17 ms·

Absorption of 5G Radiation in Brain Tissue

83 points by ofou 5y ago

aetherspawn 5y ago
I'm just looking at some of these graphs and they seem a little concerning? Like the y-axis on 3G and 4G is 0.1degC ... no measurable health effects measured for a few decades, easy done and justified. But then these 5G graphs are measured at a scale 200-300x higher on the y-axis and have like 20x the energy penetration deep in the body. That's real brave. Should my next phone be 5G or is this saying no?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- swader999 5y ago
  Just turn it down to use 4G. Sometimes I'll use LTE for meetings or big downloads. 5G - hard no. I sleep with my phone and Wi-Fi off. Don't knock it till you try it. Get a meter if you are serious about it.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    you turn off your wifi and phone before you sleep every night? why the meter?
    - swader999 5y ago
      Yeah I do. The meter checks that all the other emf from other sources is low too. I live rural so it's easier, neighbors are far away.
      - squarefoot 5y ago
        Inverse square law. You would have no reasons to worry even if the closest neighbors would put a 5G tower on each of their houses. Your body would be exposed to a lot more power from your cellphone rather than any tower. That would mean if there is a real danger, we should be already counting several millions of deaths among all those people carrying a cellphone in their pocket every day. It is something that simply cannot go undetected. Those technologies would either need extremely high power, and/or use much much higher frequencies (beyond visible light) then fall into ionizing radiations (which are dangerous indeed) to have any health effects.
        swader999 5y ago
        The 4G tower about 500m puts out about 5x what my phone does. I shielded my bedroom with the paint and its close to zero now. I'm not really thinking much about 5 yet, too early for my area. I do agree with your statements.
        inter_netuser 5y ago
        if you agree with the statements its not dangerous, why paint the room? How did you come to the conclusion it disrupts sleep?
        swader999 5y ago
        I slept really well at my parents cabin over the years but not in the city where I lived. I could never figure out why. Then one summer they got Wi-Fi and I no longer had great sleeps there. Did some research and started experimenting with shielded clothing. Noticed much deeper rem sleep, dreams and all that again. I realize there's very poor research and low quality studies that support this. It's almost impossible to fund and find a group of people that can actually be shielded for a study. But hey it works for me, enough that I invested significant time, effort and a bit of money to get a decently shielded sleeping area. I have better concentration during the day in these same low emf conditions too.
        Johnythree 5y ago
        The claim that paint can suppress 4G radiation is nonsense. Did you also paint the doors, windows, ceiling and floor? If you want further information, talk to the people who build shielded rooms. Cutting down EM radiation by more than a few db is incredibly difficult.
        LinuxBender 5y ago
        Just slapping on a coat of the stuff would not work, but doing it correctly absolutely does work. It takes a few coats and you have to ground it. Done correctly, you won't be able to use Wifi or make a phone call. Yes you will get some leakage from windows, but that can be attenuated with metal screens or use steel roll-down shutters that have the benefit of improving the R/U insulation rating of the windows at night and improving physical security. I have tested this in two houses. I will also be adding the paint to a property I recently acquired. If you bookmark this thread, I will circle back in about six months after the snow to test the attenuation.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  If all else fails, you can move to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q... I'm against 5G for now, just because I don't see what I need it for, and I resent being forced to pay even if it's not harmful.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - InitialBP 5y ago
    These aareas of West Virginia and Virginia are exceptionally beautiful and serene places to visit, if you ever get a chance to drive by the Green Bank telescope it is Massive! In fact the dish of the telescope has a diameter of around 300 feet.
- cpncrunch 5y ago
  “However, this study does not take into account the layers of skin, fat, muscle and skull containing the brain in a realistic head model” Higher frequency radiation will be absorbed by the skin more easily and I think it will not reach the brain.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ofou 5y ago
    They reached the brain. [1] [1]: https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/10595/Eulitz_handy_98.pdf https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/1059...
    - CommieBobDole 5y ago
      That study refers to GSM phones, though, which use a much lower frequency that's a lot better at penetrating things like walls and people's skulls.
      - ofou 5y ago
        Gamma radiation in-vivo cells have been shown to produce "a reduction in cell division; alteration in the ratio of the different phases of mitosis, and the appearance of degenerate cells in the germinative zone." [1] Also Le Pogam et al. [2019] found that "EM radiation in the 5G range affect cell permeability and metabolic profiles". [2] To me, that's not something to be discarded so easily, more research is needed. But there's already good one coming up. [3] [1]: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1259/0007-1285-14-158-65 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1259/0007-1285-14-158-... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45662-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45662-6 [3]: https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406 https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406
- bobsil1 5y ago
