
“We have no reason to believe 5G is safe” - bookofjoe
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-have-no-reason-to-believe-5g-is-safe/
======
marcosdumay
Honestly, after a glance at the links, they don't inspire confidence in me
either. There are papers about very small changes on very rare types of
cancer, measured by proxy on a species where it's common; papers criticizing
the critics claiming association with interested parties (what is a perfectly
fine thing to claim, but what is it doing in a scientific paper?); and the
only wide review I could find claims that the literature has very weak
conclusions that are not sufficient to claim any danger.

As usual, it's not the scientists that are wackos, it's the press that is
claiming things completely different from what they say. There are proposals
for better test equipment that should be taken, but I don't see any other
claim for change there.

> At the same time, everybody seems to accept that the chance of getting
> cancer in your lifetime has risen to about one in three for men and one in
> five for women.

The wildest of the claims anywhere on the linked papers is a ~10% increase on
the rate of one of the rarest types of cancer, so this line of research won't
give you the answers you are looking for.

~~~
Spooky23
The thing that concerns me about millimeter wave tech and 5G is that it seems
like a solution looking for a problem. My city just had a wave of poles
dropped in a few neighborhoods, and they seem to me to be an expensive
boondoggle. IMO, we would be better served by the heavy hand of the FCC
allowing fiber providers to run telephone poles and trenches without any
accountability (as the wireless carriers can with 5G).

These radio bands have been in military use for a long time. I’m surprised
that no health studies have been done or released to the public.

~~~
tboyd47
It's not a solution looking for a problem. The problem is that the existing
infrastructure does not support network slicing. Without network slicing the
telcos are severely limited in their pricing models. "5G" is just them trying
to convince consumers that this is for their benefit.

~~~
Gnarl
True! Right now telcos loathe being locked in as fixed-price dumb bit-pipes
for the content providers, the netflix'es, facebooks & amazon's, who are
making all the money.

Thus: 5G.

~~~
leereeves
It's competition and regulation, not technology, that prevents telcos from
charging as much as they'd like. How will network slicing change that?

------
BurnGpuBurn
I'm amazed at how many people here actually decline to click on the links in
the article, which would guide one to a large list of scientific publications,
with links to the original publications themselves.

Yet they are very ready to call "more than 240 scientists who have published
peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing
electromagnetic fields" "wackos" or "cranks with a PhD", call their research
"bullshit" or "impossible", call the people "thruthers" or claiming "Russian
troll farms" are behind this story.

I don't think I've ever seen so much non-scientific HN comments on a science
article.

At the same time, everybody seems to accept that the chance of getting cancer
in your lifetime has risen to about one in three for men and one in five for
women. And nobody knows why. However everybody who points to a possible answer
is shot down without much investigation. Sad, really.

~~~
userbinator
_At the same time, everybody seems to accept that the chance of getting cancer
in your lifetime has risen to about one in three for men and one in five for
women. And nobody knows why._

Because life expectancy has also risen; people who used to be dying of other
things are now living long enough that cancer is more common.

~~~
andrepd
Unfortunately the hunch you have just spendt 30 seconds thinking about is
sadly incorrect. The increase in life expectancy doesn't account for the
increased incidence of cancers. There are other factors at play, which need to
be investigated (some that we know: obesity, pollution, cigarettes).

~~~
pas
[https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#are-death-rates-from-
cance...](https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#are-death-rates-from-cancer-
rising)

"In other words, the individual incidence of cancer deaths has actually
fallen."

~~~
andrepd
You are looking at cancer deaths, which indeed have gone down from better
treatments and better screening. This does not imply less incidence of cancer.

~~~
aey
I think you just answered your own question. As detection improves, so will
the rates at which cancer is detected.

~~~
shkkmo
AFAIK, Better detection means earlier detection and may not lead to a decrease
in cancers that are never detected.

~~~
manicdee
It leads to in increase in cancers detected before the person dies of non-
cancer causes.

Situation: person has an almost undetectable cancer. They see a doctor, no
cancer detected, later that week they are shot by police at a routine road
stop.

We get in our time machine, go back a week and a bit, and supply the doctor
with a better detection kit.

Situation 2: person has an almost undetectable cancer. They see a doctor who
refers them to a specialist, cancer detected, another notch on the cancer
tally board. Later that week they are shot by police at a routine road stop.

Nothing has changed except in the second case there’s another cancer detected.
The person is still dead from non-cancer causes, just in one scenario they
died as a haver-of-cancer and in the other they didn’t.

Better/earlier detection will necessarily lead to a decrease in cancers that
are never detected (which I interpret as an increase in cancers detected
before mortality from other causes), otherwise it’s not better/earlier
detection.

------
cjslep
Radiation dosimetry is a combination of:

* Frequency of radiation

* Power of exposure

* Duration of exposure

* Where in the human body absorption is occurring

While the effects of the latter three are pretty well understood for certain
kinds of radiation (ionizing and non-ionizing) ranging from "acute radiation
sickness due to gamma burst" to "listening to the radio your whole life
doesn't have a link to cancer", there is truth that a specific band of
millimeter 5G has been less studied than others.

However, science follows patterns, and interpolating the existing data to this
sub-infrared region opens a kind of wiggle room similar to, but in fact the
opposite to, low dosimetry of ionizing radiation that has given the Linear No
Threshold model a run for it's money. Except in this case, skeptics are
typically concerned about chemical effects due to subdermal heating (not
really as compelling as ionizing radiation effects), or debating the "non-
ionizing-ness" (which is less common because its even less supported by
evidence).

It comes down to a persons personal risk. In my opinion, the sun beats out all
non ionizing radiation concerns, particularly when it comes to heating of the
skin and subdermal tissues. Wear a hat and sunscreen (against the sun).

Still worth researching and acknowledging the data gap, as the EU does in its
metastudy of 40+ years and X00 scientific papers [0], but there's no reason to
be alarmed based on the existing corpus of evidence.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/docs/scenihr_o_041.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiCttyFoK3lAhVKL1AKHU4SB7IQFjAAegQICRAC&usg=AOvVaw1qjeNEXhMye0UL-K6Azv7s&cshid=1571657533347)

Edit to add citation

~~~
Someone1234
> It comes down to a persons personal risk. [..] Wear a hat and sunscreen.

What's the "hat and sunscreen" protection against millimeter wave cellphone
towers, that someone else installed on their private property near you?

