11 ms·

5G Radiation Dangers (2016)

118 points by ashitlerferad 9y ago

CamperBob2 9y ago
Seriously? This again? There is no physical basis for the hypothesis that non-ionizing radiation at athermal levels has any effect on humans. So, either come up with some repeatable results, or find something else to spend your research funding on.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nashashmi 9y ago
  What you can't measure doesn't exist ... Until it is discovered! I can feel Bluetooth waves!
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    You should talk to the James Randi Educational Foundation about that ( http://web.randi.org/ http://web.randi.org/ ). Depending on how their rules are structured, the ability to detect Bluetooth emissions might qualify for the $1M prize that they offer for a repeatable, controlled demonstration of paranormal effects.
    - hexane360 9y ago
      That prize was officially terminated in 2015. http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html
- misterHN 9y ago
  Seeing color is "non-ionizing radiation", so if seeing a color has an effect on you, then you're speaking nonsense.
- hutzlibu 9y ago
  They reported some results of a not yet published study. So if you allready know everything, I hope you are open for some questions about the base structure and maybe the great unifying theory of the universe?
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    There have been plenty of published studies with equally-alarming results. The one thing that all of the studies have had in common is that the effects they describe mysteriously disappear as soon as someone tries to reproduce them.
    - extrapickles 9y ago
      Someone elsewhere in this topic found a preprint, its another study along the lines of sticking a rat in a microwave oven and going “OMG cell phones are evil, look at these dead rats!”
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/how-the-system-works/electric-systems/electric-and-magnetic-fields/frequently-asked-questions.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/how-the-system-works/electr... 1. Go down to, "WHAT ARE THE FINDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PRE-APPRENTICE AND UTILITY WORKER STUDY?" 2. Read this, "“This study is a major new contribution and simultaneously provides evidence against an association with leukemia and for an association between magnetic fields and brain cancer. It does not, however, resolve the fundamental question of whether magnetic fields cause cancer." 3. PG&E will not just not say that it's all Safe. Why? Yes--probally over cautious lawyers. And it's still not settled completely yet? 4. Yes--this is focused on emf's, but if they aren't sure about the effects of magnetism--why assume they figured out the rest as fact? 5. I don't hold the phone to my head for extended periods. I'm o.k. with being called paranoid at this point.
- BuuQu9hu 9y ago
  Why don't you look up the hundreds of studies on effects of athermal non-ionizing radiation on _biological_ process and then use your limited imagination to consider the human dangers.
valuearb 9y ago
No discussion of sample sizes or P values? I convinced, I will refuse to stand within inches of a 5G base station for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off, for 10 hours a day.
- pfarnsworth 9y ago
  Will you have a choice if you live in a condo where they have places several of these antennae on the roof, where they are broadcasting at much higher wattages?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- baobrien 9y ago
  Here's the preprint 'Report of Partial Findings' paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/06/23/055699.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/06/23/055... As a non-biologist, the amount of power being exposed to the rats here seems pretty high - 0, 1.5, 3, and 6 watts absorbed per Kg of body mass. Also, if I'm reading this right, survival was very slightly lower in the control groups than any of the RF exposed groups.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    6 watts absorbed per kg of body mass would be somewhere in the range of 500 watts for a human being, so, yes, very high -- that's around 5x the amount of energy normally produced as body heat. I would think that would be enough to produce severe stress just from the thermal effects.
    - vvanders 9y ago
      Holy crap, yeah you don't want to be near something dropping 500W ERP. If I recall correctly most cell phones are on the order of 1-2W since more would tear through your battery.
      - 9y ago
sschueller 9y ago
I would be more worried about issues similar to the diesel gate scandal where manufacturers start forging radiation tests results. How much testing does the government do and how much is the industry self testing?
- a1371 9y ago
  The problem right now is that the tests are not rigorous enough, so they don't even need to do that. The regulation allows them to test the radiation level when the cellphone is 15mm from the body. If the cellphone is on the body without a gap, none of the flagship phones meet the safe level of radiation when they are broadcasting to a tower far away. Also, the radiation test only tests the size of an adult's body, so children, who will have a larger region of their body and head impacted, are missed from the test. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm69ik_Qdb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm69ik_Qdb8
- lucaspiller 9y ago
