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Yeah, I've been slightly concerned about those numbers for a while now. I am in the same boat as you; we think radio waves are totally safe, I get that. But the

by ip26 6y ago

Yeah, I've been slightly concerned about those numbers for a while now. I am in the same boat as you; we think radio waves are totally safe, I get that. But the increase in background spectral density & energy is going to be huge. Makes me feel like we should up our certainty levels a bit more first.

owenversteeg 6y ago
Thanks! I'm glad I'm not the only one. And exactly - it's such a massive jump that it deserves a careful look, which it doesn't seem like it really has gotten so far. I'm not saying it's going to give people cancer, but we just don't know what it may or may not do. Maybe there are absolutely no side effects. Maybe it's even beneficial to health! Hell, exposure to enough EM radiation in the hundreds of nanometers range is actually a requirement for human health. But maybe it has a negative effect on anything from birds to bacteria to humans, and I think it's worth investigating that before we deploy it extremely rapidly in all of the world's cities. I mean, the #1 post on HN right now is how highly skilled engineers accidentally made the Golden Gate Bridge emit a loud noise that's blanketing the Bay Area. And that's a bridge, which humans have been building for some 20,000 years. And it's made out of one thing - steel - which we generally understand very well. I really hope there will be no side effects. But the chance that there will scares me a bit. 5G will be rapidly rolled out at enormous, unprecedented scale and density in nearly all the big world cities - and in 2020 most of the world lives in cities.
- icelancer 6y ago
  >> I mean, the #1 post on HN right now is how highly skilled engineers accidentally made the Golden Gate Bridge emit a loud noise that's blanketing the Bay Area. No it isn't. The engineers knew this sound was going to happen. It was not accidental.
  - owenversteeg 6y ago
    Apparently the noise on the pedestrian path itself is powerful enough that some people report it is literally unbearable while walking in the wind. From what I've read, the engineers only predicted that there would be some amount of hum, not that it would be nearly this loud. And again, the things involved here are bridges (which humans have been making for some 14,000 years) and wind (familiar to humans for our entire existence.) 5G uses little-studied frequencies around 50 GHz that we really know extremely little about compared to the widely used cm-wave.
michaelmrose 6y ago
Up our certainty levels of what? You haven't enumerated a credible concern and so far as I can tell nobody else has. A really big increase in a number without a framework to contextual it doesn't mean anything.
- s1artibartfast 6y ago
  I loathe to weigh in on this, but I do think it is worth pointing out that society has often taken a trust but verify approach to other aspects of health. For example, you don't need a credible concern for the testing of new medicines and devices. Given the financial and health stakes (>$100B & >100M lives) a through animal study and RCT trial doesn't seem unreasonable. You could relatively cheaply raise a few generations of animals on top of a 5G antenna and look at cellular and reproductive toxicity. Following that, you could do a RCT with real/ sham antennae in bedrooms as part of roll-out.
  - ac29 6y ago
    Its unreasonable to insist on studies because there is no plausible mechanism for there to be a significant effect. Emission of radio waves is not a new phenomenon, we understand pretty well the physics behind radio waves and how they interact with matter. Slapping a new marketing term (5G) on them doesnt change anything.
    - s1artibartfast 6y ago
      I think we agree on the current understanding of physics, but disagree on our understanding of biological interactions, and on our risk tolerances.
      - michaelmrose 6y ago
        What would you study precisely? Install 5G in one city and look for anything that could possibly go wrong in that city and try to figure out the 100,000 possible confounding factors and assign blame to 5G for anything we couldn't figure out how to explicate?

by ip26 6y ago

owenversteeg 6y ago

Thanks! I'm glad I'm not the only one. And exactly - it's such a massive jump that it deserves a careful look, which it doesn't seem like it really has gotten so far. I'm not saying it's going to give people cancer, but we just don't know what it may or may not do. Maybe there are absolutely no side effects. Maybe it's even beneficial to health! Hell, exposure to enough EM radiation in the hundreds of nanometers range is actually a requirement for human health. But maybe it has a negative effect on anything from birds to bacteria to humans, and I think it's worth investigating that before we deploy it extremely rapidly in all of the world's cities. I mean, the #1 post on HN right now is how highly skilled engineers accidentally made the Golden Gate Bridge emit a loud noise that's blanketing the Bay Area. And that's a bridge, which humans have been building for some 20,000 years. And it's made out of one thing - steel - which we generally understand very well. I really hope there will be no side effects. But the chance that there will scares me a bit. 5G will be rapidly rolled out at enormous, unprecedented scale and density in nearly all the big world cities - and in 2020 most of the world lives in cities.

icelancer 6y ago
>> I mean, the #1 post on HN right now is how highly skilled engineers accidentally made the Golden Gate Bridge emit a loud noise that's blanketing the Bay Area. No it isn't. The engineers knew this sound was going to happen. It was not accidental.
- owenversteeg 6y ago
  Apparently the noise on the pedestrian path itself is powerful enough that some people report it is literally unbearable while walking in the wind. From what I've read, the engineers only predicted that there would be some amount of hum, not that it would be nearly this loud. And again, the things involved here are bridges (which humans have been making for some 14,000 years) and wind (familiar to humans for our entire existence.) 5G uses little-studied frequencies around 50 GHz that we really know extremely little about compared to the widely used cm-wave.

michaelmrose 6y ago

Up our certainty levels of what? You haven't enumerated a credible concern and so far as I can tell nobody else has. A really big increase in a number without a framework to contextual it doesn't mean anything.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
I loathe to weigh in on this, but I do think it is worth pointing out that society has often taken a trust but verify approach to other aspects of health. For example, you don't need a credible concern for the testing of new medicines and devices. Given the financial and health stakes (>$100B & >100M lives) a through animal study and RCT trial doesn't seem unreasonable. You could relatively cheaply raise a few generations of animals on top of a 5G antenna and look at cellular and reproductive toxicity. Following that, you could do a RCT with real/ sham antennae in bedrooms as part of roll-out.
- ac29 6y ago
  Its unreasonable to insist on studies because there is no plausible mechanism for there to be a significant effect. Emission of radio waves is not a new phenomenon, we understand pretty well the physics behind radio waves and how they interact with matter. Slapping a new marketing term (5G) on them doesnt change anything.
  - s1artibartfast 6y ago
    I think we agree on the current understanding of physics, but disagree on our understanding of biological interactions, and on our risk tolerances.
    - michaelmrose 6y ago
      What would you study precisely? Install 5G in one city and look for anything that could possibly go wrong in that city and try to figure out the 100,000 possible confounding factors and assign blame to 5G for anything we couldn't figure out how to explicate?