Slashdot Mirror
Study Hints Ambient Radio Waves May Affect Plant Growth
dwguenther writes "A Lyons (Colorado) area woman with no academic pedigree has published a scientific paper in the International Journal of Forestry Research about the adverse effects of radio waves on aspen seedlings. Katie Haggerty, who lives north of Steamboat Mountain, found in a preliminary experiment done near her house that aspens shielded from electromagnetic radiation were healthier than those that were not. 'I found that the shielded seedlings produced more growth, longer shoots, bigger leaves, and more total leaf area. The shielded group produced 60 percent more leaf area and 74 percent more shoot length than a mock-shielded group,' she said." This was not a definitive study, as its author readily admits — it's hard to see how a double-blind study could even be designed in this area — but it was refereed.
Mine prefer Drum and Bass
... that one day AM radio would be the death of us all.
some plants grow really well when exposed to blue/red light combination from LEDs in a closed room. also, way cheaper and more unobtrusive than using incandescent lamps. (disclaimer for the well-informed slashdotters, i grow hot peppers for my pizzas).
Otherwise the plants would be dead!
Have the plants taken care of by one person and judged/reviewed by another who only sees them when they are moved to the review area. Since this is just seedlings using large plant pots should be fine.
it's hard to see how a double-blind study could even be designed in this area
In the medical field, it means that both the patient and the doctor evaluating the symptoms don't know who received a placebo.
For this experiment - setup two antennae in front of some seedlings, have a different dude turn one of them on. The person measuring the seedling growth doesn't know which were exposed to radio waves. That's all you need to make sure the study doesn't have some bias in it.
Why not create two sets of identical-looking Faraday cages, one metal and the other non-conducting plastic. Randomly hand them out to experimenters and let them figure out which is which after the results are in.
Come back and talk to me when you have a more definitive study. Something statistically significant that doesn't focus on one species in one location. Oh, and let's see the methodology used to make sure it is actually a sound experiment because an American amateur scientist is did this one and I really don't trust most of my fellow Americans to do amateur science correctly.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
While that may be true quite often in the media, nothing in the story suggests that's the case here. She had three sets of plants, one shielded with a Faraday cage, one shielded in fiberglass, and one completely unshielded. Her results aren't simply a lack of insect damage.
Build a large Faraday cage in a greenhouse. So you've got a nice area for plants with no stray radio waves. Then, put in antennas that will transmit the radio waves you want at the frequencies and power you want. Build several such greenhouses and fill them with the plants you'd like to test. Have them so that they are all controlled in terms of humidity and so on to be the same, but have the radio settings assigned by a computer randomly. At the end of the experiment, go around, have a look at the plants, make subjective observations and objective measurements. Then, have a look at which cages got what radio waves.
Really would not be that hard to set up, and probably not all that expensive. However I have a feeling it won't be done because the radio wave paranoia is just more of the general purpose "radiation" paranoia that has been around for a long time. They aren't really interested in having their views tested.
In spring 2007, she planted the aspen seedlings -- one group in a shielded Faraday cage, another group in a cage wrapped in fiberglass that did not block radio waves and a third set was unprotected altogether. By the end of July, there were measureable differences in growth, and at the beginning of October, she noticed differences in coloration.
It's one thing to criticize a study, but at least try to READ it first.......
Qxe4
Remember, Louis Pasteur only finally disproved the theory of spontaneous generation with a simple experiment involving meat broth and a long necked decanter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
There's no reason to doubt that the certain frequencies we consider harmless are in fact slowly destroying delicate parts of our biosphere. We're the same scientists who didn't think lead paint or asbestos were a problem, and discovered germ theory only a short time ago. The article itself is not sensational, and even the DIY scientist is modest in her conclusions.
It's a nice enough preliminary study. I'm usually quite skeptical about "OMG teh ebul microwaves are killing us" studies but this one seems sensible enough and it doesn't go overboard in its claims like so many do. Good for the lady for doing things systematically enough to get published in a peer-reviewed journal (that's also serious).
This shit has been going on forever. They keep changing their target, but it is always the same tune: Radiation is bad, X is radiation, so X is bad.
