Stop global roll out of 5G networks until safety is confirmed, urges expert

https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/stop-global-roll-out-of-5g-networks-until-safety-is-confirmed-urges-expert/

by rustoo • 6 years ago

35 38 6 years ago

bitcharmer• 6 years ago

I'm a complete ignorant in the matter, so will ask here. Did we have any research like this prior to rolling out 4G? Or is this concern about 5G simply because the frequencies involved are much higher?

rsync• 6 years ago

The frequencies may be higher but I believe the power is quite a bit lower - which is the point of 5G, yes ?

bdamm• 6 years ago

The objective of 5G is to increase profits for carriers by more deeply entrenching wireless broadband.

namibj• 6 years ago

4G doesn't do anything weird compared to older mobile/cellular radio technology. 5G includes an order of magnitude higher frequencies, with far less penetration depth into humans. Thus the power is dumped into less volume. While the power levels involved seem very safe, we don't have the vast research body of cm waves.

thu21114• 6 years ago

But we do have a lot of research into the effects of radio on biological cells, though. Is the assumption here that less power but higher frequency would somehow have effects on the body that have previously never been noticed and for which there is no present theoretical basis? Is this theory falsifiable in any reasonable way?

pjc502• 6 years ago

Opinion piece by non-expert in the field, failure to clearly present specific evidence (it's referred to, but not linked), pet subject for cranks. This is the kind of piece that makes the debate worse not better.

cutitout• 6 years ago

You haven't addressed a single point. Being an expert should help a person to make arguments, and sometimes does, but it's not an argument in and of itself.

pjc502• 6 years ago

sigh OK, full text: https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2021/01/04/jech-2019-2135...

Critics of 5G agree6–8—but its supporters do not9 10—that the overall population levels of exposure to RF-EMFs will be greatly increased by the 5G roll-out. One compelling argument for that view is the ‘inverse square law’ of EMF exposure: intensity varies as the inverse of the square of the distance from the emitting source.11 With plans afoot internationally to put a 5G booster antenna on ‘every second or third lamp-post’, it is difficult to believe that overall population exposures will not increase substantially

Yes, there will be more antennas. Does not address the question of power levels: part of the point of more antennas is that each individual station can have lower power output. No mention of "watts", antenna ERP, or indeed power anywhere in the article.

International health protection agencies and their scientific advisory bodies have published several reviews over the last decade, of varying scientific quality, of the research evidence regarding potential adverse biological and health effects of RF-EMFs.5 12–15 These reviews—by Health Protection England,12 the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC),13 an Expert European Union (EU) Committee14 and the International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection (ICNIRP)15—have, with one exception, not converged around a strong warning about such effects

In other words, current investigations do not support evidence of harm.

Moreover, a growing number of engineers, scientists, and doctors internationally have been calling on governments to raise their safety standards for RF-EMFs, commission more and better research, and hold off on further increases in public exposure, pending clearer evidence of safety.18–21 Some politicians have listened: France, Israel, Cyprus and Russia have banned WiFi in preschool and restricted its use in primary schools. Belgium has banned the sale of mobile phones to children under seven. In response to such concerns, several jurisdictions have recently blocked the installation of 5G antennae systems in their communities: Brussels, Florence, Rome, as well as Glastonbury, Frome and Totnes in the UK; and widespread anti-5G campaigns are now emerging in Australia, North America and elsewhere.

This is true but is a kind of self-referential policy; places that have banned 5G have often done so for unscientific reasons! Saying that there are anti-5G campaigns is like saying there are anti-mask campaigns; it is not actually evidence of harm.

more conservative jurisdictions’ guidelines, which are based on a wider variety of biological and health effects documented in recent decades

[citation needed] - no really, there are citations for other bits, where's the health effects citation?

A striking feature of this public controversy is that various commentators—even those with advanced training in telecommunications physics and engineering—inconsistently refer to quite different specific technologies when they discuss the pros and cons of 5G

Well, yes, it's a marketing term.

Discussion of local councils and lampposts. Hard to see relevance. No details of harm.

One’s overall assessment of the likelihood that an exposure causes a health condition should take into account a wide variety of evidence, including ‘biological plausibility

And "biological plausibility" is where it falls down, because I've not yet seen (and it's not expressed here either) a mechanism other than the raw heating effect of absorption used by the EU SAR metrics which has any plausible biological effect. See para on "non-thermogenic adverse effects" (what effects? How do they work? At what levels?)

