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> At higher radio frequencies, the skin acts as a barrier, shielding the internal organs, including the brain, from exposure. So am I to understand 5G causes m

by deogeo 7y ago

> At higher radio frequencies, the skin acts as a barrier, shielding the internal organs, including the brain, from exposure. So am I to understand 5G causes merely skin cancer, not brain cancer? Or is non-ionizing radiation safe regardless of shielding? I wish they had written this article better, because as it stands, it's a mess. If it wasn't for the mention that there was no increase in cancer observed as cell-phones gained popularity (which is at frequencies lower than 5G), it would be entirely unpersuasive. Would it be too much to ask for blasting a few thousand rats with 5G? Edit: Skimming https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7032050 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7032050 linked by itcrowd, I got the vague impression that biological tests were done roughly as I'd hope. It would be nice if the Times article devoted more ink to studies showing 5G to be safe, instead of 95% focusing on how the claims that it is dangerous are shaky, and barely mentioning studies proving its safety.

namibj 7y ago
Non-ionizing radiation causes heating. E.g., looking into a 2.4 GHz source (microwave) of enough power cooks your eyeballs inside-out, kinda like boiling eggs. It's because they absorb a lot, but have negligible cooling due to a lack of blood circulation inside of them. Lower powers don't seem to have significant effects, and if so, likely more of a metabolic nature than of a cancer nature. Getting an inflammation seems possible, but cancer-inducing powers cause thermal sensations/damage before you get cancer.
itcrowd 7y ago
Let me try to clear it up. (sorry, it got a bit long) First, the skin (and skull and clothing .. etc.) does act as a barrier, which is why the graph that is shown in the article is flawed (this is mentioned). It shows absorption of microwave radiation in the grey matter of the brain, but it doesn't account for the skin and skull that blocks it. There are two major effects of radiation: ionization (think X-ray imaging) and heating (think microwave oven). Ionization is irrelevant for 5G, because the frequency is way too low. Heating, on the other hand, happens at many frequencies. For example, a microwave oven is at ~2.4 GHz, just like Wi-Fi (which can also operate at 5 GHz). That said, the heating is dependent on how much power is transmitted and how well it is absorbed by the skin. For example, a low-power source (Wi-Fi antenna) doesn't fry your skin like a microwave oven because a) the power is too low and b) it mostly reflects off the surface of the skin. The power levels that 5G needs to operate at are quite low and the reflection off the skin is quite high. This is summarized nicely in the reference I gave in another comment here [1]. To answer your specific questions: > So am I to understand 5G causes merely skin cancer, not brain cancer? Or is non-ionizing radiation safe regardless of shielding? The ionization effect is not present due to low frequency (see above), the heating effect should be considered, but is minimal (see reference). The authors of [1] note specifically that the skin area is safe, but the eyes may be more vulnerable if the devices operate at large power and are close-by. So, this is not dangerous for consumers but may be dangerous for workers near antennas. However, the radiation level must be very high, and the distance very short. In my reading of the paper, it is not a danger for commercial telecom applications. > Would it be too much to ask for blasting a few thousand rats with 5G? That is not my field of expertise.. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7032050 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7032050
- deogeo 7y ago
  "So am I to understand 5G causes merely skin cancer, not brain cancer?" was mostly meant as a critique of the article, since they use shielding by skin as a defense. Otherwise yes, I'm aware that 5G is non-ionizing, and produces negligible heating, which doesn't leave many straight-forward ways it could affect biology (maybe EM fields adversely affect protein folding?). For those you pretty much need experimental studies, but looks like they've been conducted, and turned up nothing.
  - XorNot 7y ago
    EM fields are not affecting protein folding. Moreover this is really just you reacting to something that feels incomprehensible and invisible while discounting something that seems normal - sunlight - even though it's orders of magnitude more powerful, causes more heating, and is directly linked to cancer in the right ranges. But no one expresses concern about visible light causing damage from localised heating or the EM fields of it disrupting protein folding (hold a torch up to your hand - your body is quite translucent to visible light).
    - deogeo 7y ago
      > EM fields are not affecting protein folding. Why not? The energy needed to affect that is lower than ionization energy, so they could. And I'm not "reacting" to anything. 60 GHz radiation is sufficiently different from sunlight that it might plausibly have a different effect on us (such as by interacting with some low-energy absorption peak of a protein that visible light does not interact with due to its higher energy, or by penetrating deeper into tissue than visible light can). It turns out studies show it is not harmful. But they conducted actual studies to show that - they didn't dismiss it outright "because sunlight".
      - Dylan16807 7y ago
        Sunlight bathes you in multiple watts in the same narrow frequency range, so it couldn't do that much.
danielst 7y ago
Regarding: "It would be nice if the Times article devoted more ink to studies showing 5G to be safe, instead of 95% focusing on how the claims that it is dangerous are shaky, and barely mentioning studies proving its safety." There have been no studies showing 5G to be safe, because there have been no studies on 5G.
- itcrowd 7y ago
  The fact that 5G is not commercially available does not mean there have been no studies. A quick Google Scholar (or whatever) search could have cleared that up for you. Here's the link to save you from typing it in: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=5g+safety+radiation https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=5g+safety+radiation
  - danielst 7y ago
    Very interesting, so there are a few studies! Thank you for pointing this out, I had been under the impression that there were none whatsoever. I am not sure what conclusions can be drawn from these few studies at present (I found four or five on the Google Scholar link). It would be interesting if someone with the requisite technical background could read and assess them. (And the question of funding, as discussed in the Guardian article I linked to in another post, is also relevant, as empirically speaking, industry-funded studies on the whole do lead to significantly different results from independently-funded studies).

