5 ms·

So I posted this comment because I wanted to spark a discussion where intelligent people consider the safety implications of 5G, which is very hard to find on t

So I posted this comment because I wanted to spark a discussion where intelligent people consider the safety implications of 5G, which is very hard to find on the internet. Unfortunately that hasn't happened so far, so I decided to dig a bit more on my own. Step 1 so far has been Wikipedia, where I found the reassuring sentence "The scientific consensus is that 5G technology is safe.[99][100][101]" Unfortunately, after checking those sources it appears that one is a blog and the other two are news articles about the same event - a press release from the ICNIRP. Further research on the ICNIRP shows that it is a private organization that declared itself that it only considered the thermal dangers of RF in the cm-wave range, and any other dangers do not exist. And that is the common path to "proving" 5G safety on the internet: "the only way that this could be bad is heating; there's no heating; bam, it's safe, we're done here." The reality, of course, is that EM waves have many mechanisms of action. So far, we know of the following: - Ionizing radiation (nuclear weapons, x-rays, etc) can easily kill you or give you cancer - Non-UV visible light can increase skin aging, cause retinal injuries - Tons of EM waves can burn you or increase body temperature causing other problems (tissue heating) - Nerve disturbance from low-frequency RF That's four methods of ways EM waves can hurt you. Everyone is in agreement about that - no matter how you slice it, there's a minimum of those four. But that's a minimum. Relatively few good quality longitudinal studies have been run about EM waves. "Hey, can we put this weird thing in your home and see if it gives you cancer?" is a hard sell, I guess. But unfortunately there seems to be not one single high-quality, longitudinal study researching the effects of living with constant mm-wave sources. There are a few short-term studies, but most of these are on the order of hours (!) of exposure. One interesting thing I did find was a Swiss study showing people living near high voltage power lines were more than two times more likely to get Alzheimer's than people living just 600m away. While that's a completely different type of EM than 5G, it does hint that there may be more harmful mechanisms of EM radiation than we currently know.

mNovak 6y ago
Yes, but the "other mechanisms" of EM harm you list do not apply to mm-waves. Imagine being wrapped in lead to protect your organs from harmful mm-waves. That's effectively already the case; mm-waves can't penetrate skin, eyes or anything else. Moreover, the power levels you're encountering from a base station are minuscule. It's underappreciated as a miracle of engineering that we can reliably communicate with signals that are 10^-12 W. You're at more danger from a 10W fluorescent light bulb.
- owenversteeg 6y ago
  >> mm-waves can't penetrate skin, eyes or anything else. Ah, I see you made the same mistake as basically everyone researching mm-waves: you forgot about babies. See, they're born with very thin skin, so mm-waves can go right through their dermis. Will that have any effects? Who knows! It'll be a long time till the first 5G babies will be in college. Furthermore, a lot of things are cumulative effects. Asbestos, of course, doesn't instantly kill you; asbestosis requires a large exposure over a long period of time. Look at the research around kHz EM waves and Alzheimer's, for example. We've all been near a HV line for few minutes, I'd bet. When they were invented, I'm sure people tested them by standing next to them for hours - they were fine, of course. Turns out you have to build up exposure over a period of some 15 years living next to a HV line... and then you have a 200% chance of Alzheimer's.
  - BubRoss 6y ago
    Why do you think there is a risk to babies? What are you having that on specifically? It seems like you are reaching for something "untested". Also microwaves use 2.4Ghz, heat lamps are infrared, 5G is a wide array of spectrums, so what specific frequency and power do you think will harm babies and why? (Also if something just affects babies, it doesn't make sense to talk about the cumulative effects over decades)
    - owenversteeg 6y ago
      The established consensus is that mm-waves do penetrante the dermis of babies. Even recent research can agree on that. Here's one recent source. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334078749_Millimeter-Wave_Energy_as_Weapon https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334078749_Millimete... I do not believe that anything in the tens of GHz is either safe or unsafe. The frank reality is that we simply do not know, as not one person in human history has ever lived with a mm-wave source of any power for an extended period of time. With new RF technology, the burden is usually on the creators to demonstrate its safety, not random Internet commenters to prove its danger. I was hoping to have an actual discussion here, but I guess people would rather just blindly defend any new technology without even a cursory look at its safety.

mNovak 6y ago

Yes, but the "other mechanisms" of EM harm you list do not apply to mm-waves. Imagine being wrapped in lead to protect your organs from harmful mm-waves. That's effectively already the case; mm-waves can't penetrate skin, eyes or anything else. Moreover, the power levels you're encountering from a base station are minuscule. It's underappreciated as a miracle of engineering that we can reliably communicate with signals that are 10^-12 W. You're at more danger from a 10W fluorescent light bulb.

owenversteeg 6y ago
>> mm-waves can't penetrate skin, eyes or anything else. Ah, I see you made the same mistake as basically everyone researching mm-waves: you forgot about babies. See, they're born with very thin skin, so mm-waves can go right through their dermis. Will that have any effects? Who knows! It'll be a long time till the first 5G babies will be in college. Furthermore, a lot of things are cumulative effects. Asbestos, of course, doesn't instantly kill you; asbestosis requires a large exposure over a long period of time. Look at the research around kHz EM waves and Alzheimer's, for example. We've all been near a HV line for few minutes, I'd bet. When they were invented, I'm sure people tested them by standing next to them for hours - they were fine, of course. Turns out you have to build up exposure over a period of some 15 years living next to a HV line... and then you have a 200% chance of Alzheimer's.
- BubRoss 6y ago
  Why do you think there is a risk to babies? What are you having that on specifically? It seems like you are reaching for something "untested". Also microwaves use 2.4Ghz, heat lamps are infrared, 5G is a wide array of spectrums, so what specific frequency and power do you think will harm babies and why? (Also if something just affects babies, it doesn't make sense to talk about the cumulative effects over decades)
  - owenversteeg 6y ago
    The established consensus is that mm-waves do penetrante the dermis of babies. Even recent research can agree on that. Here's one recent source. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334078749_Millimeter-Wave_Energy_as_Weapon https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334078749_Millimete... I do not believe that anything in the tens of GHz is either safe or unsafe. The frank reality is that we simply do not know, as not one person in human history has ever lived with a mm-wave source of any power for an extended period of time. With new RF technology, the burden is usually on the creators to demonstrate its safety, not random Internet commenters to prove its danger. I was hoping to have an actual discussion here, but I guess people would rather just blindly defend any new technology without even a cursory look at its safety.