I'm not yet convinced the risks exist. But conceptually if there was a danger,
there's no "personal risk" argument. We're blanketing the whole area around a
tower with millimeter wave/5G, a person cannot opt out.

~~~
SigmundA
The sun is a 1000 watts per square meter exposure at your body, cell towers
might be 100w if you hugged the antenna then inverse square law to distance to
about 0.00000001 watt with a strong signal. Your cell device is a millwatts
transmitter, equivalent to an LED light shining on you.

You don't need hat and sunscreen for street lights or flashlights nor would
you need it for cellular power levels, orders of magnitude difference in
exposure.

~~~
koheripbal
Absorbsion rates vary by orders of magnitude depending on signal frequency.

A simple power comparison is not a great measure of affect.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
The Sun transfers orders of magnitude more heat to your body than cell towers
or your phone.

The problem with every argument about radiation from cell phones being
dangerous is that for every proposed mechanism, the Sun is orders of magnitude
more damaging.

The obvious worries with cell phones are repeated stress injuries, insomnia
and disruption of personal relationships. There's just no plausible mechanism
for the radiation to be damaging, though.

~~~
mcguire
Out of curiosity, do you wear sunscreen to keep yourself cool?

------
scotty79
The thing is that there's really ton of evidence that non-ionizing radiation
is not significantly harmful to humans at levels that don't cook you.

If you want to counter that you can't just pile up small studies that might be
hinting at possibility that there might be some other effect.

You need a smoking gun. Single study, but bulletproof and large, showing
strong effect. Everything else will be dismissed as "maybe, possibly, but most
likely not really".

~~~
manifestsilence
This comment explains precisely why the dismissal from so many here.
Correlational studies without a plausible causal mechanism are highly suspect.

As an illustration, people have used obviously bogus examples like, in the
past 100 years, piracy has risen. So has global warming. Therefore, pirates
cause global warming.

Unless a 5G study specifically addresses the mechanism, and how non-ionizing
radiation can cause damage to DNA, or has a very large correlation established
that does a very good job of controlling for other factors, these studies will
be dismissed out of hand.

~~~
dnautics
There's plenty of ways that non-ionizing radiation can result in increased
cancer rates. For example, they can induce currents in the DNA (DNA is s
molecular wire) which might jam the base excision repair system and prevent it
from detecting DNA damage (which is a redox-driven process).

What's even scarier is that this sort of an effect will not be found in a
standard Ames test and also is unlikely to be found in highly controlled lab
settings, since it requires a second factor - a contaminating primary mutagen
- to manifest its effect.

~~~
stinos
_they can induce currents in the DNA_

By what mechanism (and it's likely not limited to DNA then)?

~~~
blix
EMF radiation can induce a current in any condutor. Try putting a piece of tin
foil in a microwave.

It's far from limited to DNA, but it's not hard to imagine why people care
more about DNA than other conductive molecules.

------
murgindrag
I'd be interested in seeing signatures from people at institutions I recognize
and trust. There are a lot of people with degrees FROM credible institutions,
but very little in terms of currently being researchers in the field AT
credible institutions.

It's not hard to find 250 wackos if you pull random scientists working in
random fields at random institutions. Most have no better way to know safety
of 5G than I do.

Now, there's obviously some frequency band where we get into health risks. 5G
jumps us from single-digit GHz to double-digit -- I'd guess you'd have to go
at least past visible light before you run into safety issues, at least
barring extremely high levels of exposure. Intuitively, it seems to me like
that ought to still be safe, but I'm no expert.

But an appeal to experts -- with no real experts behind it -- doesn't do it
for me. Neither does an appeal to papers based on volume, without a clear
description of what they found and how. Most science is junk science.

~~~
notacoward
The scientists' appeal, including a list of signatories and their
affiliations, isn't hard to find by following links.

[https://emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-
appeal](https://emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-appeal)

Likewise for a list of relevant papers:

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl3Eur3/view)

Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust? Columbia?
Monash? McGill? Can we dispense with the tired ad hominems and talk about
science? A self-proclaimed guess from a self-proclaimed non-expert seems ill
placed in a credentialist diatribe.

~~~
nabla9
Harvard Medical School is good institution but people on the list are not
experts in the subject. Autism researchers etc.

~~~
rrss
The autism researcher from Harvard has studied the plausibility of a link
between autism and radiofrequency radiation:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24095003/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24095003/).

------
hannob
I clicked on a few links and Googled a few names. It's roughly what I'd
expect: People with few publications now working in other fields, people
without scientific publications, but university degrees, people who regularly
speak at events from radiation critics, people who are invested in other
fringe theories.

People get fooled by "large lists of peer-reviewed publications". Peer review
is a lowest level quality mark for a piece of science. It means that hopefully
it's not complete bullshit. Sometimes it still is, because noone can forbid
you to call your journal "peer-reviewed" with your own weak standards of peer
review. And sometimes credible journals make huge mistakes (remember the
"Wakefield-study"...). Even with only well-performed, non-flawed studies
you'll always have some studies saying that something is there that actually
isn't. That's simple statistics, you'll have outliers.

"Here's a large number of studies saying X" is meaningless in a topic where a
very large number of studies have been done. What you need is systematic
reviews of the literature that not only count studies, but evaluate their
quality and combine their results.

Also it's not true that "nobody knows why" cancer incidence has risen. It's a
mixture of people getting older and diagnosis getting better. Not mysterious
at all.

~~~
nroets
Furthermore, even if cell phones cause cancer then the risk will in all
likelihood be so small that it doesn't justify banning the technology. [1]

For example, eating barbecued meat causes cancer, but it we don't ban it.

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5XkhUGzBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5XkhUGzBs)

~~~
scriptdevil
Wouldn't the difference there be that the person consuming meat is voluntarily
consuming it while even people sticking to older tech phones are exposed to
the newer radiation? I am no luddite but this would be my argument from a
devil's advocate position

~~~
magduf
No, because you're only exposed to radiation if you actually use a phone.
Google for "inverse square law". Your exposure is orders of magnitude lower
from "second-hand cellphones" than from using it yourself; it's not like
second-hand smoking.

~~~
wongarsu
> it's not like second-hand smoking

Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air
currents)?

~~~
Dylan16807
> Shouldn't smoke follow the inverse square law as well (in the absence of air
> currents)?

That's why smoking is allowed outdoors.

~~~
catalogia
(Except when it's not.)

It's not really uncommon to see "no smoking on the patio" or "no smoking
within 100 feet of this door" signs. And some states have legalized smoking
cannabis, except outdoors.

~~~
Dylan16807
Patios are usually very close to doors. Is the threshold really 100 feet in
some places?

