aren’t saying what the power output was, if this was at 2.4 (wireless b/g/n) or 5Ghz (a/n the really good Highspeed stuff). If this study deserves any credit, it should be listing how the effects varied at different ranges, as well as durations.
All this is telling me is don’t put my airport extreme in my evergreens as a Christmas decoration. That’s some good sciencing right there. (rolls eyes)
Uh oh…it’s “The Happening” coming to life.
Let’s stop using Wifi! Ri g h t no .. w.. . . . . .. .
“Hmm the tree outside my Airport for the last ten years has gained about 4″ in diameter.”
——-
Just because they grow does not mean they are not sick.. Much like human children with an illness do not stop growing.
Message from The Netherlands:
Just chop those sick trees. They block my reception.
Is that a tongue in cheek there, MDN? I hope not, but just in case, the general health in the developed countries has not been all that better than the underdeveloped ones as one might expect. Sure there are many variables. But don’t dismiss this at hand. Waves (EM or otherwise) do physically affect us greatly everyday, case in hand the Sun that ripens your apples.
Ummmm… no. Sorry.
And it also makes people dumber. All the proof you need is on the Internet.
right.
I’d like to know what the control group was – a group of trees in a Faraday cage, shielded from all types of man-made electromagnetic radiation???? – cell phone transmissions, TV & radio broadcasts, terrestrial microwave communications…
“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.”
I guess the headline of the article was too short to include all the other possible causes.
oh, and 100% of people who eat carrots will die, too.
1- by “all trees” they clearly mean all species (when put in range of wifi), not every single tree, since they are clear that non-urban trees are less or unaffected.
2- they admit the cause could also be pollution from cars, and they can’t tell which it is yet.
3- they are clear that more study is needed, and so appropriately do not urge any action that I can see based on this one result.
4- @ H-E-doublehockeysticks, you probably wouldn’t know junk science from good science if the latter fell on you from the Leaning Tower of Pisa or displaced your drowning body mass in bathwater. Stick to the ad hominem attacks on Al Gore and by all means never vote to regulate pollution, because if there’s one thing we can see from this study, it’s that God would NEVER let us hurt ourselves.
@X
And here I thought this was another plot by the far Right to block internet access to more people, making them even less informed and educated. Check out the maps, the more conservative the area, the less educated the population.
Right wing conspiracy to dumb down the population is what I see………….
lol rotf
they said the exact same thing about crts and it ended up not being true!
lololololol
haha
dude were do these people get these ideas!?
haha
even if it were true, apple’s stuff tends to not be powerful enough to send the signal very far outside of a building, so it probably doesn’t hurt your trees much (if at all).
and to add to my last post:
the only time you would see enough traffic to do anything is if you have the newer versions of smb sharing that come with win7/vista that put a huge load on the netowrk