so what is the over / under on the chance that in 100 years we look back on the 19-21st century phenomenon of blanketing every centimeter of the planet with anthropomorphic electromagnetic radiation of varying wavelgenths and just assume there are no negative downstream effects the same way we look at Romans drinking from corroded lead pipes
Humans haven't changed too much but societally we now have a much better understanding of systematically understanding new phenomenon. If there was something like Lead Poisoning going around, information spreads so quickly we'd know about it.
That doesn't mean there isn't anything, but there have been people living and working around extremely strong sources of electromagnetic radiation ever since the 1930s and no one has been able to demonstrate risk on any macroscopic scale (There are some papers that do demonstrate a "statistically significant" detectable link between something an EM exposure, but - even when the levels are anywhere near safety limits let alone what is actually outside - these papers can never find any measurable risk to the body). The fact that nothing has been formally observed as of today establishes a fairly firm upper bound on the risk due to electromagnetic radiation.
That upper bound means that if there is any actual risk it is sufficiently subtle as to either be outpaced by the body or other issues (Even if 5G harmed people, based on the mentioned upper bound, it would still be better to telecommute than have cars polluting everywhere)
> If there was something like Lead Poisoning going around, information spreads so quickly we'd know about it.
If said lead poisoning was profitable, then we'd mostly be busy belittling the negative effects for decades, until they couldn't be denied/ignored anymore, at which point most of the damage will already have been done, as it happened with tetraethyllead [0].
Another example would be the massive money in tobacco and how for decades this allowed certain profit-interests to dictate the public-health discourse around smoking it or how oil companies knew about their impact on climate change for decades before it became a widely-recognized problem [1].
There is no telling what other things that we consider "harmless" now will later turn out as having absolutely disastrous effects.
Very similar to how people living in Victorian times filled their homes with all kinds of deadly things because they were considered convenient at the time [2]. With the luxury of hindsight, it's easy for us to go "Wow, people back then were kinda stupid", but I have no doubt that 100-200 years from now people will look at our current ways of living and come to very similar conclusions about us.
To keep this on-topic: Maybe us blasting the environment with EM radiation is also a contributing factor bee colonies collapsing, as it might make it more difficult for bees to find their source of nutrition?
Just to add another example, PFOA / PFAS / GenX, a chemical family used by DuPont to create non-stick surfaces, is an insidious endocrine disrupters at very low levels. And it’s basically everywhere.
> If there was something like Lead Poisoning going around, information spreads so quickly we'd know about it.
The first infection with HIV-1 subgroup M is presumed to have happened in the 1920s yet it took decades until the 1981 Pneumocystis Pneumonia article in MMWR. Only then people really started looking and discovered that the virus had been circulating for decades.
HIV has an extremely long period where it slowly destroys your immune system but you personally feel mostly fine. Only years later you develop AIDS and then die from an opportunistic infection. Diseases with such long incubation periods are extremely hard to identify and it's even harder to identify their cause. We still don't know the cause for Alzheimer's disease for example.
It's entirely possible that some aspects of a technology we use today causes such a disease but we'll only discover it 20 years down the line. Admittedly it's hard to test for such effects.
Frankly, I'm tired of reductionist, rationalist attitudes that all but ignore the vast scope of nonlinear sciences that have emerged over the last 75 years.
It's not much better than climate denial. Just less blatant.
We have the phenomenon that we now have very sensible measurement instruments usable to detect trace amounts of materials, or miniscule changes in metabolisms. This enables much new research, but also leads to essentially irrelevant news like cocaine in tap water everywhere, or results like this one you linked: Of course the insects absorbed the microwave radiation, as almost every living tissue does. The interesting research question, though, is: Does the radiation influence actual behaviour, or do actual illnesses emerge due to exposure?
We also have a lot of this in research about humans. One thing that often pops up here on HN is blue light and sleep: We can reliably show that blue light exposure before sleep affects serotonine levels in humans, but we mostly have a hard time showing effects on actual sleep. (I'm not interested in derailing the thread here, just an example)
"There are some papers that do demonstrate a "statistically significant" detectable link between something an EM exposure, but - even when the levels are anywhere near safety limits let alone what is actually outside - these papers can never find any measurable risk to the body"
I guess I missed my window of opportunity to edit my comment but I picked a poor analogy because I'm far more worried about effects on other organisms than humans (as the article would seem to indicate may be possible).