  Make an external antenna as a sticky throw ball
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  I think you are mistaken -- there is less penetration at 40GHz. The graphs show increased surface heating at 40GHz as a result of less penetration. Informative exercise: put sunlight on that graph. Note that the units (W/m^2*10^3) are such that F=1 roughly corresponds to the incident power of direct sunlight, 1kW/m^2. Results like 60 degree heating at the surface when it is illuminated with 15 times the intensity of direct sunlight suddenly don't quite seem so shocking. Yes, longer wavelengths were able to avoid absorption, but there had to be a frequency where it started behaving like visible light and shining on the surface instead, and 40GHz appears to be high enough. This is exactly what I would expect. Is there a particular graph that had you worried that we could dig deeper into?
  - oliv__ 5y ago
    > Informative exercise: put sunlight on that graph. Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity [0] [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914
    - jjoonathan 5y ago
      A. Does that paper have anything to do with any of the graphs in TFA? The point of the exercise was to calibrate intuition for trends and intensities, not to talk about damage models. B. Has this line of research actually shown anything in a bulk setting at sane levels of incident RF or is it still "we built an antenna structure out of saline and showed that a neuron can respond to the resulting voltage if we really blast it?" Thermalization mechanisms like rovibrational absorption (small scale) and conventional currents (large scale -- the focus of these new studies) aren't the only supporting evidence for thermal damage models, though. There is also the dose/response curve. We can generate RF at many thousands of times the intensity that we find in cell phones and observe the consequences. Often unintentionally. Those consequences look a heck of a lot like thermal burns. If there is an alternative damage mechanism, it has to saturate at a very low level, so that there are no observable acute effects from a wild overdose.
      - 5y ago
oliv__ 5y ago
Related: last month (Aug 16th), the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the EHT (Environmental Health Trust) et al. v. FCC case that the December 2019 decision by the FCC to retain its 1996 safety limits for human exposure to wireless radiation was “arbitrary and capricious.” [0] The court held that the FCC failed to respond to “record evidence that exposure to RF radiation at levels below the Commission’s current limits may cause negative health effects unrelated to cancer.” [0] https://ehtrust.org/in-historic-decision-federal-court-finds-fcc-failed-to-explain-why-it-ignored-scientific-evidence-showing-harm-from-wireless-radiation/ https://ehtrust.org/in-historic-decision-federal-court-finds...
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  Is this malice or stupidity? Does the FCC stand to gain anything by jeopardizing the health of the general public? Genuinely curious as I don’t know much about the lobbying or incentives that would lead to such a situation.
  - xbar 5y ago
    Ajit Pai, the commissioner at the time, was an ex-Verizon executive appointed by a corporate-friendly President. The agency itself had nothing to gain, per se. Nor lose, really. There is a fair bit of speculation about who gained from its decisions during Pai's tenure and why.
  - oliv__ 5y ago
    If you simply follow the money, the Telecom/tech industry certainly has a pretty big incentive to dismiss any health concerns over wireless radiation. That and the fact that the FCC is basically a revolving door for Telecom executives. Draw your own conclusions
  - neom 5y ago
    Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate change legislation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE How Lobbying Became A $3.5 Billion Industry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZVfTCBUkgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZVfTCBUkgM
jakebasile 5y ago
Can someone who is smarter than me tell me if I should add this to the long list of ways I worry about dying?
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  Sure, somewhere above climate change, nuclear war, but below COVID-19.
- awesomeusername 5y ago
  This is measuring how much of the RF energy is absorbed. Which on It's own isn't a risk. It says nothing of interaction with DNA etc.
- p1necone 5y ago
  As someone else mentioned this looks a bit worrying, until you realize that 5g has much lower penetration (and this experiment was carried out with tissue with no skull/skin etc surrounding it), that a live brain is actively being cooled by bloodflow, and also were you to carry out this same experiment with regular sunlight the graph would be off the charts even compared to 5g. Although research like this is definitely very important. I would just be wary of drawing conclusions without listening to the opinions of people with more knowledge in the field than you or I.
- ofou 5y ago
  I think that insect population collapse is very worrisome. Some very intelligent people claim that seems to be going towards that path. Electromagnetic pollution one of the main source of its decline. So, maybe yes.
  - Scandiravian 5y ago
    "Some very intelligent people claim" Please be specific - which intelligent people? Who disagrees with them? "Electromagnetic pollution one of the main source of its decline" What are the other sources? How do they compare to electromagnetic pollution in terms of impact?
perl4ever 5y ago
"millimeter waves have short ranges of propagation, they are absorbed by water vapor and oxygen in the atmosphere, by vegetation, very strongly by water in the tissues of people and animals, and they are readily reflected off, and scattered by, small metallic and dielectric objects, urban clutter and large manmade and natural structures" I'm no physicist...but this makes me think of my microwave oven and how super-uneven the heating is. Is it possible that all the reflecting and scattering can create problematic spots where things accidentally focus? Incidentally, I've found a way to improve my oven - I add a container of a small amount of water separate from what I'm heating. It quite definitely keeps, for instance, butter from exploding like it normally would.
