A group of schoolgirls claims to have made a scientific breakthrough that shows wifi signals could damage your health – by experimenting with cress.
In a twist on the traditional science project of growing cress on a paper plate, the 15-year-olds set out to test whether mobile phone signals could be harmful.
They say the result could affect millions of people around the world.
Pupil Lea Nielsen said: ‘We all thought we experienced concentration problems in school if we slept with our mobile phones at the bedside, and sometimes we also found it difficult sleeping.’
However, because they were not able to monitor their brain activity at their school in Denmark, they chose to monitor plants near wireless routers, which emit similar radio waves to mobile phones.
When the girls grew trays of garden cress next to wifi routers, they found that most of the seedlings died.
In the experiment, they placed six trays in a room without any equipment and another six trays in a room next to two routers.
Over 12 days many of the seedlings in the wifi room turned brown and died, whereas those in the others room thrived.
But critics claim that the cress seedlings left next to the routers probably struggled because they were dried out by heat emitted from the devices.
Kim Horsevad, the students’ biology teacher at Hjallerup School, said: ‘This has sparked quite a lively debate in Denmark regarding the potential adverse health effects from mobile phones and wifi equipment.’
The results will bolster the findings of researchers in Holland, who found that trees exposed to wireless radio signals suffered from damaged bark and dying leaves.
There is little evidence, however, that wireless emissions pose any danger to human health. Wifi signals use very low intensity radio waves – 100,000 times less powerful than a microwave.
Sitting in a wifi hotspot for a year would only expose you to the same dose of radio waves as making a 20-minute mobile phone call.
Wireless radio waves also diminish significantly with distance.