~~~
catalogia
I've seen such limits imposed on private property, but as far as I know there
aren't any laws (specifically for cigarette smoke) that extreme.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a smoker and never have been. I like these laws.
I'm just being a bit pedantic. There has been a general trend of restricting
smoking and I think that trend has continued outdoors. It used to be that you
could smoke anywhere, then businesses started creating indoor smoking
sections. Then indoor smoking sections were banned and smokers moved to the
outdoor seating. Then smoking outside near exterior doors was banned, in a way
that effectively banned smoking at many restaurants entirely. Beyond this, in
some places like NYC you have smoking bans in public parks and beaches as
well, regardless of how far you are from any exterior door. (To be clear, I
support these bans because cigarette smokers are notorious for their litter.)

And in the case of cannabis the restrictions are even more severe. In
Washington you cannot smoke cannabis in view of the general public or in most
buildings (except residential, although many apartment buildings have smoking
bans too.) California is more permissive, but even they enforce a 1000(!) foot
smoking ban around schools and youth centers.

------
LeonM
With every new generation of cellular technology, this question comes up.

This started as early as CT, then DECT, GSM, 3G, 4G and now 5G.

After 30+ years of having consumer grade wireless telephony we are still
debating whether the radio signals have any negative effect on living beings.

If we can't draw any conclusion from a sample size that big, then I must
conclude that the effects of EM-radiation are so minimal (if any at all), that
it is not something I should worry about.

Edit: typo

~~~
Tepix
> I must conclude that the effects of EM-radiation are so minimal

Cancer rates are rising and we're not sure why. Is that acceptable?

~~~
xorfish
There are quite a few obvious reasons why cancer rates are rising.

* People get older

* Cancer detection is improving

* Cancer mortality is sinking

~~~
markus92
And mortality by non-cancer causes is dropping (e.g. car accidents, infectious
diseases).

------
ttul
The author's bias is apparent from his biography:

"Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community
Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California,
Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless
radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a
review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of
brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than
two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the
International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology."

This article does not represent scientific consensus. It is alarmist, linking
nearly every report that supports the author's point of view and offering no
opposing points of view. This is not journalism.

~~~
carapace
Did you see, at the top of the page, "Observations | Opinion"?

~~~
katmannthree
Should that absolve them of writing deceptive articles that feed in to a type
of paranoia that is fairly harmful to society[0]?

[0]: Not that the anti-wireless people are particularly influential right now,
but they're fairly close to antivacciene people in how they perceive the world
with an almost complete absence of rational thought.

~~~
carapace
Well, first, I was responding to OP's complaint that the article "supports the
author's point of view and offering no opposing points of view. This is not
journalism." by pointing out that, in fact, it's _not_ journalism, it's
opinion.

Second, the whole reason articles like this get published and read is that, in
this case, one man's "alarmism" or "deception" or "paranoia" is another man's
sober _scientific_ caution. It's the same problem with GMOs. People are
rushing to market with unproven technology to make money while insisting it's
all perfectly safe.

Why not wait a century, do more research, and decide then? What's the
_urgency_ to roll it out now?

~~~
katmannthree
>Well, first, I was responding to OP's complaint that the article "supports
the author's point of view and offering no opposing points of view. This is
not journalism." by pointing out that, in fact, it's not journalism, it's
opinion.

I understand the distinction, but posting dubious opinion articles on news
sites is still problematic. The Scientific American does not host articles
espousing racist ideologies / vehemently blatant pseudoscience, by publishing
this it is a form of tacit endorsement (despite it going in their opinion
section).

>Second, the whole reason articles like this get published and read is that,
in this case, one man's "alarmism" or "deception" or "paranoia" is another
man's sober scientific caution. It's the same problem with GMOs. People are
rushing to market with unproven technology to make money while insisting it's
all perfectly safe.

The problem is that both the antiEMF and antiVaccine people are in fact not
applying scientific principles to the issue. Cherry picking studies and
opinions that support a given viewpoint is at best a rhetorical argument from
authority, it is absolutely not a scientific approach to verifying a
hypothesis.

>Why not wait a century, do more research, and decide then? What's the urgency
to roll it out now?

The urgency comes in part from the fact that the 4G network is congested and
at capacity in dense urban areas, and also from political dealings between US
and Chinese telecom companies.

~~~
carapace
Cheers! I really appreciate your reply. Personally, I hate e.g. those "magic
medallions" that are supposed to "absorb" EM and the like, but I'm not yet
convinced that bathing our cities with EM is going to turn out to have zero
health side-effects. In any event, the issue should be settled scientifically,
eh? I was surprised to see this on SciAm's website, FWIW.

~~~
katmannthree
Likewise! I appreciate your willingness to discuss this. I was also surprised
to see it on their website, surprised and disappointed. The Scientific
American used to produce wonderful articles and project guides, and I credit
them with having helped jumpstart my love for technology. It is sad to see
them publish low quality articles.

I understand your hesitation with regard to increasing the invisible radiation
flux. I would likely feel the same way if I wasn't close to the field. From my
point of view I would be far more worried about the materials used to produce
modern phones and the disposal of the resulting industrial waste, the
volatility of their batteries (particularly from manufacturers with shoddy
QC), and the ethical considerations of sourcing the materials used.

~~~
carapace
I agree, Scientific American must be feeling the hurt but I don't want them
to, uh, dilute their brand.

In re: EM, I have a better-than-average layman's understanding, but I'm
certainly no expert. The specific thing that concerns me is the interaction of
_lots_ of sources with the urban environment. One or a few transmitters might
be safe in the lab for N years' exposure, but dozens of transmitters operating
in an environment with all kinds and shapes of metal and plastic and
stone/concrete could conceivably lead to transients that have (relatively)
severe side-effects.

I think, with examples like lead in gasoline and asbestos in insulation, etc.,
that we should be more cautious than we have been in the past. Especially when
a given technology is more a marginal than a vital improvement to our lives.

In any event, you bring up a very good point: "... I would be far more worried
about the materials used to produce modern phones and the disposal of the
resulting industrial waste, ..." Indeed, there are a lot of problems "in line"
before you get to "Cellphones gave me cancer!".

Cheers! Well met.

------
Gnarl
This thread would be much shorter if someone had read this:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26151230](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26151230)

~~~
Gnarl
and also this:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914](https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14914)

~~~
doctorpangloss
These are good things to read to understand a consensus that yes,
electromagnetic radiation has biological effects.

For people reading this stuff, always search for something called the Odds
Ratio (OR), which is a gold standard way of comparing how clinically
significant a thing is. For example, smoking has an OR of 60 for lung cancer.
A well covered paper on birth control suggested its OR for developing
depression is 1.26, and the massive aspirin on heart health study had 0.95 OR
of cardiovascular disease in one of the surveyed counties (ie aspirin improved
clinical outcome).