  Unfortunately that appears to already be the case: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32170-netgear-suing-asus-for-wireless-hanky-panky http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32170-... WiFi transmission power is almost always controlled by software, with no hardware limits. It’s very easy to override this and transmit above the legal limit, to the point where you could potentially damage the hardware itself.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > I would be more worried about issues similar to the diesel gate scandal where manufacturers start forging radiation tests results. They already do. Part of the reason why government-funded tests are more likely to show that cell phones cause cancer is that there have been industry-funded tests that have placed the phones several inches away from the subject's body and put them in shielded cases.
- lgats 9y ago
  Hi, I'm no expert on the exact regulations, but I run fccid.io and have a pretty good idea of the process manufacturers go through. Although forgery of results would be possible, almost all testing is done by independent labs. It would be possible for the manufacturer to submit a "compliant" sample but then program the rest of the units to radiate differently. What I see most commonly are devices being sold without any FCC testing. All wireless devices sold in the USA should have certification but many new startups may not know the regulation around the industry (i.e. a kickstarter smart bike lock project might not take FCC certification into account and end up selling a few thousand devices before going belly up). Testing is often thousands of dollars so for a little-known startup they may just try to ride on the fact that their Aliexpress supplied Bluetooth chip "is FCC certified" (it's not). It's not always startups that are skirting the testing though, Bayer's Aleve Direct Therapy TENS bosts some invalid FCC IDs on the user manual. https://www.aleve.com/aleve-direct-therapy/how-it-works/ https://www.aleve.com/aleve-direct-therapy/how-it-works/ From what I've seen, there is little to no actual enforcement that goes on within this licensing space (but there is also a pretty high rate of compliance). The FCC has an outline from 2008 where they explain more of the compliance audit process: https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct08/Oct_08-Audit_and_Compliance_Issues.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct08/...
theyregreat 9y ago
Hmmm. It depends on the power, frequencies and distance to tissue. I remember a coworker at a GPS mfgr accidentially turned on a 440 MHz radio in high-power (25W) mode with only a whip antenna and received a nasty radio burn when he pointlessly/accidentally put his hand around it. That radio burn looked similar to a sunburn or maybe 20 seconds in the microwave. Increased risk of cancer, for sure. A fraction of a Watt every now and then might be okay, as long as it’s not bursting at multiple Watts or near the resonant frequencies of purine or water.
- pavement 9y ago
  Consider multiple transmitters operating at the same time, in the same room. Even if no signal transmitter is dumping high output into that part of the spectrum, isn’t bandwidth saturation one of the reasons for poor reception and lower bars? Would that not provide bonuses to absorbed effective wattage? There’s probably some constructive interference producing fortuitous signals, no?
  - robbiep 9y ago
    When it comes to interference with DNA, it is wavelength not wattage that is important.
    - thesz 9y ago
      In theory, yes. In practice, wattage can disrupt tissue around, introducing radicals, etc. Dirupting DNA in the end.
      - robbiep 9y ago
        The best reply to this is that we both generate a lot of radiant energy and are exposed to a lot of radiant energy in the form of sun, orders of magnitude stronger than the transmitters in our phone. The intensities the mechanism demands are neither likely or possible for everyday use
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
ddmma 9y ago
In the near future, you are antenna! to continously connect with your friends just cover your superior areas (mainly head) in aluminium foil and reflect remotley some interest from a long distance by showing the finger .. neural networks will explode like popocorn into microwave and you could rent your mental computation infrastructure to produce units such as bitcoins
ko27 9y ago
If non-ionizing low temperature radiation can be harmful to humans, does that mean we can get health issues just from standing near another human body which emits EM radiation at a far higher frequency and energy density?
- manmal 9y ago
  A human body emits more radiation in the gigahertz range than a cellphone?
  - ko27 9y ago
    I am talking about the infrared range, which is above 300GHz.
    - cma 9y ago
      The body also reflects terahertz radiation from the surrounding environment, even directly into other people's eyes. This has the bizarre side-effect of causing people to be able to "see" each other.
      - slackingoff2017 9y ago
        This is great
        katastic 9y ago
        Won't someone think of the children!?!?
    - manmal 9y ago
      Interesting thought. Near infrared light does interact with cells (photobiomodulation), usually in a beneficial way. Maybe the wave form is another factor, or some frequency ranges are beneficial while others are not?
      - 9y ago
_wmd 9y ago
Disappointing lack of specific information about the test setup, it mentions a variety of configurations at varying energy levels, but omits whether it was a single male/female pair in each configuration or whatever else I have no doubt our bodies are easily disrupted by EM in ways we know about and probably many, many more we don't, but it is insufficient to base a belief on "science said male rats don't like 5g phones", which is basically all the article states