Finally, Carpenter has recently published a well-researched analysis of how source of funding correlates with study findings, across many peer-reviewed publications over the last few decades, of the relationship between various kinds of EMF exposure and several cancers.39 He shows convincingly that studies funded by private sector entities, with strong vested interests in maintaining their current use of the sources of EMFs under study, tend to find no association

OK, this is a genuine question that does need to be asked, because we know there's been problems with this before.

innovations in radio frequency ‘pulsing,’ ‘polarisation’ and ‘modulation’

Non-physicist discovers QAM, is confused. Again, no explanation given of why this might make a difference.

happytoexplain• 6 years ago

The author being a non-expert in the field is useful to know. It doesn't have to be proof of something to be useful information in creating a more whole image. Even if that weren't the case, another point the parent made was that, in their opinion, the quality and tone of the article degrades conversation rather than contributing to it, which is another form of non-proof that is perfectly reasonable to express as an opinion. The parent may have spoken with a disrespectful tone, but "You haven't addressed a single point", is equally flippant and antagonistic. In fact, it's worse, since you're addressing it directly to a participant in the conversation.

arghwhat2• 6 years ago

This is actually a good question (rather than argument) for one reason: it's extremely simple to measure and debunk.

Go to a few places with good 5G and 4G coverage, measure EMF, compare, see nothing interesting and call it a day.

lima2• 6 years ago

It's not that simple - frequency and modulation can make a difference in terms of biological interactions. Not that I believe there to be any harmful effects.

D13Fd• 6 years ago

Agreed wholeheartedly. I don't understand what it is about 5G that makes it such a popular target.

vngzs• 6 years ago

I think a healthy degree of skepticism is warranted with all the bogus 5G news about. But the author of the cited study, Professor John Frank[0], has past research in occupational and environmental epidemiology. That sounds like exactly the branch of research that would be involved in analyzing the risks of new technology.

[0] https://www.ed.ac.uk/profile/john-frank

baxter001• 6 years ago

A meta-response: https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/should-we-pause-the-5g-roll-...

headconnect• 6 years ago

Its precisely this level of discourse we need when such topics are raised. Thanks for the link!

est• 6 years ago

5G might never fully rollout, carriers would find electricity bills too high, if what the article suggested is even half true.

WarOnPrivacy• 6 years ago

After burning blasphemous 5G cell towers at the stake and setting traps for cell-site technician priests, anti-5G believers try proselytizing directly to the heathen.

robjan• 6 years ago

One of the "dangers" presented in the article is the greater density of masts but that means rather than having high energy masts blasting radio waves broadly over the population, we can have lots of low power ones. That seems like a better situation to me.

tzs2• 6 years ago

Not necessarily. Remember that field strength goes as the inverse square of the distance from the transmitter.

Suppose you need a certain minimum field strength for the receivers to work, and suppose it turns out that there is also a maximum safe field strength.

With a system based on a small number of powerful transmitters to cover an area you can usually place those transmitters in somewhat out of the way places that few people get near. You will have variation in field strength as you move around within the service area, but it won't be a lot of variation.

If I'm 1000 m from the transmitter and move 1 m closer, the field gets 0.2% stronger.

With a system based on a large number of weaker transmitters those transmitters need to be closer to where the receivers are to get the same minimum field strength throughout the same area. But with people much closer to the transmitters, there will be a lot more variation in field strength as they move around, so it would be harder to make sure that no places where people commonly go stays under your maximum.

If I'm 100 m from the transmitter and move 1 m closer, the field gets 2% stronger.

If I'm 10 m from the transmitter and move 1 m closer, the field gets 23% stronger.

thu21114• 6 years ago

There are a few problems with this argument though. It's technically correct, but:

1. All mobile protocols reduce signal strength to the lowest possible to reach the device. The field strength isn't some constant quantity. 5G is all about massive beamforming and super accurate power management. You're being targeted with an individual beam that's reduced the min strength possible to actually maintain radio contact. So moving closer doesn't imply a stronger 'field'.

2. Even with 4G it's totally common to have lots of base stations in the middle of cities, on rooftops, etc. It's not like they're all in the middle of empty fields today, far from it.

jsjdjfjfjjrjfk• 6 years ago

This totally neglects that in many cases, your smartphone is the closest transmitter. Having many base stations reduces the output power of your smartphone necessary to create the field power at the base station.

secondcoming• 6 years ago

I finally got a 5G signal near my home. The mast is further away than the 4G mast but I'm getting ~250Mbps down, and 60 Mbps up. Pings could be better though.

I can't wait for the closer 4G mast to be upgraded.

