5 ms·
Yea I was thinking that. The back-scatter xrays are all gone, but they were not as safe as this article is trying to make. There were a lot of radiologists who
by djsumdog 6y ago
Yea I was thinking that. The back-scatter xrays are all gone, but they were not as safe as this article is trying to make. There were a lot of radiologists who were concerned.
The millimeter wave machines are less dangerous, but they also don't really work well at all and have a high false positive rate. They're pretty much security theater, which we're seeing a lot of again now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m0zg 6y ago> There were a lot of radiologists who were concerned. Would those be the same group of people who are "concerned" about 5G towers today? You can always find a small group of people who are "concerned" about anything you like. The press uses this for nearly every such story they publish. Without statistics quantifying that "a lot" the statement is meaningless. And even if you have the statistics, there being "a lot" of them is not a guarantee that they were right. One would need to present evidence for their concern as well to be treated seriously. Such evidence does not exist, since airplane flights themselves are a source of radiation exposure. https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DZqWhneDEMxElDzz7ZiUk0Jv93w=/0x0:1599x7185/1520x0/filters:focal(0x0:1599x7185):format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4030924/RADIATION-FLIGHT-DOSES.jpg https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DZqWhneDEMxElDzz7ZiUk0Jv93w=...
- X6S1x6Okd1st 6y agoX-rays are reasonable to worry about, the radio waves used in 5g, not so much
- rrss 6y agoNo. People who are concerned about 5G deployment for non-conspiracy theory or ignorance reasons are concerned about unknown effects of increased exposure to nonionizing radiation. X-rays are very much different from the sub-100 GHz bands used for 5G, and the concerns raised at the time about backscatter xray scanners were that the safety of the systems had not been demonstrated sufficiently to start irradiating everyone who got on a plane, because the negative health effects of ionizing radiation are well understood.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y agoI'm concerned about mm wave 5G because of sideband interference with water absorbtion lines making weather satellites less accurate.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoA very reasonable heuristic for life is: you should not be concerned about non-ionizing radiation (like 5G), unless in doses that could burn your face off. You should, by default, be concerned about ionizing radiation (like x-rays) in any dose above the natural background.
- acidburnNSA 6y agoThat's been the heuristic since the 1950s. Now we have much more data on low-dose ionizing radiation. Regulations still assume linear no-threshold, yet no one has definitively shown that anything below 100 mSv causes harm or good using vast amounts of data (c.f. US natural background of 3 mSv/yr). Thus, my rule of thumb is to start worrying only if I get more than 100 mSv either acutely or integrated over a year. I worry a lot more about eating hamburgers than anything less than 100 mSv.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI agree, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. I was focusing more on the point about ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation, which I swear to god had to drill into random people's heads in every imaginable way and combination. I assume this chart is still good to show to people: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/?
- acidburnNSA 6y agoGotcha. Yeah lots of people don't get that. Yeah I still love this chart!
- triyambakam 6y agoThere is the other side, though. You can always find a rather like group of people who will rail against all of the concern and no matter the data will continue to be unconcerned. They often say they advocate for science, but it is completely unscientific to not reexamine one's ideas given new data
- m0zg 6y agoI (unlike the OP) did present evidence, though.