- CommentCard 9y ago
  Link to the NTP's paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/23/055699 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/23/055699 This article is misleading. The paper it is based on studied the effects of 900MHz CDMA modulated RF on rats. 5G bandwidth in the U.S. is from roughly 3100 MHz to 4200 MHz.
  - tomxor 9y ago
    RE: 5G, maybe it's different in US but following quote is from IEEE: >As far as frequency, the 5G test network used a 15 GHz frequency band, which is higher and shorter range than current 3G/4G cellular frequencies that top out at around 2.6 GHz http://www.comsoc.org/blog/latest-update-5g-ieee-communications-society http://www.comsoc.org/blog/latest-update-5g-ieee-communicati... The original article was suggesting this substantial difference is the likely source of the problem, which would make sense if the study used the same frequency range. Higher frequencies tend to dislike solid obstacles and need higher gain (there is a specific absorption rate that phones must not exceed to prevent literally cooking bits of you, something you might not necessarily feel but could eventually result in cancerous tissue just like any repetitive internal trauma)... such an argument against it's use for cell phones might have weight, on the other hand forcing this paper narrative (if it was in-fact using 900MHz) was a mistake.
zipotm 9y ago
My MacBook Air wireless spot is producing more than 40 Gauss!
davidmurdoch 9y ago
My grandfather, one of the engineers that worked with the Voyager I and II teams, died of throat cancer. From the late 90s up until his death in 2007 he was warning people about the potential harmful effects of cell phone radiation. He would only use corded phones. His throat cancer was thought to be caused, at least in part, by his increased exposure to radiation from the instruments he worked on while working for the US government. Most of his work was classified and he took almost everything about his work to his grave. My mother told me he'd disappear for weeks at a time and he'd never talk about where he went or what he did. If anyone knows more about the specifics of what my grandfather, William Henry Fairing, Jr., was working on, that'd be so amazing to learn about!
- rb808 9y ago
  > My mother told me he'd disappear for weeks at a time and he'd never talk about where he went or what he did. How good is this? Maybe I should try to get away with this in my regular job.
  - davidmurdoch 9y ago
    It didn't work out well for my grandparents. I don't think many relationships could make it through this much secrecy.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  > If anyone knows more about the specifics of what my grandfather, William Henry Fairing, Jr., was working on, that'd be so amazing to learn about! You probably thought about it, but wondering if you contacted your representative if they could do anything to help there. Stuff usually gets declassified after a time period, he might have not said anything but by now some of it might be not secret any more.
  - davidmurdoch 9y ago
    I haven't done it, actually. The only mention I have found on him online is a quick "thanks" in this PDF (mentioned as "Bill Fairing"): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dbf2/9a4eac990f8cfef7bcb7815499a82e5776d3.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dbf2/9a4eac990f8cfef7bcb781..., though I honestly haven't done much digging. I'll look into it the representative route.
cagenut 9y ago
Hey good news, 5G is coming soon.
exabrial 9y ago
Do we really have to relive this?
- averagewall 9y ago
  Yes because cigarettes, radium, leaded petrol, asbestos, etc. Most things turn out to be pretty safe but in the slim chance they're not, the downside risk is very high.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    >radium Not well understood physics, then it was understood and quickly recognized as dangerous. Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. >leaded petrol Recognized as dangerous to begin with ("December 1922, the US Surgeon General wrote to GM regarding growing concerns that environmental lead would become a serious menace to public health."), huge negative effects in workers noticed almost immediately. Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. (https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/) >asbestos Recognized as dangerous by medical journals as far back as the 30s (About 40 years after it came into widespread use). Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. >cigarettes Recognized as dangerous by medical journals as far back as the 40s. Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. >Non-ionizing radiation Not recognized as dangerous despite every conceivable study being tried multiple times. No link to cancer. Technology has been widely used for a little under a century with no signs of population-level effects. No known mechanism of action (unlike all the others). Regardless, regulations limit human exposure and require standardized testing of all consumer products.
    - harryf 9y ago