If error bars on measured OR contain 1.0 you can’t say if it is helpful or
harmful. OR accounts for baseline incidence in a way that RR (relative risk)
does not. So it lets you actually choose among behaviors instead of within
diseases or outcomes. It informs why it’s possible to tell everyone they
shouldn’t smoke (OR is very high), keep taking birth control (because
depression outcome is better than unwanted or complicated pregnancy outcomes),
and aspirin for cardiovascular disease prophylaxis (very limited side effects,
very cheap so even 0.95 is worth it).

I don’t know if there’s a consensus that electromagnetic radiation from
electronics has clinical significance. If there is clinical significance it
will be a small OR for most outcomes. It won’t be comparable at all to e.g.
smoking.

However this is still an imperfect measure. In Japan OR for lung disease from
smoking is 15, 4 times better than the US. The researchers speculated this has
to do with a specific filter on common Japanese cigarettes but it could be
genetics or other things that they didn’t control for (ie BMI and gender
matching but not Japanese ancestry). So technology can have huge effects on
clinical outcomes but 4x 15 is a much bigger deal than 4x 1.015. My point is
that it has its limitations but OR definitely measures something real.

This is a robust framework for evaluating how this research matters to you in
a way that does not require conspiracies or investigating the researcher’s
backgrounds. Additionally it is widely accepted by legitimate medical
practitioners across the world.

Under this framework, the reviews posted here do not document clinical
significance, although individual papers cited in them might.

A big limitation is that mice are tested with orders of magnitude higher
incidence rate of the disease to quickly find RR (high RR in mice vs placebo
is strong research evidence just not strong clinical evidence). So mouse OR
isn’t often predicative of human OR. But this applies to chart reviews too.
Still a pretty durable framework.

~~~
godelski
> A big limitation is that mice are tested with orders of magnitude higher
> incidence rate of the disease to quickly find RR

Do people also assume that EM radiation is a linear no threshold? Because we
know it isn't true for ionizing radiation, but it is a great model to use in
practice because it overestimates harm (which we'd rather over estimate than
under).

I've read a few of those papers on the EM radiation on mice and they seem to
assume a LNT model, which doesn't seem all that honest to me. A few of the
papers I read didn't have great p-values either and had drastically differing
rates of cancer development for radiation levels and sex (IIRC one big one had
high cancer rates for low power, nothing for medium, and moderate cancer rates
for high power. Which there was no explanation to this. But that might have
just been one bad paper).

~~~
aclarry
Citation for knowing it isn't true for ionizing radiation? LNT is supported by
the US NRC, the EPA, and UNSCEAR. Not saying that it supports the papers on EM
radiation, but it's definitely not crazy to assume LNT in your research (and
given we don't know much about the effects of low radiation doses, it's
definitely the more precautionary option).

~~~
greggman2
Isn't the answer "Denver"? The city has a higher radiation dosage than average
yet no more medical issues. Or at least that's something I heard once. A quick
google brought up this site (which I have no idea who is sponcering)

[https://atomicinsights.com/science-falsified-no-safe-dose-
hy...](https://atomicinsights.com/science-falsified-no-safe-dose-hypothesis-
radiation-now/)

Also

[https://www.google.com/search?q=denver+radiation](https://www.google.com/search?q=denver+radiation)

~~~
godelski
Yes, and an even better example is Ramsar Iran.

------
Jonnax
"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."

This sounds like bullshit. What were there changes between 3G and LTE that
would make it more dangerous?

More efficient use of spectrum?

~~~
markus92
Different modulation techniques is the one they're claiming now. For some
reason OFDM/CDMA is more dangerous than FM or amplitude modulation (AM) and
there are huge biological differences, they claim.

~~~
swader999
The studies that look at calcium voltage channel activation in cells are
easily replicated and point to biological effects.

~~~
pitaj
Citation needed. Can you point to a replication from a reputable school or
journal?

~~~
swader999
There's a lot linked in here:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780531/)

I don't think you'll see a lot of reputable schools taking this on though. But
this effect should be easy to replicate at least.

------
WhiteSage
The author of the article himself embarked in a crussade to ban limit EM
emissions after publishing a meta-analysis which shown there is correlation
between 10 year phone use and brain tumors. Yes. Without accounting for any
other risk factor. Because the lifestyle of people who use phones and people
who don't are certainly similar.

Correlation != causation. And the author does not ask for caution and
research, he asks directly for limits on the technology.

------
coldtea
In such matters, there's a strong psychological bias from tech-savvy people to
dismiss evidence and side with the technology (not the science, which would
include estimation of potential harm etc, but with the technological
application, which is assumed as de facto good).

It's a strong self-identification with technology who instills a fear of
appearing as a luddite, like the unwashed masses who fear this or that and
fall for hoaxes about the dangers of safe substances (vaccines, chemicals) and
harmless technologies.

But it can also be thought-stopping, and more emotional based than empirical.

~~~
pas
Hm. Sure, some people just point to how the same thing happened with GSM, 2G,
3G, 4G, WiFi... but that's just a fallacy, because we also know that gamma
rays, X-rays and UV are harmful, so deductively there must be some grey zone
between 3G and hard gamma rays. Since we can't simply infer the health effects
with certainty from first principles (let's say from physics/chemistry) we
should demand relevant data.

But we have a lot of data (even if not as an enormous pile as about WiFi), and
we know that so far the evidence points to no unexpected effects. There are
interesting avenues of inquiry about the effects of 50-70 GHz on biology
(heating of insects, interference with bacterial growth), of course those
effects are a lot smaller than what we already do from air pollution to
manufacturing an dumping lot of chemicals everywhere, heating our cities, and
so on.

~~~
Fordec
Between Gamma rays and 3G is UV. Between UV and 3G is visible light. Between
visible light and 3G is IR, one of which is the heat human bodies give off. Do
warm blooded animals cause cancer? Because they're still a far higher
frequency than 3G and the wattage of a human at rest is 100W which is roughly
equivalent.

Do hugs cause cancer? If yes, then we can start narrowing it down to 3G/5G
more after that. But by that stage I think we're doomed as a species anyway.

~~~
pas
Microwaves are around 2.4G yet they can pump a lot of energy into water, and
that can be an unintended side effect with WiFi.

Of course that's one thing that we know about, we can reason about, and that's
why people are not getting boiled.

~~~
greenshackle2
Yes, wattage matters. The comment you responded to covered that.

