We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/

by papito • 5 years ago

27 48 5 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

papito2• 5 years ago

"Since the FCC adopted these limits based largely on research from the 1980s, the preponderance of peer-reviewed research, more than 500 studies, have found harmful biologic or health effects from exposure to RFR at intensities too low to cause significant heating."

And...

"The research suggests that long-term exposure may pose health risks to the skin (e.g., melanoma), the eyes (e.g., ocular melanoma) and the testes (e.g., sterility)."

What I see is the "small government" striking again. These federal agencies that are there to protect the public from irresponsible capitalism (e.g. Boeing) have been gutted to the point where they are effectively subsidiaries of the businesses. Lord forbid they affect shareholder value.

edmcnulty1012• 5 years ago

education > regulation.

We don't even know if 5g is dangerous!

We're going on data from the 80's?

They could protect the public by doing research and actually finding out what's going on.

Isn't the fed the number one in research grant amounts? Can't it award something to look into this?

tablespoon4• 5 years ago

education > regulation

Not really. There's always going to be a significant fraction of the public that will be irresponsible, either through ignorance, intransigence, or greed. And then there's the fact that the amount personal education and effort required to substitute for regulation in the modern world is so high to be entirely impractical (sure you could reasonably take up one or two areas, but not all areas).

papito2• 5 years ago

I don't really see how this applies. First of all, the whole point is that the agency is NOT doing it, because it does not have the public's interest in mind.

Secondly, how would education help here? Am I supposed to walk around with a detailed map of 5G towers, spaced every 200 meters? Or what if Boeing decides to make a vital redundant piece of equipment optional - a thing that actually happened - killing hundreds of people. The regulation was flawed. How does education help?

NikolaeVarius2• 5 years ago

However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research.

Ok, well if this is the stance that this article is taking, its a +1 to the notion that Scientific American has gone the way of the History Channel, pure trash.

Miner49er• 5 years ago

I'm curious what is wrong with this statement? Is it false or something?

NikolaeVarius2• 5 years ago

we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G

This is false.

Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology

Also false.

nickysielicki2• 5 years ago

Before I took an interest in amateur radio I always thought that there was zero evidence of non-ionizing radiation being dangerous. Like you. I thought it was established science that it was safe. Then I came across some recent papers and came to learn that NIR is definitely associated with the disruption of cells, and it’s not because of localized heating.

Go do a Google Scholar search for “non-ionizing radiation dangerous cell phones” and you’ll find a bunch of results from 15 years ago that say it’s perfectly safe, and another bunch of articles from the past 5 years saying the opposite.

It’s not quite the same risk as chain smoking cigarettes, but it’s definitely there.

Edit: link, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02697...

Aloha4• 5 years ago

It's field strength that's the key here - and the field strength from a cell phone is basically impossibly low.

dekhn5• 5 years ago

Yes, it's correct non-ionzing radation has detectable effects on cells, some of which are deleterious.

It's still not quite enough (given the lack of strong epidemiological evidence) to make any arguments for or against 5G.

tablespoon4• 5 years ago

> However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research.

What would be the difference between 2G/3G and 4G from a health perspective? Does 4g transmit on different frequencies or at a higher power level or something?

My assumption was that they were pretty similar from a "radio" perspective, and the differences were mostly in the protocol.

hammyhavoc2• 5 years ago

Enjoy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G#New_radio_frequencies

cl423• 5 years ago

The article made me curious about the incidence of head and neck cancers over time. I only found a UK graph ending in 2018, but it does show a significant increase from 1993 to 2018[1]... 33% and 50% for men and women, respectively.

That sounds... high... but this is also pre-5G.

[1] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-...

sunbum• 5 years ago

Which can entirely be explained by the fact that we have gotten way way better at detecting cancers since 1993.

cl423• 5 years ago

Beautiful point! I remember reading about this a few years ago, and it is a fantastic confounding factor.

I wonder -- do cancer studies take cancer detection rates into account?

newbamboo2• 5 years ago

I’m reminded of the history of the science establishing the link between cigarettes and cancer. All the same arguments and similar conflicted interests. Took many decades before the mainstream accepted the linkage and of course the industry still denies the science.

pessimizer3• 5 years ago

Which might entirely be explained by us getting better at detecting cancers, but I would have to see evidence.