      Radium is a great example of society blindly placing trust in technology and corporations as these ads from the 1910's show... - It will cure your hayfever! https://i.imgur.com/yXpONhN.png https://i.imgur.com/yXpONhN.png - Wear a radium pad for great health! https://i.imgur.com/NlnzYOx.jpg https://i.imgur.com/NlnzYOx.jpg - Drink Radium water for better health! https://i.imgur.com/d1uIUGO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/d1uIUGO.jpg Story is explained here https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-re... ...and probably there were people back then saying "Oh more scare stories about Radium again?!?" Where mobile phones are concerned, I remember my old Ericsson GA628 that used to heat up my ear leaving it red after 5 minutes of conversation. What's worth bearing in mind is we deployed mobile phones to the public at large before we had any significant data of their long term effects on us. Likewise 5G - we'll only really know what is does to us long term once we've gathered a few years of data, but that's not going to stop us deploying it. So yes it won't immediately kill us but we're deluding ourselves to say we know for sure there's no harm long term.
dash2 9y ago
"Why, for instance, did only male rats show increased tumor rates, and not females?" Hmm, was this pre-registered? Wee bit p-hacking? I can't find the answer in the paper. Hmm, though I did find this interesting nugget: "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of 23 males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR." Anyone want to venture a post hoc explanation?
- scarlac 9y ago
  > Anyone want to venture a post hoc explanation? The results are too weak and they're searching too hard for results. That's not to say the study itself is "wrong" just that they're motivated to find an issue to get published and media coverage, not to say "oh, it's fine". The entire article can be summed up with the quote: > Final results from the peer-reviewed study won't be released until at least the end of 2017. Cellphone cancer studies are not in short supply. What we need is peer-reviewed reproducible studies.
- red75prime 9y ago
  Thermoregulation reduced metabolic rate thanks to additional thermal energy input, leading to slightly higher lifespans? Pure unfounded speculation, of course.
  - baobrien 9y ago
    It looks like the control group just didn't survive for quite as long as this particular strain of rats usually do. Probably just a statistical fluke with the seemingly small (to a non-biologist) sample size. From 'Conclusions': >The survival of the control group of male rats in the current study (28%) was relatively low compared to other recent NTP studies in Hsd:Sprague Dawley ® SD ® (Harlan) rats (average 47%, range 24-72%).
KaiserPro 9y ago
"It’s unclear how many smaller base stations would be needed for 5G service. But it’s widely believed that there would need to be exponentially more because of the limited distance the signals can travel" Lets unpack this: 1) there is and has been lots of modelling to work out if the frequency bands are viable for business. 2) Where on the exponential curve is it? double? Quadruple? don't use terms that one clearly doesn't understand. 3) "Widely believed" is not a good source. Fucking talk to the scientists that are doing the moedelling. Do you honestly think that the entire international mobile industry is going to just guess as to how many Basestations are needed? 4) "more because of the limited distance the signals can travel" Do you know what this means? propogation is limited, which means that exposure is more than likley to be less. Its simple physics that propagation on the 4-6Ghz bands is nowhere near as much as 700Mhz. (https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/ https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/) 5) once again, if range is limited, so is exposure. Once again a lack of basic science, combined with clickbate has continued to undermine valid criticism and replace it with bone headed stupidity. If you are worried about 5G, why the fuck do you use Wifi? wifi is both 2.4 ghz, and 5 ghz.
- piker 9y ago
  > If you are worried about 5G, why the fuck do you use Wifi? wifi is both 2.4 ghz, and 5 ghz. Assuming one chooses to use Wifi in one's home, perhaps the criticism is still valid because such choice is just that--a choice. By contrast, one is forced to expose oneself to radio waves legally propagating in public spaces.
  - lloeki 9y ago
    $ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -s | wc -l 31 I have no choice but to bathe in 2.4GHz (out of 30, two are 5.GHz).
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Bluetooth and other stuff work on 2.4GHz too.
  - 9y ago
femto 9y ago
For what it's worth, the definition of 5G isn't really settled yet. To some people it means a high rate multi-antenna system in the existing radio bands (in the approximate frequency range 900MHz to 2GHz). To others it means a wide-band system at a centre frequency of approximately 60GHz. The 60GHz band was specifically chosen for short range wide-band data transmissions because it is close to the absorption peak for oxygen. This means it doesn't propagate far in air, making it a poor choice for much other than short range communications, where it's an asset if neighbouring cells don't interfere with each other. Short range in this case means a cell in every room of a house, as typical propagation distance is about 10 metres. Given that the 60GHz band is specifically absorbed by oxygen, and the body contains oxygen, it strikes me that it's worth specifically testing the biological effects of this band, separately to existing cell phone bands. Note that the article under consideration here tests at 900MHz and 1900MHz.
mark_l_watson 9y ago
It is worth the risk, in my opinion. I never hold my phone next to my ear, but there will be more general ambient radiation with more 5g cell towers and cell use. Something unfortunate is that there is really no way to opt-out of cell tower radiation exposure unless you live in a remote area.
juancn 9y ago
I'm more worried about airport full body scanners in the THz range than cell phones in the 4-6GHz bands (and I'm not that worried).