When I was a kid the target was high voltage distribution lines. They said those were bad for kids, caused cancer. They had a data point, kinda, in terms of one community. Of course upon further study there was actual radioactive shit there (Radon IIRC). At any rate because of the serious nature of this, it was looked in to. Long term studies were done, looking at kids who grew up near these lines. I am probably a data point in one of those studies as our house was under some large lines when I was young (that's why I know about this shit, Mom was worried).
Well, now there's many decades of results compiled and guess what? There's no difference at all. They don't do shit.
Now any scientist could have told you that, the radiation is non-ionizing, hell the waves are millions of meters long from 60Hz power. The nuts weren't doing science, they were just being nuts.
So this is more of the same shit, same as the "cellphones kill honeybees" and so on. They do not consider it logically, they are just reactionary.
For someone outside of academia to get reviewed and published is news enough.
Since she knew which was which, confirmation bias seems rather likely.
Well, half of the double-blind part is trivial: the seedlings aren't going to know whether they are in the experimental group or the control group.
The other half isn't entirely impractical. Plant seeds in a number of sites with similar background RF levels, and mount visually-identical "transmitter devices" at each site. The people collecting growth data at the sites will not be informed which transmitter devices are actually transmitters adding significantly to the RF background, and which are not.
(Alternatively, you could pick sites with different RF backgrounds, and use active transmitters of different power levels at all sites so that, in combination with the background, you have groups of "baseline" and "high" background sites for the same effect.)
I dunno if your results will, but your lynching might.
Double blind studies exist to control for the placebo effect. Unless trees are aware that they are being experimented on, this is not an issue (they're already "blind"). This is more like a physics experiment than a medical one: you need to control all the variables and only change one at a time, and use objective measures to determine the effect. Leaf area and shoot length sound like excellent measures in this regard. If there is an opportunity for experimenter bias to creep into any measurement (for example if they are recording something a bit more subjective like bark quality or growth symmetry), then having the person measuring the result be "blind" may be appropriate.
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
You might be able to double-blind the Faraday cage if the screen material consisted of (for the active cage) wire overcoated with plastic and (for the inactive cage) fiberglass threads overcoated with the same type of plastic, the intent being to provide two cage materials that look and feel alike (bump into them and they both have the same stiffness) but only one of which provides the RF shielding function.
Light was controlled for within 5% of that received by the un-shielded plants. There were three groups, and it was simple... fiberglass screen shaded the "mock shielded" group from the sun the same way the aluminum screen did.
I personally think further experiments will discover some other cause besides RF, but Haggerty controlled for and measured a lot of other things... light, air circulation, etc. That doesn't mean her results will turn out to be correct, but she did present everything anyone would need to do to repeat her experiments to verify or refute them.
Presumably, the double blind experiment is to avoid some sort of Hawthorn Effect?
Not from the emitted RF, that doesn't have enough energy to break chemical bonds or really have much of any effect on a cell, but standing in line for seven hours unprotected in the sun waiting to pick one up on the day or release will almost certainly increase your risk of skin cancer.
G.
Just how unbiased was this person? If they were hoping for a specific result, there are a lot of things they could do in an "experiment" like this, even without thinking that they are doing such things.
Do the experiment yourself and find out. You're skeptical so if anything, you'll have the opposite bias. That's how this works.
No human being is 100% free of subconcious bias. A good scientist will do everything they can to perform objectively identical actions on all members of their various experimental organisms. IN that way, they will minimize the effect of their own biases. And others can reproduce the same objectively identical actions to gather more data.
Haggerty's paper suggests that she attempted to be careful in this regard. She explicitly presents her method. That's one way we know that she was trying to avoid her personal biases.
Like most of these studies that the news media have orgasms over, I suspect that they would be able to find whatever they wanted to prove. Science without mathematics, indeed.
Yeap. Parasite Correlated With World Cup Success - that's science indeed. /. too).
/.-ish science, but covers all your needs (meant to be ironic, not sarcastic - after all, I'm wasting my time on
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I was wondering why the plants I keep in my microwave never grow :( I thought the extra light would help out.
Once it's shown that radio waves are detrimental to aspen seedlings, there will be:
1. Signs posted around transmitter towers saying "WARNING -- Radio waves can be detrimental to your leaf area development". In both English as Aspenic.
B. Pictograph version of the same for Aspens that read yet.
Three. Non-animal subjects committees at arboreal research centers defining then testing for proper and ethical treatment of seedlings, such informed consent.