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  I always thought this was normal, but I bought a new cheap modern microwave from LG and the heating is virtually perfectly even these days.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  5G towers are phase arrays that literally focus on your phone. No need to worry about anything accidental.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    So what happens when your self is between your phone and the tower?
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      I remember reading that phones are adaptive, so they ramp up the power if they have trouble connecting to a tower.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    My current phone, a Pixel 3, died after about a year, just barely under warranty. I thought later, I wonder if putting it on the top of my microwave while it's in use did anything to it. So I stopped doing that.
xbar 5y ago
I read the entire paper. My conclusion: the blue line is too high. I guess my iPhone 13 will have 5G disabled.
- MisterBastahrd 5y ago
  You have to look at the bright side. Now when an annoying family member who talks too long calls you, you can tell them you have to go because you are microwaving your brains.
- __t__ 5y ago
  Am not familiar with the topic but would it make a difference to disable 5G in your phone when cities eventually have many 5g towers?
  - anilakar 5y ago
    Inverse square law still holds.
- ofou 5y ago
  Not very effective if living in a city.
akersten 5y ago
As I scroll through the wall of heat transfer equations and long-winded extrapolations of how some derived formulae can be used to predict a temperature rise in a specific contrived scenario.. I can't help but wonder if the paper is attempting to disguise a mundane conclusion (when we crank radio waves into a waveguide we can heat stuff up, obviously) within a wall of intimidating text. I feel like if there were anything to be worried about re:5G, they'd be presenting the conclusion front and center in the abstract?
- aetherspawn 5y ago
  I think if they presented it in an alarmist way, it would probably be dismissed early by the academic community as anti-5G propaganda?
  - ofou 5y ago
    That's the problem with Conspiracy theories, people tend to polarize in order to avoid being flagged as such. I think that, indepently whatever you think about 5G and its implications. It's a new tech, and it must be studied thoroughly with highly accurate methods, specially if there are used to regulate and prevent damage of any kind.
  - inter_netuser 5y ago
    It will be dismissed no matter how it is presented. self-driving cars/etc, more integrated city infra cannot happen without 5G, way too much money on the line.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - stonewareslord 5y ago
      > self-driving cars/etc, more integrated city infra cannot happen without 5G What do you mean? We basically have the first prototype of self driving cars already and what city infrastructure works on 5G but not 4G?
jiggawatts 5y ago
This is not the smoking gun you're looking for. First of all, it is an "ex vivo" experiment, which means they took a chunk of brain tissue out and tested it in a measurement device all by itself. That means: No skull, no skin, and -- most importantly -- no blood flow. Animal brains are thermally regulated. We're liquid cooled! This matters, because in their tests they heated a piece of dead tissue with no blood circulation for minutes, and tried to extrapolate from that for biological systems. That time frame is plenty for normal blood flow to remove (or reduce) the heat. To simplify: If it can damage your brain, it would definitely also burn your skin. If it doesn't burn your skin, it's almost certainly safe. This is basic physics: it has to go through your skin (and skull!) to get to your brain, and your skin has similar electrical properties and worse cooling than your brain.
- ofou 5y ago
  "There is a need for research regarding local heat developments on small surfaces, e.g., skin or the eye, and on any environmental impact." [1] I would not discard research because its "ex vivo" qualia. I think you are missing the point. It is not about if short-term 5G exposure can damage a extracted bovine brain, but the worrisome part. it is that current gel-based models to study its effects are at least, limited in their scope. All of that, without mentioning anything regarding insect population which are rapidly declining due to primarily electromagnetic pollution [2]. Source of the quote: [1]: https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406 https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406 [2]: https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mobile-insects-german.html https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mobile-insects-german.html
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    This is misrepresenting the referenced paper. They specifically tested brain tissue, but in a context that invalidates their results for realistic (in-vivo) scenarios. And anyway, heat is not some mysterious cancer-causing phenomena that's insufficiently studied by science. It's heat! You know, warmth. It's not only necessary for mammalian life, it's downright pleasant. People voluntarily put themselves in saunas, hot tubs, and pay to get hot stone massages. It's nice. When it stops being nice, you can definitely tell! There's no need for "5G radiation" measurements with scientific instruments. When you're heated to the point that you take damage, it hurts. You have a built-in sensor for that. No need for lab tests. If your phone isn't burning your hand, it's not burning your brain. It's just that simple. PS: insects are 100% for certain being wiped out by pesticides, which are poisons specifically designed to kill insects. You'd have to have fantastically good evidence to argue that no-no-no-no, it's not the millions of tons of insect poison killing them, it's the microwaves that we've always used before, but suddenly they're deadly because they're used for mobile phones... slightly differently to how they've been used previously. "...according to the study presented in Stuttgart, which is yet to be peer reviewed." No peer review? Shocker.