118 points by ashitlerferad 9y ago

Seriously? This again? There is no physical basis for the hypothesis that non-ionizing radiation at athermal levels has any effect on humans. So, either come up with some repeatable results, or find something else to spend your research funding on.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nashashmi 9y ago
What you can't measure doesn't exist ... Until it is discovered! I can feel Bluetooth waves!
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  You should talk to the James Randi Educational Foundation about that ( http://web.randi.org/ http://web.randi.org/ ). Depending on how their rules are structured, the ability to detect Bluetooth emissions might qualify for the $1M prize that they offer for a repeatable, controlled demonstration of paranormal effects.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    That prize was officially terminated in 2015. http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html http://web.randi.org/the-million-dollar-challenge.html
misterHN 9y ago
Seeing color is "non-ionizing radiation", so if seeing a color has an effect on you, then you're speaking nonsense.
hutzlibu 9y ago
They reported some results of a not yet published study. So if you allready know everything, I hope you are open for some questions about the base structure and maybe the great unifying theory of the universe?
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  There have been plenty of published studies with equally-alarming results. The one thing that all of the studies have had in common is that the effects they describe mysteriously disappear as soon as someone tries to reproduce them.
  - extrapickles 9y ago
    Someone elsewhere in this topic found a preprint, its another study along the lines of sticking a rat in a microwave oven and going “OMG cell phones are evil, look at these dead rats!”
icantdrive55 9y ago
https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/how-the-system-works/electric-systems/electric-and-magnetic-fields/frequently-asked-questions.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/how-the-system-works/electr... 1. Go down to, "WHAT ARE THE FINDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PRE-APPRENTICE AND UTILITY WORKER STUDY?" 2. Read this, "“This study is a major new contribution and simultaneously provides evidence against an association with leukemia and for an association between magnetic fields and brain cancer. It does not, however, resolve the fundamental question of whether magnetic fields cause cancer." 3. PG&E will not just not say that it's all Safe. Why? Yes--probally over cautious lawyers. And it's still not settled completely yet? 4. Yes--this is focused on emf's, but if they aren't sure about the effects of magnetism--why assume they figured out the rest as fact? 5. I don't hold the phone to my head for extended periods. I'm o.k. with being called paranoid at this point.
BuuQu9hu 9y ago
Why don't you look up the hundreds of studies on effects of athermal non-ionizing radiation on _biological_ process and then use your limited imagination to consider the human dangers.

valuearb 9y ago

No discussion of sample sizes or P values? I convinced, I will refuse to stand within inches of a 5G base station for 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off, for 10 hours a day.

pfarnsworth 9y ago
Will you have a choice if you live in a condo where they have places several of these antennae on the roof, where they are broadcasting at much higher wattages?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
baobrien 9y ago
Here's the preprint 'Report of Partial Findings' paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/06/23/055699.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/06/23/055... As a non-biologist, the amount of power being exposed to the rats here seems pretty high - 0, 1.5, 3, and 6 watts absorbed per Kg of body mass. Also, if I'm reading this right, survival was very slightly lower in the control groups than any of the RF exposed groups.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  6 watts absorbed per kg of body mass would be somewhere in the range of 500 watts for a human being, so, yes, very high -- that's around 5x the amount of energy normally produced as body heat. I would think that would be enough to produce severe stress just from the thermal effects.
  - vvanders 9y ago
    Holy crap, yeah you don't want to be near something dropping 500W ERP. If I recall correctly most cell phones are on the order of 1-2W since more would tear through your battery.
    - 9y ago

sschueller 9y ago

I would be more worried about issues similar to the diesel gate scandal where manufacturers start forging radiation tests results. How much testing does the government do and how much is the industry self testing?