IV. Radical vegans, rejected Greenpeace applicants and overly sensitive hippie hangers-on 'rescuing' seedlings from Torture Hothouses because they're being tested 24 hours a day and not allowed to sleep.
Cinco. Smarmy, crooning, sexy but aloof modern folk singers moaning out a somewhat relevant lyric while you see pictures of abused seedlings, then their eyes tearing up as they beg you "Won't you please help? Think of the seedlings."
=== 100 years pass ===
99. Members of the Poplar* Peoples' Front forming a picket line around the Deciduous Students Union, carrying signs made of rock (no living material was harmed in the making of these signs) in their branches, demanding representation of their own kind among elected officials (Vote Yeast, Not Beast) and protesting the deplorable treatment of some of the more 'culturally mature due to greater experience evolving' and 'third forest' species (Smile Mold Is People Too) while Jefferson Floodplain sings "Up against the wall... Up against the wall, Carbonizers" from their hit album 'Nothing Can Stop The Shape of Leaves To Come and then giggle when you start to turn blue and gasp because you have cyclic respiration and can't read sentences this long without stopping for air whereas their constant bidirectional respiration means they can talk for hours straight without stopping once.
* Not misspelled, you meat chauvinist pig.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
It isn't ruled out, which is why the study is merely 'interesting' and 'should be followed up' rather than 'OMFG turn off that radio!!!'.
Since she did use objective measurements, the role of confirmation bias is limited.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/96252.htm
Danger! Corrosive. Harmful if inhaled. May be absorbed through intact skin. Causes eye and skin irritation and possible burns. May cause severe respiratory tract irritation with possible burns. May cause severe digestive tract irritation with possible burns. May cause liver and kidney damage. May cause central nervous system effects. This substance has caused adverse reproductive and fetal effects in animals. Inhalation of fumes may cause metal-fume fever. Possible sensitizer.
Target Organs: Blood, kidneys, central nervous system, liver, brain.
Just ignore that. Go play with some, preferably in the room where you sleep.
Personally, I think the shielding worked more as a cozy for the plant and gave it a more stable immediate environment upon which to grow. Perhaps even the faraday cage was diminishing the light around the geraniums, so they spent more energy growing their leaves bigger to compensate.
Yep. Or the area was simply too bright, and the plants shielded has more favorable conditions. Sunlight, humidity, temperature, and airflow were probably all affected by whatever was used to shield the plants. And all of which have an effect on plant growth.
Whoeever came up with this "study" is a moron.
Please help metamoderate.
one group in a shielded Faraday cage, another group in a cage wrapped in fiberglass that did not block radio waves and a third set was unprotected altogether.
So, she placed one group in a cage which only blocks a little bit of light via shade from the wire, versus another group that added a material which blocks some wavelengths, shields the plant from rain, and prevents air movement?
Big fucking surprise the "unshielded" plant didn't do as well. She wasn't testing for whether radio waves affect plant growth. She was testing whether a fiberglass shelter affects plant growth.
what's the likelihood that someone designing the experiment would have thought of the same problems you thought of in 30 seconds since reading the summary
Apparently, quite poor. You're also assuming she didn't intentionally design the test to give the results.
Please help metamoderate.
All cell phones emit some amount of electromagnetic radiation. Given the close proximity of the phone to the head, it is possible for the radiation to cause some sort of harm to the 118 million cell-phone users in the United States. What is being debated in the scientific and political arenas is just how much radiation is considered unsafe, and if there are any potential long-term effects of cell-phone radiation exposure.
There are two types of electromagnetic radiation:
Ionizing radiation - This type of radiation contains enough electromagnetic energy to strip atoms and molecules from the tissue and alter chemical reactions in the body. Gamma rays and X-rays are two forms of ionizing radiation. We know they cause damage, which is why we wear a lead vest when X-rays are taken of our bodies.
Non-ionizing radiation - Non-ionizing radiation is typically safe. It causes some heating effect, but usually not enough to cause any type of long-term damage to tissue. Radio-frequency energy, visible light and microwave radiation are considered non-ionizing.
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone-radiation.htm/printable
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
My violet ray has killed every plant its radiation ever came into contact with. I bought it at a yard sale in Greenwich Village about 18 years ago. It also removes gold leaf from antique picture frames. It's really cool and can also be used to cause premature component failure in electronic equipment. It scares the shit out of the developers where I work....
Ask Me About... The 80's!