pulvinar 5y ago
Their experiment has a serious flaw: live brains have active temperature regulation and wouldn't see these large temperature rises. Put that dead cow brain out in the sun and its temperature would rise too. But that solar radiation isn't causing brain cancer in cows out in fields.
- oliv__ 5y ago
  There seem to be differences between natural and man-made electromagnetic fields when it comes to biological activity: Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity [0] [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914
  - adamredwoods 5y ago
    I'm not sure what that paper is trying to prove by killing E Coli with polarized 50Ghz, as we humans use all kinds of EM waves to our advantage already. We use ultraviolet radiation (750 THz range) to kill germs: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/uv-lights-and-lamps-ultraviolet-c-radiation-disinfection-and-coronavirus https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and... Or lower RF (40Mhz) to transfer heat and kill germs in foods: https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-magazine/issues/2016/august/columns/processing-radio-frequency-processing-of-food https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-ma...
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  This is a good point that was acknowledged in the study and by other commenters here. However don’t you think comparing with the sun is a slippery analogy? Specifically when discussing the health effects of duration of exposure, beam shape, pulse pattern, etc?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shrubble 5y ago
I had thought in the past, that as long as the radiation did not reach the level of 'ionizing', that there was nothing to worry about. However I do see papers like https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531 https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531 which talk about 'voltage gated calcium channels' etc. being affected. It seems to be a very complex subject...
- ofou 5y ago
  Can you provide some context why do you think this is a big deal? I'm not an expert, but I'm really interested.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Johnythree 5y ago
  The "level" of radiation is not the issue. Whether Ionising radiation is present depends on the frequency being generated. It is either there or it's not.
p1necone 5y ago
Any actual physicists around who can weigh in with a "for dummies" explanation of this? I'm worried I'm having knee jerk reaction dismissing this as not evidence that 5g could be harmful because of the sheer amount of total nonsense 5G conspiracy theories I've also been exposed to. Especially interesting was someone mentioning potential affects on insects, who do have much thinner barriers between air and their internal organs/brains.
hamburgerwah 5y ago
A lot of people are trying to interpret this. I read the complete paper. This is very far from any kind of conclusive result that says 5G presents serious risks to human health. However it does raise a couple of important considerations that warrant further study. This study was done on cow brain tissue outside of a skull cavity and found that in certain specific circumstances the radio frequencies used by 5G can transmit energy to brain tissues and pathways that warrant further study. That's all this paper says and it's methodology appears to be pretty credible for the conclusion reached. In somewhat of a rarity these days, this appears to be "good science".
- ofou 5y ago
  Plus the limits of gel simulants to estimate potential hazards.
35mm 5y ago
What if it is damaging in other ways that are not detectable by tissue heating effect?
- Johnythree 5y ago
  If there were "hidden" dangers from EM radiation, then it would have been obvious decades ago. People harp on about tobacco, but the evidence for illness caused by smoking was immediately evident the first time it was examined. These days even school kids learning about statistics can download the data and see the correlation. However any correlation between EM and health has never been detected in spite of hundreds of careful studies.
  - hypefi 5y ago
    Read The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, I am predicting in the next 5-10 years there will be a great change of view on how we see the impact of electromagnetic fields on health.
    - ofou 5y ago
      This is a must read. Also the 5G appeal in europe, over 230 scientists from more than 40 countries have expressed their “serious concerns” regarding the ubiquitous and increasing exposure to EMF generated by electric and wireless devices already before the additional 5G roll-out. [1] [1]: https://www.5gappeal.eu/ https://www.5gappeal.eu/
      - Johnythree 5y ago
        I read that page with interest, however was not surprised that it offers zero evidence to support it's claims. In fact they completely discredit themselves in their first paragraph: They clearly don't understand that 5G is a modulation mode, which can operate on any of the existing phone bands. And of course they offer no evidence that modulation is relevant. Secondly, the whole point of 5G is to replace the existing high-powered phone bases with multiple sources using much lower power. So if anything 5G will dramatically reduce the average power levels. It's pretty obvious that their push for a further study is a rather pointless scare campaign. If they are so concerned, why don't they start a "fund-me" campaign and do their own study? Designing a worthwhile study is surprisingly simple, and the equipment can be rented quite cheaply. Whatever, there have already been a large number of independent and well funded studies, none of which have demonstrated a convincing correlation.