a1371 9y ago
The problem right now is that the tests are not rigorous enough, so they don't even need to do that. The regulation allows them to test the radiation level when the cellphone is 15mm from the body. If the cellphone is on the body without a gap, none of the flagship phones meet the safe level of radiation when they are broadcasting to a tower far away. Also, the radiation test only tests the size of an adult's body, so children, who will have a larger region of their body and head impacted, are missed from the test. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm69ik_Qdb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm69ik_Qdb8
lucaspiller 9y ago
Unfortunately that appears to already be the case: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32170-netgear-suing-asus-for-wireless-hanky-panky http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32170-... WiFi transmission power is almost always controlled by software, with no hardware limits. It’s very easy to override this and transmit above the legal limit, to the point where you could potentially damage the hardware itself.
Alex3917 9y ago
> I would be more worried about issues similar to the diesel gate scandal where manufacturers start forging radiation tests results. They already do. Part of the reason why government-funded tests are more likely to show that cell phones cause cancer is that there have been industry-funded tests that have placed the phones several inches away from the subject's body and put them in shielded cases.
lgats 9y ago
Hi, I'm no expert on the exact regulations, but I run fccid.io and have a pretty good idea of the process manufacturers go through. Although forgery of results would be possible, almost all testing is done by independent labs. It would be possible for the manufacturer to submit a "compliant" sample but then program the rest of the units to radiate differently. What I see most commonly are devices being sold without any FCC testing. All wireless devices sold in the USA should have certification but many new startups may not know the regulation around the industry (i.e. a kickstarter smart bike lock project might not take FCC certification into account and end up selling a few thousand devices before going belly up). Testing is often thousands of dollars so for a little-known startup they may just try to ride on the fact that their Aliexpress supplied Bluetooth chip "is FCC certified" (it's not). It's not always startups that are skirting the testing though, Bayer's Aleve Direct Therapy TENS bosts some invalid FCC IDs on the user manual. https://www.aleve.com/aleve-direct-therapy/how-it-works/ https://www.aleve.com/aleve-direct-therapy/how-it-works/ From what I've seen, there is little to no actual enforcement that goes on within this licensing space (but there is also a pretty high rate of compliance). The FCC has an outline from 2008 where they explain more of the compliance audit process: https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct08/Oct_08-Audit_and_Compliance_Issues.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct08/...

theyregreat 9y ago

Hmmm. It depends on the power, frequencies and distance to tissue. I remember a coworker at a GPS mfgr accidentially turned on a 440 MHz radio in high-power (25W) mode with only a whip antenna and received a nasty radio burn when he pointlessly/accidentally put his hand around it. That radio burn looked similar to a sunburn or maybe 20 seconds in the microwave. Increased risk of cancer, for sure. A fraction of a Watt every now and then might be okay, as long as it’s not bursting at multiple Watts or near the resonant frequencies of purine or water.

pavement 9y ago
Consider multiple transmitters operating at the same time, in the same room. Even if no signal transmitter is dumping high output into that part of the spectrum, isn’t bandwidth saturation one of the reasons for poor reception and lower bars? Would that not provide bonuses to absorbed effective wattage? There’s probably some constructive interference producing fortuitous signals, no?
- robbiep 9y ago
  When it comes to interference with DNA, it is wavelength not wattage that is important.
  - thesz 9y ago
    In theory, yes. In practice, wattage can disrupt tissue around, introducing radicals, etc. Dirupting DNA in the end.
    - robbiep 9y ago
      The best reply to this is that we both generate a lot of radiant energy and are exposed to a lot of radiant energy in the form of sun, orders of magnitude stronger than the transmitters in our phone. The intensities the mechanism demands are neither likely or possible for everyday use
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago

ddmma 9y ago

In the near future, you are antenna! to continously connect with your friends just cover your superior areas (mainly head) in aluminium foil and reflect remotley some interest from a long distance by showing the finger .. neural networks will explode like popocorn into microwave and you could rent your mental computation infrastructure to produce units such as bitcoins

ko27 9y ago

If non-ionizing low temperature radiation can be harmful to humans, does that mean we can get health issues just from standing near another human body which emits EM radiation at a far higher frequency and energy density?

manmal 9y ago
A human body emits more radiation in the gigahertz range than a cellphone?
- ko27 9y ago
  I am talking about the infrared range, which is above 300GHz.
  - cma 9y ago
    The body also reflects terahertz radiation from the surrounding environment, even directly into other people's eyes. This has the bizarre side-effect of causing people to be able to "see" each other.
    - slackingoff2017 9y ago
      This is great
      - katastic 9y ago
        Won't someone think of the children!?!?
  - manmal 9y ago
    Interesting thought. Near infrared light does interact with cells (photobiomodulation), usually in a beneficial way. Maybe the wave form is another factor, or some frequency ranges are beneficial while others are not?
    - 9y ago

_wmd 9y ago

Disappointing lack of specific information about the test setup, it mentions a variety of configurations at varying energy levels, but omits whether it was a single male/female pair in each configuration or whatever else I have no doubt our bodies are easily disrupted by EM in ways we know about and probably many, many more we don't, but it is insufficient to base a belief on "science said male rats don't like 5g phones", which is basically all the article states