The purpose of cancer detection is to be as early as possible, allowing more time for treatment. It is not to count cancers. I would assume the vast majority of cancers are eventually detected, unless you die of something else before they become a problem. So, unless I'm missing something, your claim is that at least 33% to 50% of head and neck cancers would not have ever become identifiable as cancers without improvements made since 1993, which I think is insanely high.

edit: and seeming high doesn't make it impossible, I know that there are a lot of slow growing prostate cancers where people die of old age before ever noticing them. But we know this because we checked for them after people were dead. Is there anything similar connected to particular head and neck cancers that you can point out?

ekianjo• 5 years ago

We'd need to do the same research worldwide (at least where phones were massively deployed) to confirm if there is clearly some indication of link or not. H&N cancers can come from multiple factors too.

sydbarrett74• 5 years ago

Some of this increase can be explained by exploding rates of human papilloma virus infection.

OJFord2• 5 years ago

We Also Have No Reason To Believe <Latest Launch HN> Is Safe

(*and no, also no reason to believe the contrary..)

unmole• 5 years ago

Cancer causes cellphones: https://xkcd.com/925/

newbamboo2• 5 years ago

You can’t see it, therefore it doesn’t exist.

Aloha4• 5 years ago

We have little reason to believe it's dangerous either.

Look, I've known dozens of RF engineers who died of cancer (mostly lung) - people who had much higher than common exposure to both low frequency and microwave RF, but they all had one thread in common - they all smoked like chimneys. As an aside, they also used carcinogenic solvents with regularity for most of their careers. It's best not to confuse correlation with causation.

There is no evidence to indicate that exposure to RF at 5G frequencies is different than exposure to any other kind of higher frequency RF, 800, 1900, 2.6 and the other cellular bands behave similarly around the human body. If anything I'd expect lower effects, because the field strength is so low.

There is an enormous body of work that indicates that field strength not frequency is the relevant thing here.

Articles like this are little more than opinion articles.

qorrect2• 5 years ago

We have little reason to believe it's dangerous either.

I took that as the point of the article, we don't know enough to say whether it's safe or dangerous, so let's pause and study it "for real this time".

Articles like this are little more than opinion articles.

This article sounds like it's the opinion of the 240 scientists that are calling for the study though, not an uninformed journalists opinion.

Aloha4• 5 years ago

We have a pretty enormous body of work that was used to set safe field exposure limits for RF. No one seems to be making a rational argument why that work isnt relevent.

RobertRoberts• 5 years ago

Look at the documentation of many industrial strength radio systems that include health regulations for exposure to RF. (sometimes on the outside of the box in stores even)

A hand-wavy sort of dismissal of health issues around many forms of radiation seem to be common in the tech world.

hammyhavoc2• 5 years ago

I know plenty of RF engineers who haven't died, or have lived very long lives. They also don't smoke.

Aloha4• 5 years ago

That was the tongue in cheek remark. Smoking has taken a great very many lives before their time.

blakesterz• 5 years ago

I have NO idea if the author knows what he's talking about, I've never heard of him before, but he at least has a background in this area.

This is his website: https://www.saferemr.com/

He points to a bunch of studies on this topic. Seems like there's enough there for you to make up your own mind on how reliable he can be.

He's from University of California, Berkeley and seems to study this stuff.

zhrvoj• 5 years ago

Reminds me of this: https://history.aip.org/exhibits/curie/radinst3.htm They were wrong, now we know. But today we are much more clever, are we? Now, when big investments are backing up 5G development...

el_don_almighty• 5 years ago

7.7B people and you found 240 of them who said, "This is scary. Pay us and we will scare you some more!"

The most poignant thing I learned in 1990 came from my electromagnetics & digital communications professor at Iowa State, Dr. Mani Mina who used to say, "The more you scare people, the more they will pay you."

He's still there and still brilliant.

As Omicron winds down the pandemic, the media needs a new boogeyman to drive clicks and scientists need funding for apparition research

It's almost Spring and time for NASA/NOAA to regale us with their latest scary tales requiring money as part of the annual Federal budgeting process. Happens every year and coincides with new swimsuit fashion releases.

Dang, I am getting to old for this...

We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe

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