... particularly that with wavelengths between around 350 and 700nm.
I think that the journal publishing and the amateur scientist published should attempt to grow their seedlings in complete absence of electro-magnetic radiation between 350 and 700nm. That'll teach them something that every troglobite population on the planet learned millennia ago.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That assumes the only influence of the cages is in blocking EM radiation. I can already tell you that's not the case. Metal in moist soil can create a voltage gradient and current, which has long been known to affect plant growth.
A better control would be a metal cage, and an identical fiberglass cage with an equivalent amount/type of metal in contact with the ground.
I makes me wonder if the lady who published this article understands that light (from the sun, from the lights in the room where I'm typing this, from my computer monitors...) is *IS* electromagnetic radiation. Do you think she knows, or was grade 12 physics a course which she did not attend?
Anybody capable of making a functioning Faraday cage is probably not an ignoramus. Basically, the light from the sun is not modulated into coherent, low power (non-ionizing) signals in the low Hz range where cellular activities have been repeatedly observed to show effects. But you'd have to read a book or two beyond grade 12 physics to know that.
The maturity level around here is astonishing. People love their cell phones and their normal, comfortable patterns so much that they are emotionally incapable of allowing the possibility that anything *bad* might be associated with their established behaviors.
It's fucking pathetic.
-FL
"I've tried to grow plants totally isolated from electromagnetic radiation (all wavelengths). Damn! They wouldn't grow at all!"
Well, for one, you're not doing it right. I can get animal fodder grown in 8 days with no light at all, in a totally dark shed.
Why, yes, some of us do work on this exact problem of growing in the absence of light. Turns out some crops can be grown without light at all, depending upon how far you need to go with them.
And that goes a LONG way to power savings.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Why do people assume that the only way cellular activity can be affected by EM radiation is through heat damage due to ionization?
That's almost exactly like saying arsenic in small quantities is safe because it takes more than ten pounds of any substance dropped from over ten feet to cause damage to one's internal organs.
Biological chemistry and electricity are enormously complex, and yet people routinely try to establish in black & white what safe and unsafe are based on the most cartoonish levels of understanding. (And those cartoonish concepts, it MUST be noted, were initially injected into the media from the P.R. wings of the U.S. military and the Telecos in attempting to avoid being prosecuted. But people now accept such common 'wisdom' as though it were some sort of cosmic law of reality when in fact its origin was a clever public relations tactic.)
There are several known mechanics through which low power (non-ionizing) radiation can affect living cells. I've outlined a few of them in the past, and every time I do, the emotional explosions it sets off in readers is astonishing, but whatever. Here we go again. . .
Remember the phenomenon of "sympathetic resonance" from science class? That's the one where when you strike a string on a guitar on one side of the room, the identically tuned guitar on the other side of the room will start to vibrate. This is how radios work.
Every object on the planet has a natural frequency at which it vibrates.
Okay. Now take 60 Hz wall socket power. The Lithium ion happens to resonate at 60 Hz. Combine that with the Earth's static magnetic field, and you get an interesting effect where Lithium ions energize and move on a vector. Sub-ionizing power levels of EM can cause Lithium ions in your blood stream to penetrate the blood/brain barrier and deliver a narcotic psycho-active effect with greater frequency than if they were not being energized from an outside EM broadcast frequency. This effect is called, "Cyclotronic Resonance" and it is just one of several mechanics known.
There are entire lists of frequencies and the various effects they have on cellular activity. These different frequencies can be used to modify moods and behavior sets in humans, and the cell phone system is an ideal method of delivery because the high-frequency carrier signals can be modulated down to mimic whatever frequency is desired.
In a rather elegant double-stroke of genius, the billion or so lithium cell-phone batteries which have made their way to landfills, and there leach into ground water, supply the biosphere with plenty of distributed lithium.
And yes, just to be clear, we're talking about global population mind-control.
-Another cartoon concept people have been effectively sold, (though I find it astonishing that people so easily fall for such a patently false premise), is that, "Conspiracies do not exist."
Like I said. Emotions run high on this subject. I wonder what causes that. . ?
-FL
No, I'm serious. My suspicion is that she shielded the successful plants with something that contains trace nutrients that are lacking in her local soil.
For example, if her shielding was composed of steel chicken wire, then rainwater will pick up iron and zinc from the wire before it falls on the ground, both of these are essential trace nutrients for plant growth. In particular the rich red colour of the leaves in the experimental group speaks of a good supply of iron.
