Animals are also affected by exposure to radio frequency radiation near cell phone antennas. Various examples are provided below. Note the levels and distances at which these associations occur in some cases. In many households pets are left at home in the most highly polluted microwave environment and will experience significantly greater exposures than their owners and children. Cancer in pets is becoming significantly more prevalent.
MICE
Six pairs of mice were placed near an antenna park in Greece and 6 pairs were used as unexposed controls. They were mated 5 times. Mice can reproduce every 3 weeks. The exposed mice had progressively fewer newborns per dam and within 5 matings became irreversibly infertile. Exposure to radio frequency radiation at the antenna park was calculated to be between 1.05 to 0.17 microW/cm. Compare this to calculations of 1 microW/cm within 16 feet of a Wi-Fi node or 6 microW/cm near a 20 W node/gateway combination or 1.4 microW/cm for the city employee working at his desk with a wireless router.
COWS
A study funded by the Bavarian State Government in Germany followed reports of adverse health effects in dairy cattle after a Telecoms mast had been erected for TV and cell phone transmission. Scientists documented a significant drop in milk yield and behavioural disorders in some of the cows that related to the microwave transmissions from the mast.
When the cattle were moved to a farm 20 km away, their milk yield and behaviour returned to normal within days. When the cattle were returned to the mast environment their symptoms returned as well. Fodder analysis and the amount of feed could not account for the changes among the cattle. Analysis of aborted foetal material did not find any pathogens causing the abortion based on microscope and cultural examination and on serological tests. Autopsy of dead cows reported acute heart and circulatory collapse with internal bleeding from several organs. Exposure to RFR at the stable entrance was 80microW/cm with the highest reading reported on the farm near the barn being 350microW/cm. These values are much lower than the FCC guideline of 1000 microW/cm.
Wildlife
Recent evidence suggests that wildlife near mobile phone antennas may also be affected by radio frequency radiation. White storks nesting within 200 m of a cell phone antenna were compared to those nesting more than 300 m away. Nesting, breeding, and hatching success were significantly reduced for those birds near the cell phone antenna. The number of young per pair for nests near the antenna was significantly lower than for those farther away (0.86 vs. 1.6, ~50% decrease, P=0.001). Nests with no chicks increased from 3.3% (reference population) to 40% within 200 m of the antennas. Near the antennas, the nesting pairs were more aggressive with each other, were less successful at building nests, and had more chick deaths in the early stages. Level of radio frequency exposure was not provided.
Bees
Non-ionising radio frequencies can affect important pigments; for example, Ritz and co-workers (Nature, Vol. 429, 13th May 2004) showed that they affect the normal functioning of cryptochrome. Birds, bees and other animals use cryptochrome to sense the direction of the earth's magnetic field for navigation, and radio waves can interfere with this. In fact, the cryptochromes are a family of pigments, present in virtually all animal and plant cells, where they also form a vital part of the biological clock that senses time. In animals that use the sun for navigation, an accurate sense of time is important because it enables them to compensate for its changing position throughout the day. In the case of the bees, which can use either magnetic or solar navigation, radio waves from mobile phone masts will leave them with little or no sense of direction. This is probably the main contributory factor to the so-called colony collapse disorder in which foraging bees simply do not return to the hive. The bees clearly do not like this sort of radiation since, if you place a iDECT cordless phone base station (a surrogate mobile phone mast) next to a hive, the bees leave and do not return. These effects now threaten the very survival of the bee population, which in turn threatens us because many of our crops depend on them for pollination.
These studies show that animals and birds, living within 200 m of a cell phone antenna are adversely affected. Note that all three species (mice, cows, birds) had reproductive problems. Radio frequency exposure has also been suggested for the decline of the European House Sparrow.
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