> the wattage of a human at rest is 100W which is roughly equivalent.

~~~
pas
I was more referring to energy density and total energy density over time.
Also absorption patterns and penetration depth.

We know these pretty well, but they are not trivial (due to non-linearity
creeping in).

------
everdrive
For everyone genuinely worried about this: have there been any studies that
specifically single out technicians who work on cellular antennas? Long hours
every day, getting closer to the antennas than any of us ever do? I'm not
suggesting there's a risk, but it seems that if there were a risk, then we've
identified one of the highest risk populations for study.

~~~
tboyd47
Here's a longitudinal study on about 55,000 Polish military personnel found in
the article:

"The cancer morbidity rate for RF/MW-exposed personnel for all age groups
(20-59 years) reached 119.1 per 100,000 annually (57.6 in non-exposed) with an
OER of 2.07, significant at P < 0.05."

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8717316](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8717316)

------
tyfon
5G has been paused in Brussels [1] already due to the companies inability to
prove it is safe. The energy output of 5G antennas is apparently higher than
4G and higher than their current laws allow.

[1] [https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/55052/radiation-
conce...](https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/55052/radiation-concerns-
halt-brussels-5g-for-now/)

~~~
ajsnigrutin
How the hell do you prove it's safe? Try proving carrots are safe.

This is just some youtuber soccer moms spreading FUD.

~~~
tyfon
The normal way to do it is to conduct a long term study with control and test
subjects. Carrots have been studied for a long time, as long as you consume
them in moderate amounts they are safe but in large amounts you can get all
sorts of issues. It's probably the same way with 5G radiation but we don't
know yet.

And I don't think the government of Belgium consists entirely of youtube
soccer moms but there are probably some of them :)

------
nabla9
EMF Scientist appeal is BS. It's random collection of people (many retired
cranks) with PhD.

Autism researcher from Harvard Medical School is not convincing.

~~~
loa_in_
Why not? Studying of not-neurotypical behavior in humans is less convincing
than studies of rats?

~~~
nabla9
It's not related to EMF radiation.

------
Merrill
It seems odd to associate risk with "NG". Any risks would be more likely
related to the frequency spectrum being used and the signal power than to the
modulation techniques and communications protocols. 5G can be deployed in the
same frequency bands that are currently in use, although higher frequency
bands are also anticipated.

------
pjkundert
Interesting observations:

\- More 5G towers operating in the same frequency/power range as 4G means
_less_ RF energy emitting from your Phone to the (now nearer) tower.

\- The emissions from the towers _to_ the phones should also be less, because
A) they need to emit less energy to reach the (now nearer) handset, and B) the
"fountain coding" in 5G means that less data packages need to be transmitted
to carry the same data payload as 4G. Of course, this is counterbalanced by
the probably higher data usage under 5G.

\- Beam-forming millimeter-wave antennas cannot penetrate flesh, so won't try
to establish links in that direction. Regular 4G frequencies do (and, use your
head as an antenna element). So, transitioning from 4G frequencies to
millimeter-wave should _reduce_ the amount of your-head-is-an-antenna
utilization for a set amount of data...

------
vkaku
When I started reading about the radiation safety of 5G, I started
understanding that most early operators were not interested in the safety
aspects as much as the money aspects of it.

And if anything, what time has shown me is that the for-profit people will not
operate these right. As regular people, we can of course choose to stop buying
5G phones, as long as we do have other sources of Internet.

My personal mobile internet usage has shown me that it is grossly expensive,
underutilized and doesn't majorly solve a speed problem for me - only remote
connectivity.

And no, I don't need more cancerous substances than there are. Especially
after watching Chernobyl, I sure as hell don't need radiation messing around
with my cellular structure.

In short, 5G is unnecessary in most cities, and the risks outweigh the
benefits, IMO.

------
blue_devil
At least the EU has a very good tool for grey area scenarios like this where
evidence is still lacking either way: the Precautionary Principle.

>>We conclude that, because scientific knowledge is incomplete, a
precautionary approach is better suited to State obligations under
international human rights law.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S14629...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S146290111300186X)

------
vizzah
I feel EMF from WiFi/LTE with my head. Someone wants to study me?

As soon as there is a high-bandwidth transmitter very close to me - headache
comes in seconds.

I've done blind tests holding non-remitting iPad or the one streaming 1080p
movies at high bitrate and easily able to tell when there is no radiation.

~~~
darkFunction
I used to get a very sharp pain in my head, above my ear, when making outbound
calls, just before the recipient would pick up. Nobody seems to believe me,
and I have never had the motivation to try to prove it to anyone, but it got
to the point where I would hold the phone away from my head until the person
answered.

It began with a Sony Ericsson, but happened across a couple of different phone
brands over the years. Still happens extremely occasionally now (maybe twice a
year) with my iPhone.

I'd be interested to know if the signal strength is suddenly spiked when a
call is connected.

~~~
dekhn
I get a sharp pain in my head above my ear from my glasses. The skin right
there is very sensitive. Just rubbing things (including phones) causes the
same senstation.

------
OOPMan
I'm amazed that I scanned a bunch of comments and it seems like no one read
the article and noticed that it's not actually a proper SciAm article, just an
Op-Ed.

Let me repeat, this is not a proper SciAm article in which some actual
academics condense their interesting research into something more easily
understood by people outside the field.

This is an Op-Ed. It's an opinion. And more specifically, it's an opinion from
someone who is most certainly not unbiased.

~~~
knzhou
"Op-ed" doesn't mean anything these days. I've seen plenty of "proper"
Scientific American articles that get basic physics horribly wrong, or have a
very heavy slant towards a particular point of view.

------
bhouston
They have been repeated reports that wifi is linked with male infertility...
and I haven't yet seen this disproved as quack science...

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4503846/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4503846/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6240172/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6240172/)

[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190429005914/en/Stu...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190429005914/en/Study-
Showing-Mounting-Evidence-Harmful-Effects-WiFi)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1607551X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1607551X1500162X)

I definitely would like to avoid 5G beam forming aimed at my crotch if I
wanted to have more children. But isn't that sort of close to where we all
hold our phones when we are siting? Yikes.

~~~
rrock
That first article is published in a journal I’ve never heard of, studied a
total of 27 mice, and has a strange study design that doesn’t consider random
effects.

------
NelsonMinar
This article is going to have a lot of influence in civic debates about 5G.
Everyone in the US recognizes Scientific American; now the anti-5G folks can
say "even Scientific American says it could be dangerous!". And they'll be
right, it does say that.