CommentCard 9y ago
Link to the NTP's paper: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/23/055699 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/06/23/055699 This article is misleading. The paper it is based on studied the effects of 900MHz CDMA modulated RF on rats. 5G bandwidth in the U.S. is from roughly 3100 MHz to 4200 MHz.
- tomxor 9y ago
  RE: 5G, maybe it's different in US but following quote is from IEEE: >As far as frequency, the 5G test network used a 15 GHz frequency band, which is higher and shorter range than current 3G/4G cellular frequencies that top out at around 2.6 GHz http://www.comsoc.org/blog/latest-update-5g-ieee-communications-society http://www.comsoc.org/blog/latest-update-5g-ieee-communicati... The original article was suggesting this substantial difference is the likely source of the problem, which would make sense if the study used the same frequency range. Higher frequencies tend to dislike solid obstacles and need higher gain (there is a specific absorption rate that phones must not exceed to prevent literally cooking bits of you, something you might not necessarily feel but could eventually result in cancerous tissue just like any repetitive internal trauma)... such an argument against it's use for cell phones might have weight, on the other hand forcing this paper narrative (if it was in-fact using 900MHz) was a mistake.

zipotm 9y ago

My MacBook Air wireless spot is producing more than 40 Gauss!

davidmurdoch 9y ago

My grandfather, one of the engineers that worked with the Voyager I and II teams, died of throat cancer. From the late 90s up until his death in 2007 he was warning people about the potential harmful effects of cell phone radiation. He would only use corded phones. His throat cancer was thought to be caused, at least in part, by his increased exposure to radiation from the instruments he worked on while working for the US government. Most of his work was classified and he took almost everything about his work to his grave. My mother told me he'd disappear for weeks at a time and he'd never talk about where he went or what he did. If anyone knows more about the specifics of what my grandfather, William Henry Fairing, Jr., was working on, that'd be so amazing to learn about!

rb808 9y ago
> My mother told me he'd disappear for weeks at a time and he'd never talk about where he went or what he did. How good is this? Maybe I should try to get away with this in my regular job.
- davidmurdoch 9y ago
  It didn't work out well for my grandparents. I don't think many relationships could make it through this much secrecy.
rdtsc 9y ago
> If anyone knows more about the specifics of what my grandfather, William Henry Fairing, Jr., was working on, that'd be so amazing to learn about! You probably thought about it, but wondering if you contacted your representative if they could do anything to help there. Stuff usually gets declassified after a time period, he might have not said anything but by now some of it might be not secret any more.
- davidmurdoch 9y ago
  I haven't done it, actually. The only mention I have found on him online is a quick "thanks" in this PDF (mentioned as "Bill Fairing"): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dbf2/9a4eac990f8cfef7bcb7815499a82e5776d3.pdf https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/dbf2/9a4eac990f8cfef7bcb781..., though I honestly haven't done much digging. I'll look into it the representative route.

cagenut 9y ago

Hey good news, 5G is coming soon.

exabrial 9y ago

Do we really have to relive this?

averagewall 9y ago
Yes because cigarettes, radium, leaded petrol, asbestos, etc. Most things turn out to be pretty safe but in the slim chance they're not, the downside risk is very high.
- hexane360 9y ago
  >radium Not well understood physics, then it was understood and quickly recognized as dangerous. Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. >leaded petrol Recognized as dangerous to begin with ("December 1922, the US Surgeon General wrote to GM regarding growing concerns that environmental lead would become a serious menace to public health."), huge negative effects in workers noticed almost immediately. Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. (https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-ethyl-poisoned-earth/) >asbestos Recognized as dangerous by medical journals as far back as the 30s (About 40 years after it came into widespread use). Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. >cigarettes Recognized as dangerous by medical journals as far back as the 40s. Nothing was done because of nonexistent regulations and corporate money. >Non-ionizing radiation Not recognized as dangerous despite every conceivable study being tried multiple times. No link to cancer. Technology has been widely used for a little under a century with no signs of population-level effects. No known mechanism of action (unlike all the others). Regardless, regulations limit human exposure and require standardized testing of all consumer products.
  - harryf 9y ago
    Radium is a great example of society blindly placing trust in technology and corporations as these ads from the 1910's show... - It will cure your hayfever! https://i.imgur.com/yXpONhN.png https://i.imgur.com/yXpONhN.png - Wear a radium pad for great health! https://i.imgur.com/NlnzYOx.jpg https://i.imgur.com/NlnzYOx.jpg - Drink Radium water for better health! https://i.imgur.com/d1uIUGO.jpg https://i.imgur.com/d1uIUGO.jpg Story is explained here https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-re... ...and probably there were people back then saying "Oh more scare stories about Radium again?!?" Where mobile phones are concerned, I remember my old Ericsson GA628 that used to heat up my ear leaving it red after 5 minutes of conversation. What's worth bearing in mind is we deployed mobile phones to the public at large before we had any significant data of their long term effects on us. Likewise 5G - we'll only really know what is does to us long term once we've gathered a few years of data, but that's not going to stop us deploying it. So yes it won't immediately kill us but we're deluding ourselves to say we know for sure there's no harm long term.