83 points by ofou 5y ago

I'm just looking at some of these graphs and they seem a little concerning? Like the y-axis on 3G and 4G is 0.1degC ... no measurable health effects measured for a few decades, easy done and justified. But then these 5G graphs are measured at a scale 200-300x higher on the y-axis and have like 20x the energy penetration deep in the body. That's real brave. Should my next phone be 5G or is this saying no?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
swader999 5y ago
Just turn it down to use 4G. Sometimes I'll use LTE for meetings or big downloads. 5G - hard no. I sleep with my phone and Wi-Fi off. Don't knock it till you try it. Get a meter if you are serious about it.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  you turn off your wifi and phone before you sleep every night? why the meter?
  - swader999 5y ago
    Yeah I do. The meter checks that all the other emf from other sources is low too. I live rural so it's easier, neighbors are far away.
    - squarefoot 5y ago
      Inverse square law. You would have no reasons to worry even if the closest neighbors would put a 5G tower on each of their houses. Your body would be exposed to a lot more power from your cellphone rather than any tower. That would mean if there is a real danger, we should be already counting several millions of deaths among all those people carrying a cellphone in their pocket every day. It is something that simply cannot go undetected. Those technologies would either need extremely high power, and/or use much much higher frequencies (beyond visible light) then fall into ionizing radiations (which are dangerous indeed) to have any health effects.
      - swader999 5y ago
        The 4G tower about 500m puts out about 5x what my phone does. I shielded my bedroom with the paint and its close to zero now. I'm not really thinking much about 5 yet, too early for my area. I do agree with your statements.
        inter_netuser 5y ago
        if you agree with the statements its not dangerous, why paint the room? How did you come to the conclusion it disrupts sleep?
        swader999 5y ago
        I slept really well at my parents cabin over the years but not in the city where I lived. I could never figure out why. Then one summer they got Wi-Fi and I no longer had great sleeps there. Did some research and started experimenting with shielded clothing. Noticed much deeper rem sleep, dreams and all that again. I realize there's very poor research and low quality studies that support this. It's almost impossible to fund and find a group of people that can actually be shielded for a study. But hey it works for me, enough that I invested significant time, effort and a bit of money to get a decently shielded sleeping area. I have better concentration during the day in these same low emf conditions too.
        Johnythree 5y ago
        The claim that paint can suppress 4G radiation is nonsense. Did you also paint the doors, windows, ceiling and floor? If you want further information, talk to the people who build shielded rooms. Cutting down EM radiation by more than a few db is incredibly difficult.
        LinuxBender 5y ago
        Just slapping on a coat of the stuff would not work, but doing it correctly absolutely does work. It takes a few coats and you have to ground it. Done correctly, you won't be able to use Wifi or make a phone call. Yes you will get some leakage from windows, but that can be attenuated with metal screens or use steel roll-down shutters that have the benefit of improving the R/U insulation rating of the windows at night and improving physical security. I have tested this in two houses. I will also be adding the paint to a property I recently acquired. If you bookmark this thread, I will circle back in about six months after the snow to test the attenuation.
perl4ever 5y ago
If all else fails, you can move to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Quiet_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q... I'm against 5G for now, just because I don't see what I need it for, and I resent being forced to pay even if it's not harmful.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- InitialBP 5y ago
  These aareas of West Virginia and Virginia are exceptionally beautiful and serene places to visit, if you ever get a chance to drive by the Green Bank telescope it is Massive! In fact the dish of the telescope has a diameter of around 300 feet.
cpncrunch 5y ago
“However, this study does not take into account the layers of skin, fat, muscle and skull containing the brain in a realistic head model” Higher frequency radiation will be absorbed by the skin more easily and I think it will not reach the brain.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- ofou 5y ago
  They reached the brain. [1] [1]: https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/10595/Eulitz_handy_98.pdf https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/handle/123456789/1059...
  - CommieBobDole 5y ago
    That study refers to GSM phones, though, which use a much lower frequency that's a lot better at penetrating things like walls and people's skulls.
    - ofou 5y ago
      Gamma radiation in-vivo cells have been shown to produce "a reduction in cell division; alteration in the ratio of the different phases of mitosis, and the appearance of degenerate cells in the germinative zone." [1] Also Le Pogam et al. [2019] found that "EM radiation in the 5G range affect cell permeability and metabolic profiles". [2] To me, that's not something to be discarded so easily, more research is needed. But there's already good one coming up. [3] [1]: https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1259/0007-1285-14-158-65 https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1259/0007-1285-14-158-... [2]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45662-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45662-6 [3]: https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406 https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406
bobsil1 5y ago
Make an external antenna as a sticky throw ball
jjoonathan 5y ago
I think you are mistaken -- there is less penetration at 40GHz. The graphs show increased surface heating at 40GHz as a result of less penetration. Informative exercise: put sunlight on that graph. Note that the units (W/m^2*10^3) are such that F=1 roughly corresponds to the incident power of direct sunlight, 1kW/m^2. Results like 60 degree heating at the surface when it is illuminated with 15 times the intensity of direct sunlight suddenly don't quite seem so shocking. Yes, longer wavelengths were able to avoid absorption, but there had to be a frequency where it started behaving like visible light and shining on the surface instead, and 40GHz appears to be high enough. This is exactly what I would expect. Is there a particular graph that had you worried that we could dig deeper into?
- oliv__ 5y ago
  > Informative exercise: put sunlight on that graph. Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity [0] [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    A. Does that paper have anything to do with any of the graphs in TFA? The point of the exercise was to calibrate intuition for trends and intensities, not to talk about damage models. B. Has this line of research actually shown anything in a bulk setting at sane levels of incident RF or is it still "we built an antenna structure out of saline and showed that a neuron can respond to the resulting voltage if we really blast it?" Thermalization mechanisms like rovibrational absorption (small scale) and conventional currents (large scale -- the focus of these new studies) aren't the only supporting evidence for thermal damage models, though. There is also the dose/response curve. We can generate RF at many thousands of times the intensity that we find in cell phones and observe the consequences. Often unintentionally. Those consequences look a heck of a lot like thermal burns. If there is an alternative damage mechanism, it has to saturate at a very low level, so that there are no observable acute effects from a wild overdose.
    - 5y ago