Alas, I've not seen the paper. If she's doing it properly her control plants should be growing through a layer of what she's using for shielding, instead of inside it. I suspect this is not the case.
The Sun is among the other sources of radio waves streaming down to the surface of the earth. I would suggest that man made radio waves are not automatically the cause. Although we broadcast strongly on particular frequencies in most areas background radiation drowns out total human output but across a wider spectrum. Plants may be sensitive to changes in background radio sources, for example we're in a period of unusual solar activity. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/11jul_solarcycleupdate/
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Great a 3 kdawson-story day. What next? Ouija boards cause cancer in mice? Perhaps we could have an article on the risks posed by heavy electricity, or homeopathic remedies for Autism (One lady in wisconsin swears that her little jimmy is much better after his injections). Perhaps we should change the slogan for Slashdot from "News for Nerds" to "Alternative Health monthly", or "News for Arts Graduates who like Apple Products", or "Anti-Globalisation Discussion Group". As someone with a science degree and a basic grasp of statistics, general science and economics I'd rather eat my own excreta, thanks. Faraday cage. Pathetic.
Anti-radiation nuts will always be spewing out shit, but reading the article, I feel this specific piece has nothing to do with nuts. It seems to talk about one single experiment and doesn't seem to extrapolate any further than that.
Actually, I think I have a very nice explanation for the effect. The shielded seedlings produced more growth, longer shoots, bigger leaves and more total leaf area.. Also, The leaves in the shielded group produced striking fall colors, while the two exposed groups stayed light green or yellow and were affected by areas of dead leaf tissue.
All of these symptoms suggest to me that radio waves fool the trees into thinking they have more incoming solar radiation than they actually do. The tree only needs enough growth, leaves and leaf size, determined by incoming sunlight. Trees and plants in general are very good at growing exactly the way they need to, in order to maximize the sunlight they can catch and the amount of photosynthesis they can do. Also it makes sense that when the fall comes, lack of sunlight makes trees store the useful substances remaining in leaves (thus turning them red) and then dropping them in due time - false impression of still having enough sunlight could slow or partly block this process.
I'm not saying radiation is inherently harmful, but presenting the idea that maybe aspen measure incoming sunlight in a way that also counts radio waves. They're both EM, and I see no reason why plants would have evolved to be very wavelength-specific about it. Indeed, measuring sunlight by a biological process is probably bound to be somewhat hazy, and it's possible that through sheer bad luck (or some chemical reason), this process somehow exaggerates the radio wavelengths.
If this is true, it might be aspen-specific, apply to all plants, or be something in between. Different plants might have different "frequency responses". And in any case, aspen / plants would evolve within some period to cope with present levels in radio waves. Fun to think, maybe evolved aspen will die in hordes if we someday abruptly stop transmitting radio waves ;-).
As a background I'll mention that I did the math once - assuming blackbody radiation, the sun's output is completely insignificant compared to human transmission at wavelengths we use for communication. There would actually be no comparable natural radiation at these wavelengths, which explains why we got such a good signal-to-noise ratio ;).
... with double blindness in research topics where it makes no sense at all?
If I want to test the effects of parachutes on living people using them and have a test setup like this:
a) 10 red packed parachutes - which will open perfectly
b) 10 blue packed parachutes - which won't open at all
c) 20 voluntary test persons - single blind in so far that they don't know about the purpose of the experiment nor about the fact that the blue ones won't open
Now: why do you think I need a double blind test set up??? I don't get it. The outcome of such a test is completely unrelated to the fact that I could hand out the parachutes to the test persons, or some one else who does not know about the manipulation.
Heck, I even can replace the volunteers by sacks of sand. I also can number the parachutes and give them a colour randomly. The effect will still be the same! The manipulated ones will not open.
Double Blindness in studies only makes sense if knowing something about the test would influence its outcome. The only thinkable tests where that is true are tests on humans (does not matter if it is a medical treatment or a psychological or IQ test).
Double blind studies got invented because a test patient who knew that he got the placebo did of course respond to the "medical" different than one who did not know that.
And furthermore: nurses who knew what a patient should have gotten gave the true stuff instead of a placebo, or looked so pity-full that the patient could guess that he was getting the wrong stuff. So they invented: the nurse should know nothing.