dash2 9y ago

"Why, for instance, did only male rats show increased tumor rates, and not females?" Hmm, was this pre-registered? Wee bit p-hacking? I can't find the answer in the paper. Hmm, though I did find this interesting nugget: "At the end of the 2-year study, survival was lower in the control group of 23 males than in all groups of male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RFR." Anyone want to venture a post hoc explanation?

scarlac 9y ago
> Anyone want to venture a post hoc explanation? The results are too weak and they're searching too hard for results. That's not to say the study itself is "wrong" just that they're motivated to find an issue to get published and media coverage, not to say "oh, it's fine". The entire article can be summed up with the quote: > Final results from the peer-reviewed study won't be released until at least the end of 2017. Cellphone cancer studies are not in short supply. What we need is peer-reviewed reproducible studies.
red75prime 9y ago
Thermoregulation reduced metabolic rate thanks to additional thermal energy input, leading to slightly higher lifespans? Pure unfounded speculation, of course.
- baobrien 9y ago
  It looks like the control group just didn't survive for quite as long as this particular strain of rats usually do. Probably just a statistical fluke with the seemingly small (to a non-biologist) sample size. From 'Conclusions': >The survival of the control group of male rats in the current study (28%) was relatively low compared to other recent NTP studies in Hsd:Sprague Dawley ® SD ® (Harlan) rats (average 47%, range 24-72%).

KaiserPro 9y ago

"It’s unclear how many smaller base stations would be needed for 5G service. But it’s widely believed that there would need to be exponentially more because of the limited distance the signals can travel" Lets unpack this: 1) there is and has been lots of modelling to work out if the frequency bands are viable for business. 2) Where on the exponential curve is it? double? Quadruple? don't use terms that one clearly doesn't understand. 3) "Widely believed" is not a good source. Fucking talk to the scientists that are doing the moedelling. Do you honestly think that the entire international mobile industry is going to just guess as to how many Basestations are needed? 4) "more because of the limited distance the signals can travel" Do you know what this means? propogation is limited, which means that exposure is more than likley to be less. Its simple physics that propagation on the 4-6Ghz bands is nowhere near as much as 700Mhz. (https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/ https://gsacom.com/5g-spectrum-bands/) 5) once again, if range is limited, so is exposure. Once again a lack of basic science, combined with clickbate has continued to undermine valid criticism and replace it with bone headed stupidity. If you are worried about 5G, why the fuck do you use Wifi? wifi is both 2.4 ghz, and 5 ghz.

piker 9y ago
> If you are worried about 5G, why the fuck do you use Wifi? wifi is both 2.4 ghz, and 5 ghz. Assuming one chooses to use Wifi in one's home, perhaps the criticism is still valid because such choice is just that--a choice. By contrast, one is forced to expose oneself to radio waves legally propagating in public spaces.
- lloeki 9y ago
  $ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport -s | wc -l 31 I have no choice but to bathe in 2.4GHz (out of 30, two are 5.GHz).
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Bluetooth and other stuff work on 2.4GHz too.
- 9y ago

femto 9y ago

For what it's worth, the definition of 5G isn't really settled yet. To some people it means a high rate multi-antenna system in the existing radio bands (in the approximate frequency range 900MHz to 2GHz). To others it means a wide-band system at a centre frequency of approximately 60GHz. The 60GHz band was specifically chosen for short range wide-band data transmissions because it is close to the absorption peak for oxygen. This means it doesn't propagate far in air, making it a poor choice for much other than short range communications, where it's an asset if neighbouring cells don't interfere with each other. Short range in this case means a cell in every room of a house, as typical propagation distance is about 10 metres. Given that the 60GHz band is specifically absorbed by oxygen, and the body contains oxygen, it strikes me that it's worth specifically testing the biological effects of this band, separately to existing cell phone bands. Note that the article under consideration here tests at 900MHz and 1900MHz.

mark_l_watson 9y ago

It is worth the risk, in my opinion. I never hold my phone next to my ear, but there will be more general ambient radiation with more 5g cell towers and cell use. Something unfortunate is that there is really no way to opt-out of cell tower radiation exposure unless you live in a remote area.

juancn 9y ago

I'm more worried about airport full body scanners in the THz range than cell phones in the 4-6GHz bands (and I'm not that worried).