------
ozymandias12
The article writer is a known "truther" of the field. But I like his view, I
believe we need opinions from his end of the spectrum, but I've also read a
few times comments such as this:

>"Academia: Where Crazy People Can't Get Fired - Dr. Moskowitz disgraces the
University of California-Berkeley in precisely the same way Dr. Oz and Mark
Bittman disgrace Columbia University: They are charlatans who wrap themselves
in the prestige of academia to peddle foolishness to anxious parents."

[https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/28/uc-berkeley-
psychologis...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/28/uc-berkeley-psychologist-
joel-moskowitz-cell-phone-wi-fi-truther-10928)

To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised (in a good way!!) that Moskowitz got
published on Scientific American at all.

Anyway, I have my fair share of worries on large density mmwave equipment
environments, mostly focused on other things, as in, not on its effects on us,
but on microbial life, bacterial life, not the focus of this article, so I
won't derail, but at least for me, Moskowitz isn't this zero sum game as he
may be to some field agents.

------
peignoir
The sun is way worse than 5G. Saddens me for the academic world to see such
study / or see an argument based on a number of “scientists” instead of an
argument of quality.

------
mensetmanusman
Bad headline.

5G covers a huge spectral range starting at, yes, 5 GHz.

5GHz is coming out of every home router built in the last couple years. If it
was unsafe, we would probably know about it. (Let’s say ‘unsafe’ as in, “it is
‘unsafe’ to drive a car” since we need some baseline risk tolerance).

~~~
avian
> If it was unsafe, we would probably know about it.

The article claims this is in fact the case. Quote:

"We are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor
registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation
of cell phone radiation."

I've clicked a few cited papers and they are all behind a paywall, so I can't
make my own opinion how justified this claim is.

~~~
mensetmanusman
We have heard about these increases since wireless landlines were introduced.

I would be more likely to believe this risk if it was showing up as hand
tumors since most people are now carrying phones far more often then holding
them up to the head.

It would however be interesting if the known decrease in male sperm count
worldwide was actually attributed to cellular devices in the pocket.

------
newshorts
There seems to be many “all or nothing” arguments here.

How about a “maybe it’s a factor and we should do some research first because
we just don’t know” argument?

Honestly, my alarm bells ring when people get this polarized and passionate
about a topic that shouldn’t be that intense.

~~~
rpmisms
It's pretty simple: nobody wants to be the kook who won't use cell phones, so
it's a contest to see who can be the most aggressively normal.

Maybe they're killing us, but damned if I'll be _that_ guy.

------
Qwertystop
I would think the more important safety risk from 5G would be that it's going
to cause interference with weather-forecast satellites.

A small increase in cancer incidence seems like less of a danger than
hurricane path predictions being off by 300 miles less than a week out
([https://hackaday.com/2019/04/16/5g-buildout-likely-to-put-
we...](https://hackaday.com/2019/04/16/5g-buildout-likely-to-put-weather-
forecasting-at-risk/) and many others)

------
knzhou
I'm seeing a lot of people support or dismiss these findings for bad reasons.
Hilariously, some people are dismissing papers because "the authors have a
history of publishing papers about this stuff". In other words, papers on X
are wrong because they are about X. This is reasoning on the level of "God
exists because the Bible says He does, and the Bible is true because God wrote
it". It's just going in a loop and spitting back your original preconceptions,
without actually processing the evidence. You can't actually learn anything
that way!

I scanned through some of the mouse studies, but they all had the same problem
for me: to see effects, they blasted the mice with huge powers, on the order
of 1 W/kg absorbed. For reference, the human body itself, through all its
metabolic activity, barely generates that much. If you were absorbing anything
near 1 W/kg of power at _any_ frequency, you would start overheating, as if
you'd just stepped out into the midday sun. Increase that by a few times, and
you would probably shortly die, by literally being cooked. So I think most of
those studies can be safely discarded. _Anything_ is bad for you at those
crazy intensities, which are far higher than what you get from a cell phone.

Of course, this leaves a lot of other studies that may or may not be more
solid -- but without more time I can't draw any solid opinions.

------
shaneprrlt
I'm still just outraged at this "5GE" hoax being played on us by AT&T. They
should have called it "5GL" for lies!

------
youdontknowtho
It wouldn't matter if there was direct evidence linking 5G to cancer. "Global
Industry" sells us things that cause cancer. They sell us things made with
things that cause cancer. There is literally no part of the planet that isn't
polluted with these materials. (Just one
example...[https://fortune.com/longform/teflon-pollution-north-
carolina...](https://fortune.com/longform/teflon-pollution-north-carolina/))

I wish that I weren't so cynical, but I just don't think that anything would
stop the initial deployment of something like this.

The amount of money that is expected to be made by content creators, network
operators, and everyone in between, just makes it incredibly unlikely that
health concerns would be taken seriously.

Unless you could force these companies to account for health outcomes as a
real cost of doing business and not an externality that could be fobbed off on
the legal system or public budgets...I just don't see how you change it.

------
CobrastanJorji
There are a lot of arguments for and against this, but what's not
controversial is that widespread 5G is going to significantly impair our
ability to forecast weather by as much as 30%.

23.8 GHz is the frequency water vapor in the atmosphere emits, which is what
weather radars are looking for. A bunch fo 24 GHz signals all over the place
are going to screw it up.

------
zeleza
It seems theoretically impossible for non-ionising radiation produced by 5G or
any other radio emitters to cause cancer as there's no known mechanism for it
to induce carcinogenic damage, so a priori we should expect that 5G is safe
until shown otherwise.

Joel Moskovitz was co-author on a meta-analysis
([https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2008.21.6366](https://ascopubs.org/doi/10.1200/JCO.2008.21.6366))
that claimed to find a link between mobile phone use and brain tumours.
However, this was a meta-analysis of case-control studies, which is the
weakest form of study (worse even than a prospective observational cohort
study). The problem here is they essentially had to ask people who did or not
have tumours how much they used their mobile phones and trust them, which
introduces the obvious issue that people with brain tumours who had heard that
phones may cause cancer are probably going to report higher usage of mobile
phones than those without tumours. Moskowitz even notes this in the discussion
of his paper. He even notes that other, better, better, prospective cohort
studies have found no evidence for a link between cellphones and cancer
([https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/93/3/203/2906436](https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/93/3/203/2906436)),
but dismisses the study because they looked at subscription data rather than
examining 'actual exposure to mobile phones' (which his study didn't do
either).

This fear mongering, with no a priori theoretical justification and no
evidential basis from people who've checked anyway just to be safe, muddies
the waters and distracts from real environmental problems like air pollution
causing respiratory diseases. This isn't quite as bad as promoting antivaxxer
positions, which are imbecilic because the benefits from vaccines obviously
outweigh the costs _even if they did cause autism_ , but it's getting awfully
close.