Do you really think scientific experiments like observing the sky with telescopes or conducting crashes in the LHC are done "double blind", rofl?
regards
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Unless, of course, there are other bottlenecks such as nutrient availability that are holding them back. And there are - this experiment has already been done. Several varieties of plants were exposed to a set of conditions: normal (control), increased CO2, and increased CO2 plus soil amendment with certain minerals (iron, if I remember correctly, was one of them), and increased minerals alone. The plants exposed to increased CO2 alone and fertilizer alone showed increased growth, but not that much. Those exposed to both grew significantly more. I don't think you can conclude that because plants aren't going crazy with growth from increased CO2, that it must be because of exposure to RF - there are a lot of other issues that could cause this.
Some makes of electric blanket now have rectifier/transformers built in, so that the blanket is heated by DC currents (to be sure, this is also good for safety: the voltage and current through the blanket are quite a bit lower) rather than 60Hz AC. I don't have the heart to tell these people that if they really want to avoid exposure to 60Hz radiation, they'll have to secure power to their houses... as they're soaking in it all day long otherwise.
Hm.
Mods of Troll and Funny.
And yet. . , deep down inside you know there's something to it otherwise there wouldn't be such a strong reaction.
It's not the same as promoting Christianity; (God arguments inspire the logical frustration response of, "Why can't they SEE? I must point out the truth!" And hence people dive into debate. But there is only quiet here.)
It's not the same as promoting a welfare state; ("Let's All Share" arguments inspire selfishness and rage at the idea of people taking without deserving, and again people dive into debate.)
It's not the same as taking a side in any of the boring contentious issues, like abortion, or partisan politics or what have you. It's not the same as any of those arguments or comments. It's rational, it makes sense, it's got plenty of solid information available to back it up for those willing to explore. So why the reactions?
Why? Because it's painful truth which if one looks at if full on would require a very difficult transition away from current behavior patterns. People love and rely on their cell phones and WiFi devices. They Love them! They identify with them! And any suggestion that their identity may be causing them harm evokes not a sense of fascination and curiosity, but only Ego-based fear and emotional rejection. "Nothing I have chosen to devote myself is allowed to be wrong. Anybody who offers evidence suggesting it is, must be destroyed, shut down, laughed at! DENIED!" That's the ego talking. That's the child inside taking control.
And what a great way to control an entire population. Children are easy to manipulate, after all.
-FL
More from TFA
"From 1.0MHz to 3.0GHz, its effectiveness in attenuating RF signals was found to vary from 40dB to 73dB across the entire range of frequencies (Figure 1). Theoretically, an enclosure made of this material would reduce signal intensity by a factor of 104 to 107.3, blocking essentially all ambient RF energy, including the naturally occurring RF background."
"In both the mock-Faraday cage and the uncaged area, numerous stations were received in the AM and FM bands. A sweep of RF background at the site, June 6, 2009, using an Anritsu spectrum analyzer, showed that field intensity ranged from 117dBm to 87dBm at frequencies from 1 to 1,000MHz. Mean field intensity was 109dBm. "
She definitely did her homework.
As a society, we spent the 20th century establishing that the *energy* in various sources of radiation like lasers, microwave ovens, radioactive decay, etc. etc. can damage and kill living organisms. Yet much work remains to exactly how the information encoded within radiation effects and is processed by organisms.
Imagine living the first 5 years of your life awash in a constant 60-70 decible wash of white noise. It wouldn't cause organic "damage" by harming your ears, but it's not hard to see how it could hinder, say, language acquisition...
I recall reading (I thought from a Slashdot posting) about a scientific group's trip to the southern Pacific, where they seeded the ocean with iron just as you describe. Sure enough, there was a big phytoplankton boom, successfully sequestering a goodly bit of carbon in their skeletons, and when they died, sure enough, they sank, taking that carbon to the bottom of the sea. (Some information here.) This would seem to suggest that it has indeed been implemented, albeit so far only on a limited and experimental basis.
However, they also found that the process has a limit -- successive attempts at seeding a bloom in the same area failed. The speculation was that this is because phytoplankton rely on more than Fe and CO2, and that the first bloom had exhausted the local supplies of the other required nutrients, among them, oxygen. This, among other factors, leads us to your 2) fear of unintended consequences, which could indeed bear more modeling and study.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."