oliv__ 5y ago

Related: last month (Aug 16th), the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in the EHT (Environmental Health Trust) et al. v. FCC case that the December 2019 decision by the FCC to retain its 1996 safety limits for human exposure to wireless radiation was “arbitrary and capricious.” [0] The court held that the FCC failed to respond to “record evidence that exposure to RF radiation at levels below the Commission’s current limits may cause negative health effects unrelated to cancer.” [0] https://ehtrust.org/in-historic-decision-federal-court-finds-fcc-failed-to-explain-why-it-ignored-scientific-evidence-showing-harm-from-wireless-radiation/ https://ehtrust.org/in-historic-decision-federal-court-finds...

criticaltinker 5y ago
Is this malice or stupidity? Does the FCC stand to gain anything by jeopardizing the health of the general public? Genuinely curious as I don’t know much about the lobbying or incentives that would lead to such a situation.
- xbar 5y ago
  Ajit Pai, the commissioner at the time, was an ex-Verizon executive appointed by a corporate-friendly President. The agency itself had nothing to gain, per se. Nor lose, really. There is a fair bit of speculation about who gained from its decisions during Pai's tenure and why.
- oliv__ 5y ago
  If you simply follow the money, the Telecom/tech industry certainly has a pretty big incentive to dismiss any health concerns over wireless radiation. That and the fact that the FCC is basically a revolving door for Telecom executives. Draw your own conclusions
- neom 5y ago
  Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate change legislation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE How Lobbying Became A $3.5 Billion Industry - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZVfTCBUkgM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZVfTCBUkgM

jakebasile 5y ago

Can someone who is smarter than me tell me if I should add this to the long list of ways I worry about dying?

aetherspawn 5y ago
Sure, somewhere above climate change, nuclear war, but below COVID-19.
awesomeusername 5y ago
This is measuring how much of the RF energy is absorbed. Which on It's own isn't a risk. It says nothing of interaction with DNA etc.
p1necone 5y ago
As someone else mentioned this looks a bit worrying, until you realize that 5g has much lower penetration (and this experiment was carried out with tissue with no skull/skin etc surrounding it), that a live brain is actively being cooled by bloodflow, and also were you to carry out this same experiment with regular sunlight the graph would be off the charts even compared to 5g. Although research like this is definitely very important. I would just be wary of drawing conclusions without listening to the opinions of people with more knowledge in the field than you or I.
ofou 5y ago
I think that insect population collapse is very worrisome. Some very intelligent people claim that seems to be going towards that path. Electromagnetic pollution one of the main source of its decline. So, maybe yes.
- Scandiravian 5y ago
  "Some very intelligent people claim" Please be specific - which intelligent people? Who disagrees with them? "Electromagnetic pollution one of the main source of its decline" What are the other sources? How do they compare to electromagnetic pollution in terms of impact?

perl4ever 5y ago

"millimeter waves have short ranges of propagation, they are absorbed by water vapor and oxygen in the atmosphere, by vegetation, very strongly by water in the tissues of people and animals, and they are readily reflected off, and scattered by, small metallic and dielectric objects, urban clutter and large manmade and natural structures" I'm no physicist...but this makes me think of my microwave oven and how super-uneven the heating is. Is it possible that all the reflecting and scattering can create problematic spots where things accidentally focus? Incidentally, I've found a way to improve my oven - I add a container of a small amount of water separate from what I'm heating. It quite definitely keeps, for instance, butter from exploding like it normally would.