While I agree that one shouldn't do bad things by doing a lot of things in general and some of them turning out to be bad, I also feel you shouldn't call all things bad just because there is a certain unknown probability thereof.
The answer to me seems to be "go slow and don't break things".
For those that may think otherwise, this is exactly the approach being taken with GMOs. We have the ability to produce maize that will feed a lot of hungry people, but the negatives can be drastic and irreversible. One doesn't need to have a political veil when talking about GMOs. It remains fact that we don't know the limits or the consequences and hence GMOs are (sensibly) mostly restricted to grain crops. Tomatos for example are—in my area of the world—100% non-GMO despite Flavr Savr now being older than 20 years (and having failed as a product). That didn't happen because of intentional trepidation, rather: public response, but the point is that we are trying to be really careful with GMOs since we should be.
We don't know enough about OP's topic scientifically to say that we know that it influences bees in an important way. Even the word "electromagnetic" is loaded, no pun intended, is the same way holism is loaded and a lot of people pay a lot of money for some kind of psuedohealth service around these. If we know that we are influencing bees negatively, not just that bees can observe these fields, then we need to be more careful than we are being now.
On this topic, the only thing further that I will say is that it appears that 5G can influence weather satellites and as someone studying weather patterns, I would say that is something to be careful about.
The experiment necessary would need create a large enough society that adopts a very low EMF exposure lifestyle from pre-birth. There certainly appears to be enough evidence to suggest some people are more sensitive to others to energy, and perhaps that has to do with natural sensitivity levels, either the "fragility" or "strength" of the characteristic's of someone's brain's neural network - more "strength" with redundancy, or more "fragility" with less redundancy, with pros-cons for each.
Extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields. I can’t find what field strength they used from the abstract, and that may not matter much, as radio isn’t extremely low frequency, and newer technology tends to be higher frequency because that increases bandwidth. That article is more about the 50Hz/60Hz of AC electricity than about radio communication waves.
Also, your WHO link says
“A number of studies have been conducted where EHS individuals were exposed to EMF similar to those that they attributed to the cause of their symptoms. The aim was to elicit symptoms under controlled laboratory conditions.
The majority of studies indicate that EHS individuals cannot detect EMF exposure any more accurately than non-EHS individuals. Well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure.
It has been suggested that symptoms experienced by some EHS individuals might arise from environmental factors unrelated to EMF. Examples may include “flicker” from fluorescent lights, glare and other visual problems with VDUs, and poor ergonomic design of computer workstations. Other factors that may play a role include poor indoor air quality or stress in the workplace or living environment.
There are also some indications that these symptoms may be due to pre-existing psychiatric conditions as well as stress reactions as a result of worrying about EMF health effects, rather than the EMF exposure itself”
Sure, you just cherry picked parts to support the opposing side or doubt. Clearly it needs more study and better defined, controlled studies at that.
We know there are animals that are capable of feeling, detecting magnetic fields, including the subtlety of the Earth's magnetic field. That all or some humans may have this capability, and at different sensitivity levels/awareness levels, arguably isn't a farfetched idea.
I urge everyone interested in similar topics (bioelectricity and natural electromagnetic phenomena) to grab a copy of Becker's 'Body Electric', it's a fascinating book.
Thanks for sharing that! This presentation serves as a nice TL;DR of the book. I am curious if there's a palpable bio-inspired computational model based on these discoveries. [1] and [2] in general come to mind.
These links are very interesting, thank you! I haven't heard of the term autonomic computing before. Software systems are so far from achieving properties of life such as homeostasis...
Can't be ruled out, but I would first look at (improper) pesticide use and monoculture. At least this is the general observation in my beekeeping community. We noticed a gradual decline in colonies since the local farmers started growing rapeseed for biodiesel about 7-8 years ago. It has only gotten worse recently. Apart from the intensive use of pesticides, compared to other plants, one other problem that I face with rapeseed, is that the honey crystallizes really fast. If such honey is left in the hive during winter, its a sure recipe for failure. Even in the summer, it creates some irregularities in the food supply (I've seen bees taking it out of the combs after crystallization).
