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Growing Next to Wifi Router

Ethansm said:
That study is painfully flawed.

"Six trays containing the seeds of a garden cress herb were placed in a room without a WiFi router, and six trays were placed in a different room and next to two WiFi routers which, according to the girls' calculations,emitted about the same type of radiation as an ordinary cellphone, reports DR."

Did these rooms have the same sun exposure? Artificial light exposure? Temperature? Were the rooms adjacent? Were the wifi routers transmitting 2.4ghz band? 5ghz band? What's the transmit power set to? Are the electronics in the router properly shielded? Is there RF interference nearby?

If it was 2.4 and the rooms were adjacent they're getting blasted with RF, same with 5 but not as bad.

I especially enjoyed the "emitted about the same type of radiation as an ordinary cellphone". What "type" of radiation? EM, RF, or actual radiation? I'm assuming they mean RF, and if they do then yes same "type" but you've got higher EM coming off that router, and if one piece of electronic isn't shielded properly then it's not functioning properly and even more different.

I welcome further research on this, and maybe there is an effect, but this study is too flawed to draw any conclusions.

Sorry, I'm off my soap box.

Try switching your seedlings to the 5ghz band next time, it's less prone to interference :P
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Ethansm,
 
Unfortunately, the high school experiment was replicated by a lab at Trent University, with even stranger results. Give this one a whirl, I am still quite skeptical, but at least they answer all of your questions.
 
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/ccb/2016/00000010/00000001/art00009#
 
The odd thing is our spider plants on top of our old crt tv grew faster then the ones on the shelf next to it in front of the same huge picture window. It seemed as though they liked the emf, and yes, the plants were all cuttings from the same mother plant.
 
Hafners said:
The odd thing is our spider plants on top of our old crt tv grew faster then the ones on the shelf next to it in front of the same huge picture window. It seemed as though they liked the emf, and yes, the plants were all cuttings from the same mother plant.
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CRTs get pretty warm. Maybe it had a heating mat effect
 
Gorizza said:
 
Ethansm,
 
Unfortunately, the high school experiment was replicated by a lab at Trent University, with even stranger results. Give this one a whirl, I am still quite skeptical, but at least they answer all of your questions.
 
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/ccb/2016/00000010/00000001/art00009#
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Glad to see it's been studied further. I wonder what specifically in the plant is reacting, looks like it effects some plants more than others
 
Ethansm said:
Glad to see it's been studied further. I wonder what specifically in the plant is reacting, looks like it effects some plants more than others
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It is really strange. I'm still ready to say the experiment was flawed, but its difficult to say how without just trying to repeat it myself with temperature and humidity recorders.
 
One interesting thing is that the journal has an impact factor of 0.76, which is about the lowest I have ever seen.
 
Gorizza said:
 
It is really strange. I'm still ready to say the experiment was flawed, but its difficult to say how without just trying to repeat it myself with temperature and humidity recorders.
 
One interesting thing is that the journal has an impact factor of 0.76, which is about the lowest I have ever seen.
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Yes, I thoroughly read the paper and also skimmed some of the cited previous studies. Considering the results are so different depending on plants/experiments, I would also agree that I am skeptical of these results or the conclusions made from them.
 
You make a good point on the impact factor of the journal which (although I hate to say it) often does at least hint at its reputability. You can draw conclusions as you want from this, but after a little digging, I noticed that experiments coming from journals with low impact factors (for example the citation of Phyton - 5 y mean IF of .387) usually conclude/show that radio frequency EMR strongly influences plant development while journals with higher impact factors (Mutation Research - IF of 3.68) usually conclude minor or no influences.
 
Since I personally often need to reproduce work in scientific literature, the IF of a journal does at least have some anecdotal correlation with my success in those experiments. I definitely prefer to work on things leading from reputable research.
 
While my own anecdotal evidence suggests that there is no obvious effect of RF-EMR on plants, I can at least accept that there might be limited cases when it does. Some frequencies could potentially have a resonant frequency with important chemicals in plant cells which would then heat up slightly - or some similar effect, but this would require very close proximity to the device generating that EMR. Hard to say, of course, without doing a controlled experiment of my own.
 
Either way, it's interesting to talk about. I would say I'm somewhat biased into thinking there isn't an effect (or it's very minor), but the right study could certainly convince me.   
 
 
 
 
Examples of citations
 
Cammaerts MC, Johansson O. Effect of man-made electromagnetic fields on common Brassicaceae Lepidium sativum (cress d’Alinois) seed germination: a preliminary replication study. Phyton Int J Ext Bot 2015; 84: 132-137.
 
Tkalec, M, Malarić K, Pavlica M, et al. Effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields on seed germination and root meristematic cells of Allium cepa L. Mutation Research 2009; 672(2): 76-81.
 
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