aetherspawn 5y ago
I always thought this was normal, but I bought a new cheap modern microwave from LG and the heating is virtually perfectly even these days.
inter_netuser 5y ago
5G towers are phase arrays that literally focus on your phone. No need to worry about anything accidental.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  So what happens when your self is between your phone and the tower?
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    I remember reading that phones are adaptive, so they ramp up the power if they have trouble connecting to a tower.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  My current phone, a Pixel 3, died after about a year, just barely under warranty. I thought later, I wonder if putting it on the top of my microwave while it's in use did anything to it. So I stopped doing that.

xbar 5y ago

I read the entire paper. My conclusion: the blue line is too high. I guess my iPhone 13 will have 5G disabled.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
You have to look at the bright side. Now when an annoying family member who talks too long calls you, you can tell them you have to go because you are microwaving your brains.
__t__ 5y ago
Am not familiar with the topic but would it make a difference to disable 5G in your phone when cities eventually have many 5g towers?
- anilakar 5y ago
  Inverse square law still holds.
ofou 5y ago
Not very effective if living in a city.

akersten 5y ago

As I scroll through the wall of heat transfer equations and long-winded extrapolations of how some derived formulae can be used to predict a temperature rise in a specific contrived scenario.. I can't help but wonder if the paper is attempting to disguise a mundane conclusion (when we crank radio waves into a waveguide we can heat stuff up, obviously) within a wall of intimidating text. I feel like if there were anything to be worried about re:5G, they'd be presenting the conclusion front and center in the abstract?

aetherspawn 5y ago
I think if they presented it in an alarmist way, it would probably be dismissed early by the academic community as anti-5G propaganda?
- ofou 5y ago
  That's the problem with Conspiracy theories, people tend to polarize in order to avoid being flagged as such. I think that, indepently whatever you think about 5G and its implications. It's a new tech, and it must be studied thoroughly with highly accurate methods, specially if there are used to regulate and prevent damage of any kind.
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  It will be dismissed no matter how it is presented. self-driving cars/etc, more integrated city infra cannot happen without 5G, way too much money on the line.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - stonewareslord 5y ago
    > self-driving cars/etc, more integrated city infra cannot happen without 5G What do you mean? We basically have the first prototype of self driving cars already and what city infrastructure works on 5G but not 4G?

jiggawatts 5y ago

This is not the smoking gun you're looking for. First of all, it is an "ex vivo" experiment, which means they took a chunk of brain tissue out and tested it in a measurement device all by itself. That means: No skull, no skin, and -- most importantly -- no blood flow. Animal brains are thermally regulated. We're liquid cooled! This matters, because in their tests they heated a piece of dead tissue with no blood circulation for minutes, and tried to extrapolate from that for biological systems. That time frame is plenty for normal blood flow to remove (or reduce) the heat. To simplify: If it can damage your brain, it would definitely also burn your skin. If it doesn't burn your skin, it's almost certainly safe. This is basic physics: it has to go through your skin (and skull!) to get to your brain, and your skin has similar electrical properties and worse cooling than your brain.

ofou 5y ago
"There is a need for research regarding local heat developments on small surfaces, e.g., skin or the eye, and on any environmental impact." [1] I would not discard research because its "ex vivo" qualia. I think you are missing the point. It is not about if short-term 5G exposure can damage a extracted bovine brain, but the worrisome part. it is that current gel-based models to study its effects are at least, limited in their scope. All of that, without mentioning anything regarding insect population which are rapidly declining due to primarily electromagnetic pollution [2]. Source of the quote: [1]: https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406 https://sci-hub.st/10.3390/ijerph16183406 [2]: https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mobile-insects-german.html https://phys.org/news/2020-09-mobile-insects-german.html
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  This is misrepresenting the referenced paper. They specifically tested brain tissue, but in a context that invalidates their results for realistic (in-vivo) scenarios. And anyway, heat is not some mysterious cancer-causing phenomena that's insufficiently studied by science. It's heat! You know, warmth. It's not only necessary for mammalian life, it's downright pleasant. People voluntarily put themselves in saunas, hot tubs, and pay to get hot stone massages. It's nice. When it stops being nice, you can definitely tell! There's no need for "5G radiation" measurements with scientific instruments. When you're heated to the point that you take damage, it hurts. You have a built-in sensor for that. No need for lab tests. If your phone isn't burning your hand, it's not burning your brain. It's just that simple. PS: insects are 100% for certain being wiped out by pesticides, which are poisons specifically designed to kill insects. You'd have to have fantastically good evidence to argue that no-no-no-no, it's not the millions of tons of insect poison killing them, it's the microwaves that we've always used before, but suddenly they're deadly because they're used for mobile phones... slightly differently to how they've been used previously. "...according to the study presented in Stuttgart, which is yet to be peer reviewed." No peer review? Shocker.

