Cell Phones Are Behind the Bee Decline.
07 August 2010
For years, scientists have been trying to explain why the bee population has been drastically declining. A new study may hold the answer, CNN reports, and it could have an impact on humans, too.
In a study at Panjab University in Chandigarh, northern India,
researchers fitted cell phones to a hive and powered them up for two
fifteen-minute periods each day.
After three months, they
found the bees stopped producing honey, egg production by the queen bee
halved, and the size of the hive dramatically reduced.
Andrew
Goldsworthy, a biologist from Imperial College, London, told CNN that
the reason may have to do with radiation from cell phones and cell
towers disturbing the molecules of the chemical cryptochrome, which bees
and other animals use for navigation. The "other animals" part there is
key: it includes humans.
Cryptochrome apparently also plays a
role in controlling circadian rhythms. If cell phone and tower radiation
disturbs cryptochrome molecules, it could have serious consequences for
our circadian rhythms, Goldsworthy wrote in a briefing for an
independent, British radiation research group last year. Circadian
rhythms follow a roughly 24-hour cycle and play a key role in
physically, mentally and behaviorally regulating our bodies. Mess with
your circadian rhythms and you screw with, among other things, your
ability to be well-rested and the associated health benefits.
Goldsworthy argues that the link between phone radiation and
cryptochrome could then explain the sometimes-found link between cell
phones and cancer:
[A]ny weakening of the amplitude of these
rhythms means that at no time will any process controlled by them ever
function at maximum power. In particular, the immune system may never be
able to summon up the overwhelming power that is sometimes needed to
overcome pathogens or to destroy developing cancer cells before they get
out of control.
Of course, the ostensible link between cell
phones and cancer is itself up for debate, but if the evidence starts
supporting that connection, then cryptochrome might be at the heart of
it all.
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