~~~
lucideer
> _his was a meta-analysis of case-control studies, which is the weakest form
> of study ... Moskowitz even notes this in the discussion of his paper_

Sounds like he's noting that the link found is (as you say) weak to non-
existent. Which supports the claim in this Scientific American article: that
studies are inconclusive and as such we have no reason to believe the
technology is safe.

Also worth pointing out here (as I have elsewhere) that the ACSH link is not
from reputable org. It seems to be the only link people are posting and re-
posting to rebut Moskowitz's research here on HN.

~~~
zeleza
If the link is "weak to non-existent" and our a priori thinking is that it
should be perfectly safe, shouldn't we default to it being safe? I'm not
against also running studies to make sure we haven't missed something, but
this seems like an unfair standard that we don't apply to other forms of
things we expect to be safe a priori.

~~~
lucideer
> _our a priori thinking is that it should be perfectly safe_

What a bizarre statement. I'm curious where you get this notion that things
are perfectly safe a priori. What examples do you have where this has been the
case? X-ray? Asbestos? Cigarette smoke? Freon? Lead? Certainly they're
evidence of things that were accepted as such.

~~~
floriol
We are talking about a form of energy which is other than being omnipresent
naturally, was studied extensively for more than 100-150 years - including
health hazards when it comes to ionising radiation.

While I do think that studies should be continued for a more definitive
answer, and I personally don't feel a strong need for a 5G network as of now,
I am more on the defaults to safe side.

------
gertrunde
Potentially a more informative source on this topic:

[https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/r...](https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
prevention/risk/radiation/cell-phones-fact-sheet)

------
judge2020
Maybe AT&T's stunt with 5GE (fake 5g) is a necessary tactic to get regular
people comfortable with 5g so when it actually comes out the mindset is along
the lines of "I've had 5g for years and haven't dropped dead so these health
claims must be FUD."

------
djsumdog
Is 5G tech at the same Millimeter waves frequencies as those used in airport
scanners? I've heard mm scanners as considerably safer than the old
backscatter x-rays (although full of false positives and no better than random
chance at actually detecting things).

~~~
pas
Yes, sort of. Backscatter X-ray is ionizing (much smaller than mm - about
0.0000001 millimeters, so something like EHz - ExaHertz). While 5G new radio
is 60 GHz (5 mm), like WiMax supposed to be.

Airport mm-wave machines are somewhere around 24-30 GHz (so around 10mm).
(source:
[https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_l...](https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_layman/security-
scanners/en/l-3/3-technology.htm) )

So far concerns are about insects (heating) and bacterium (antibiotic
resistance "could" develop -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21261425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21261425)
). Though the heating effect is probably negligible compared to how cities
already radiate a lot more heat and insects are loving it.

Furthermore, if there is any serious new/strange/second-order effect on
biology we would have already seen it, as people blasted lab animals with
every kinds of EMF and we got only the coincidental expected flukes.

------
blunte
i don’t know why 5G is so important when not only is 4G pretty good, but 4G is
better than most wired internet i’ve used in the US and Europe.

My vote would be fix the often abysmal wired networks first.

------
WillDaSilva
When I saw the headline I thought that this might have to do with digital
security, and I was both interested, and confused as to how 5G had anything to
do with digital security. I'm disappointed to see that in reality it's just
this tired old debate again. Low-power non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation
is not dangerous to biological beings.

------
royetop
I'm not a scientist but have worked in the telecom industry. My understanding
is that regardless of 4G/5G modulation, it's all just RF electromagnet
radiation, using the same frequency allocation as old analog television
transmissions. Besides, given the frequencies used, there will be difficulty
having the RF get through building walls.

------
Nursie
> massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO

MIMO is Multi-Input Multi-Ouput, surely?

There does appear to be such a thing as Massive MIMO, which they might mean?

------
seanlinmt
So what happens if you're standing in the path of a milimeter wave beam from a
tower trying to reach a user behind a wall?

~~~
pas
MIMO, active beam steering and paths with reflections. In theory. In practice,
we'll see, but probably you'll have to hold your phone high to provide some
clear line of sight between the antennas if you want those blazing fast
speeds.

~~~
judge2020
I'd recommend watching this video of a real-world 5g test
[https://youtu.be/_CTUs_2hq6Y](https://youtu.be/_CTUs_2hq6Y) \- The speeds are
>1gbps when you're effectively next to the 5g nodes, while it would reach
<400mbps while going around walls and would jump between LTE and 5g (in an
attempt to be on the fastest network).

------
jannes
Apart from possible health effects, is anyone else concerned about 5G
eventually being used for real-time CCTV surveillance networks with
centralized facial recognition?

The higher bandwidth (up to 10 Gbps) and higher cell density should support
quite a few simultaneous video feeds to a central government location.

~~~
criddell
The government doesn't need to do anything. Advertisers will deploy the
technology and when the government wants access, all they have to do is get a
warrant or maybe even just ask nicely.

~~~
mywittyname
Or lease direct access. Lots of companies make bank by selling to the
government access to their databases, even when said database contains
information you'd think the police (or whomever) would already have access to,
such as public records info.

------
jammygit
Releasing things into our daily environment without adequate testing is likely
why so many men are infertile now compared to a few decades ago and we don’t
know why. Sperm counts are halved for example. At least there is some research
in this case, which is nice

------
karmakaze
Why is this a headline? This is a title for a research paper. A headline would
be "We have reason to believe 5G is unsafe." Until then this is could just be
viewed as lobbying, if I were the cynical type.

------
xeornet
All arguments about the safety of 5G seem to speak about how the waves
interact with human cells in isolation.

What about the combined energy and interference with the myriad of other waves
our bodies are subjected to?

------
jokoon
I spend a lot of time in public transport, and on internet in general. I never
paid for 3G or 4G on my smartphone. Only wifi. OSMAnd for maps, etc.

5G is also pretty bad for the environment (netflix, instagram, snapchat are
also pretty awful). The amount of energy and resources you need to make all
those electronic is gigantic, not to mention the lifespan of a smartphones is
so short, smartphones vendors are now trying to add more and more features to
make customers replace their phones.

I'm really dying for any electronic brand to release durable hardware, and I'm
also eager to have minimal smartphone OS that consume less CPU and memory.