pulvinar 5y ago

Their experiment has a serious flaw: live brains have active temperature regulation and wouldn't see these large temperature rises. Put that dead cow brain out in the sun and its temperature would rise too. But that solar radiation isn't causing brain cancer in cows out in fields.

oliv__ 5y ago
There seem to be differences between natural and man-made electromagnetic fields when it comes to biological activity: Polarization: A Key Difference between Man-made and Natural Electromagnetic Fields, in regard to Biological Activity [0] [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914
- adamredwoods 5y ago
  I'm not sure what that paper is trying to prove by killing E Coli with polarized 50Ghz, as we humans use all kinds of EM waves to our advantage already. We use ultraviolet radiation (750 THz range) to kill germs: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and-medical-devices/uv-lights-and-lamps-ultraviolet-c-radiation-disinfection-and-coronavirus https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/coronavirus-covid-19-and... Or lower RF (40Mhz) to transfer heat and kill germs in foods: https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-magazine/issues/2016/august/columns/processing-radio-frequency-processing-of-food https://www.ift.org/news-and-publications/food-technology-ma...
criticaltinker 5y ago
This is a good point that was acknowledged in the study and by other commenters here. However don’t you think comparing with the sun is a slippery analogy? Specifically when discussing the health effects of duration of exposure, beam shape, pulse pattern, etc?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

shrubble 5y ago

I had thought in the past, that as long as the radiation did not reach the level of 'ionizing', that there was nothing to worry about. However I do see papers like https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531 https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531 which talk about 'voltage gated calcium channels' etc. being affected. It seems to be a very complex subject...

ofou 5y ago
Can you provide some context why do you think this is a big deal? I'm not an expert, but I'm really interested.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Johnythree 5y ago
The "level" of radiation is not the issue. Whether Ionising radiation is present depends on the frequency being generated. It is either there or it's not.

p1necone 5y ago

Any actual physicists around who can weigh in with a "for dummies" explanation of this? I'm worried I'm having knee jerk reaction dismissing this as not evidence that 5g could be harmful because of the sheer amount of total nonsense 5G conspiracy theories I've also been exposed to. Especially interesting was someone mentioning potential affects on insects, who do have much thinner barriers between air and their internal organs/brains.

hamburgerwah 5y ago

A lot of people are trying to interpret this. I read the complete paper. This is very far from any kind of conclusive result that says 5G presents serious risks to human health. However it does raise a couple of important considerations that warrant further study. This study was done on cow brain tissue outside of a skull cavity and found that in certain specific circumstances the radio frequencies used by 5G can transmit energy to brain tissues and pathways that warrant further study. That's all this paper says and it's methodology appears to be pretty credible for the conclusion reached. In somewhat of a rarity these days, this appears to be "good science".

ofou 5y ago
Plus the limits of gel simulants to estimate potential hazards.

35mm 5y ago

What if it is damaging in other ways that are not detectable by tissue heating effect?

Johnythree 5y ago
If there were "hidden" dangers from EM radiation, then it would have been obvious decades ago. People harp on about tobacco, but the evidence for illness caused by smoking was immediately evident the first time it was examined. These days even school kids learning about statistics can download the data and see the correlation. However any correlation between EM and health has never been detected in spite of hundreds of careful studies.
- hypefi 5y ago
  Read The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, I am predicting in the next 5-10 years there will be a great change of view on how we see the impact of electromagnetic fields on health.
  - ofou 5y ago
    This is a must read. Also the 5G appeal in europe, over 230 scientists from more than 40 countries have expressed their “serious concerns” regarding the ubiquitous and increasing exposure to EMF generated by electric and wireless devices already before the additional 5G roll-out. [1] [1]: https://www.5gappeal.eu/ https://www.5gappeal.eu/
    - Johnythree 5y ago
      I read that page with interest, however was not surprised that it offers zero evidence to support it's claims. In fact they completely discredit themselves in their first paragraph: They clearly don't understand that 5G is a modulation mode, which can operate on any of the existing phone bands. And of course they offer no evidence that modulation is relevant. Secondly, the whole point of 5G is to replace the existing high-powered phone bases with multiple sources using much lower power. So if anything 5G will dramatically reduce the average power levels. It's pretty obvious that their push for a further study is a rather pointless scare campaign. If they are so concerned, why don't they start a "fund-me" campaign and do their own study? Designing a worthwhile study is surprisingly simple, and the equipment can be rented quite cheaply. Whatever, there have already been a large number of independent and well funded studies, none of which have demonstrated a convincing correlation.