Stop this roll out over my dead body.

daemoon2• 6 years ago

Its inherent fragility means that transmission boosting ‘cell’ antennae are generally required every 100–300 m—which is far more spatially dense than the transmission masts required for older 2G, 3G and 4G technology, using lower frequency waves

I can see that it's necessary to place 5G masts more densely in order to deliver the promised transmission rates and coverage but it seems like a bad solution to a greater problem. Assuming the trend continues one would need even more cells to deliver 6G, 7G etc. Are there no other ways of increasing the bandwidth without placing a mast at every city corner?

1241rtfasfasf2• 6 years ago

The high frequencies are one of the techniques in 5G that enable faster data transmission. Another is beamforming: instead of broadcasting data in all directions, it is only sent in the direction of your smartphone. The thing is, there's no change for the receiving smartphone (same RF transmission power), just reduction in interference for others.

[edit: thereby, you can have more devices talking on the same frequency without disturbing each other, since they are separated by the "beams"]

CraigJPerry• 6 years ago

Quite a weak article, i’m surprised this makes the bar for publication.

There’s a fair amount of contradiction too, it makes a distinction of “5G EMF” but then goes on to say 5G is loosely defined. So why 5G EMF and not just EMF? EMF in the Ghz to Thz range is not new. The only extra information conferred by adding 5G to the term is that we’re restricting the concerns to EMF at very low power levels (milliwatts).

I missed any links to let me follow up on the claims of harm found from non ionising radiation. I definitely want to see a bit more of the basis for those claims because if they’re based on findings at megawatts of RF energy then it’s not exactly useful, on the other hand if the findings are based on milliwatts of RF energy, that’s potentially a concern.

Side note: i don’t know if you’ve had a look at the 2.4GHz spectrum recently but i am amazed at the amount of emissions and i live next to mostly fields, genuinely surprised to see much in the way of emissions. Bluetooth beacons are a real stand out surprise, neighbours televisions, bathroom scales, all sorts of things that I wouldn’t expect to beacon when turned off.

abeppu• 6 years ago

On the one hand, it seems like to really understand the public health consequences, especially if some of the important effects are likely to be rare, one would likely need to see a large population exposed for a very long period of time (e.g. do babies who live their whole life around this tech develop some cancer when they're middle aged?) meaning the wait could be very long indeed, and probably by the end of it, engineers would have figured out something way better anyway.

But on the other hand, we do seem too prone to jump headlong into wide use of new tech without understanding all their impacts. Light pollution, climate change, microplastics inside everything including human placentas, leaded gasoline which may have driven a generation of higher crime rates, etc etc.

So in what cases _should_ we as a society wait a few decades to really vet something on a beta-testing population, if ever?

akmarinov• 6 years ago

Like you said something like 5G causing cancer 30 years down the line would be very difficult to pinpoint as a cause of 5G, due to hundreds of other factors.

Either way, if you're worried about 5G, you should be worried about terrestrial TV airwaves as well.

gnabgib• 6 years ago

The actual essay[0] is more tempered than the linked news release would suggest, and sounds like Professor Frank is hedging more than anything. The precise technology used is a complicated by 5G using different frequency bands between countries[1], even between providers [2]

[0] https://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2021/01/04/jech-2019-2135... [1]: https://www.pcmag.com/news/upgrade-now-or-wait-canadas-5g-se... [2]: https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-vs-at-t-vs-t-mobile-vs-spr... (Although this article is old enough things may have changed)

swiley• 6 years ago

Honestly, safety isn't my biggest complaint about 5g. We already have a wireless standard for short range networks: WiFi. It supports the same bands and multi antenna beam forming techniques. 5G means replacing open WiFi networks with networks controlled by a handful of companies paying fees to one or two equipment manufactures and pretty much exclusively Qualcomm in the US. Yes, the same Qualcomm that makes Android such a shitty platform by not publish GPU specs/driver code so you can throw out the broken code from the OEM.

1241rtfasfasf2• 6 years ago

I haven't seen use case proposals where 5G replaces home WiFis. It's often referred to as replacing the last mile to your home (i.e., your home router would talk 4G/5G to the operator and create a WiFi in your home). Also, some "small cell" approaches use WiFi and only do the access management using the mobile network.

WiFi on the other hand doesn't have any approaches for wide coverage, cell handover, or any kind of IoT applications.

I'd expect that smaller manufacturers emerge, especially for niche use cases outside consumer mass-markets.

Stop global roll out of 5G networks until safety is confirmed, urges expert

Related Stories