by deogeo 7y ago

namibj 7y ago

Non-ionizing radiation causes heating. E.g., looking into a 2.4 GHz source (microwave) of enough power cooks your eyeballs inside-out, kinda like boiling eggs. It's because they absorb a lot, but have negligible cooling due to a lack of blood circulation inside of them. Lower powers don't seem to have significant effects, and if so, likely more of a metabolic nature than of a cancer nature. Getting an inflammation seems possible, but cancer-inducing powers cause thermal sensations/damage before you get cancer.

itcrowd 7y ago

Let me try to clear it up. (sorry, it got a bit long) First, the skin (and skull and clothing .. etc.) does act as a barrier, which is why the graph that is shown in the article is flawed (this is mentioned). It shows absorption of microwave radiation in the grey matter of the brain, but it doesn't account for the skin and skull that blocks it. There are two major effects of radiation: ionization (think X-ray imaging) and heating (think microwave oven). Ionization is irrelevant for 5G, because the frequency is way too low. Heating, on the other hand, happens at many frequencies. For example, a microwave oven is at ~2.4 GHz, just like Wi-Fi (which can also operate at 5 GHz). That said, the heating is dependent on how much power is transmitted and how well it is absorbed by the skin. For example, a low-power source (Wi-Fi antenna) doesn't fry your skin like a microwave oven because a) the power is too low and b) it mostly reflects off the surface of the skin. The power levels that 5G needs to operate at are quite low and the reflection off the skin is quite high. This is summarized nicely in the reference I gave in another comment here [1]. To answer your specific questions: > So am I to understand 5G causes merely skin cancer, not brain cancer? Or is non-ionizing radiation safe regardless of shielding? The ionization effect is not present due to low frequency (see above), the heating effect should be considered, but is minimal (see reference). The authors of [1] note specifically that the skin area is safe, but the eyes may be more vulnerable if the devices operate at large power and are close-by. So, this is not dangerous for consumers but may be dangerous for workers near antennas. However, the radiation level must be very high, and the distance very short. In my reading of the paper, it is not a danger for commercial telecom applications. > Would it be too much to ask for blasting a few thousand rats with 5G? That is not my field of expertise.. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7032050 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7032050

deogeo 7y ago
"So am I to understand 5G causes merely skin cancer, not brain cancer?" was mostly meant as a critique of the article, since they use shielding by skin as a defense. Otherwise yes, I'm aware that 5G is non-ionizing, and produces negligible heating, which doesn't leave many straight-forward ways it could affect biology (maybe EM fields adversely affect protein folding?). For those you pretty much need experimental studies, but looks like they've been conducted, and turned up nothing.
- XorNot 7y ago
  EM fields are not affecting protein folding. Moreover this is really just you reacting to something that feels incomprehensible and invisible while discounting something that seems normal - sunlight - even though it's orders of magnitude more powerful, causes more heating, and is directly linked to cancer in the right ranges. But no one expresses concern about visible light causing damage from localised heating or the EM fields of it disrupting protein folding (hold a torch up to your hand - your body is quite translucent to visible light).
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > EM fields are not affecting protein folding. Why not? The energy needed to affect that is lower than ionization energy, so they could. And I'm not "reacting" to anything. 60 GHz radiation is sufficiently different from sunlight that it might plausibly have a different effect on us (such as by interacting with some low-energy absorption peak of a protein that visible light does not interact with due to its higher energy, or by penetrating deeper into tissue than visible light can). It turns out studies show it is not harmful. But they conducted actual studies to show that - they didn't dismiss it outright "because sunlight".
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      Sunlight bathes you in multiple watts in the same narrow frequency range, so it couldn't do that much.

danielst 7y ago

Regarding: "It would be nice if the Times article devoted more ink to studies showing 5G to be safe, instead of 95% focusing on how the claims that it is dangerous are shaky, and barely mentioning studies proving its safety." There have been no studies showing 5G to be safe, because there have been no studies on 5G.

itcrowd 7y ago
The fact that 5G is not commercially available does not mean there have been no studies. A quick Google Scholar (or whatever) search could have cleared that up for you. Here's the link to save you from typing it in: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=5g+safety+radiation https://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=5g+safety+radiation
- danielst 7y ago
  Very interesting, so there are a few studies! Thank you for pointing this out, I had been under the impression that there were none whatsoever. I am not sure what conclusions can be drawn from these few studies at present (I found four or five on the Google Scholar link). It would be interesting if someone with the requisite technical background could read and assess them. (And the question of funding, as discussed in the Guardian article I linked to in another post, is also relevant, as empirically speaking, industry-funded studies on the whole do lead to significantly different results from independently-funded studies).