I can't understand that race towards higher bigger everything.

~~~
jiggawatts
How exactly are they "bad for the environment"?

Would you prefer we revert to manufacturing plastic VHS tapes, then distribute
them by diesel trucks like we used to in the good old days?

Would you prefer people get their morning news on broadsheets made from the
bleached pulp of rainforest trees?

Or would you like to go back to the good old days of AM radio when the
inadequacy of the receiver electronics was compensated for by sheer power at
the transmitter, to the tune of megawatts of broadcast power?

You're probably one of those people who would prefer to breathe in lungfuls of
woodsmoke rather than bathe your skin in the harmful rays of electric light.

~~~
NateEag
I believe he's implying we don't need to share all that information, period.

I agree.

Remember: reduce, reuse, recycle is a hierarchy. Reduction is far more
effective than the other two.

~~~
rvense
One of the use cases I saw somewhere for 5G was "smart wine glasses".

Like glasses with sensors in them so the waiter at a restaurant would know
where he needed to go to refill someone's glass.

This was in a context where it definitely was not an ironic jab at the overuse
of technology.

I don't know if the product actually exists, but honestly. Honestly. Smart
wine glasses! I think it's just like... a really, really dumb idea. And if
that's the kind of thing that 5G is going to enable, I absolutely do think we
should consider it a threat to the environment.

~~~
antisemiotic
I've seen wireless thingies that would beep when your order is ready at kebab
joints. Since the basic principle is the same (1-bit signaling), I'm pretty
sure it could be just as well rolled out right now, unfortunately.

------
benbristow
What do we do instead then? Just give up and stick to using 4G?

~~~
apocalyptic0n3
If it is truly unsafe, yes. And develop a new next-gen wireless technology.
Just because someone developed it does not mean we have to adopt it.

------
OrgNet
We have no reason to believe that any computer system and/or software is safe
because bugs always pop up... I know of no software that is perfect.

------
xeornet
The serious issue here is the inability to opt-out. There is clear doubt about
it's safety. Do those with doubts get to opt-out? Definitely not.

------
headsoup
So my summary from the comments here is that almost all scientific study is
junk, except when one is certain themselves it isn't.

------
rpmisms
Bias in research is real, and now there's a list of things that make you
crazy, including:

\- Evidence that cell phones might not be the best thing for you

\- Evidence that a vaccine might harm some people

\- Evidence that some medical convention is wrong

All of these are things that we _absolutely_ need to know if true, but even
good evidence towards these points is dismissed as noise because there's a
pseudoscience culture surrounding them.

It's really frustrating to see both social and scientific progress hampered by
idiots acting as such.

------
targonca
Why not have carrier executives install 5G base stations on their houses as a
publicity stunt?

------
posterboy
The mantra of radiation safety is reduce the risk.

In that sense, an improvement in the energetic profile is potentially helpful.

An xray or a plain ride is completely fine, but pilots as well as patience
have some upper limits. xray is hard alpha radiation, but do you know how
xrays are created?

~~~
pitaj
X-rays are not alpha radiation. Alpha radiation is composed of alpha
particles, aka helium nuclei. X-rays are EM radiation.

------
appleflaxen
For others (like me) to whom the name of the author (Joel Moskowitz) is
unfamiliar:

He is a wifi / cell phone radiation "truther" who thinks the EMF in everyday
devices causes cancer

[https://www.acsh.org/news/2007/02/16/cell-phone-dangers-
stil...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2007/02/16/cell-phone-dangers-still-argued)

The fact that this is in Scientific American, even in the _Opinion_ section,
is simultaneously a testament to the openmindedness of science, and quite sad.

After reading his ideas, I think we should all feel a little lucky that Trump
hasn't made hime the head of the FCC.

~~~
userbinator
_is simultaneously a testament to the openmindedness of science, and quite
sad._

That brings to mind the old saying, "don't be so open-minded your brain falls
out."

Also, I'm pretty sure Trump is very much _not_ in the group of "cell
phones/EMF/etc. cause cancer" believers.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
Or the classic aphorism of the Space Marines: "An open mind is like a fortress
with its gates unbarred and unguarded."

------
jakedub4d2
I personally just think we could live without 5G.

------
k__
I was hoping for some security implications....

------
tiku
We also have no proof it is not safe..

------
jliptzin
Maybe 5G is the Great Filter!

------
baybal2
Check at the bottom

> ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

> Joel M. Moskowitz

~~~
vfc1
Anything about him worth mentioning? After a quick search online, at first
glance, he looks like a reputable researcher.

Does he have industry ties that we should be aware of, reputation issues,
conflicts of interest, something else?

~~~
fastball
I am also unaware of this topic, but this[0] is the second google result when
you search his name.

[0] [https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/28/uc-berkeley-
psychologis...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/28/uc-berkeley-psychologist-
joel-moskowitz-cell-phone-wi-fi-truther-10928)

~~~
vfc1
The article is a bit suspect, the author seems to have a personal dislike on
the guy. The author works for the American Council on Science and Health which
is a nonprofit, but I couldn't find the sponsors.

The article uses personal insult (calling the guy a charlatan) but does not
say much about why he disagrees with those positions.

I see no companies on the name of Joel M. Moskowitz, no products sold, no
industry sponsors.

On the other hand, I see a guy with no industry ties being slandered online by
no reason, weird.

I don't know anything about the guy, if anyone can chime in on why his opinion
is not trustworthy I would like to learn more.

------
keithnz
well, I was curious about the New Zealand "researchers", first on the list

Tracy Chandler, BSc (Hons) MBChB FRNZCGP FNZSCM, PGDipSEM, Cert Dermoscopy,
Cert Homeopathy, MACNEM member.

Homeopathy? ummm...red flag.... ok... maybe an anomaly.... who else from NZ?,
huh, no one from any credible research org.

~~~
OJFord
I assume you're North American and so upset mainly by the absence of an 'MD'.
MBChB is an equivalent.

Having an additional 'Cert' in homeopathy would be like having a CS degree but
also certifying in AWS or Azure products, for example, which wouldn't even
necessarily say that I endorse them, perhaps just that I have clients that
might like to see that certification.

~~~
verall
A cert in homeopathy would not be like certifying in AWS or Azure products. It
would be like having a CS degree and then getting a cert in computer shamanism
where you were trained in the proper chants and symbology to fix computers
just by shouting at them.

Equating certifying in a stack or methodology like AWS or Azure with
homeopathy lends it 1000X more credit than it deserves.

By all means certify in herbology or natural medicine but if you are a real
(equivalent or otherwise) to a medical doctor and you certify in homeopathy
you are legitimizing fake bullshit and you should be judged for it. Homeopathy
preys on the sick and desperate and deserves no slack.

Maybe this seems overly harsh but people I care about have paid thousands for
this bullshit and the smooth talking bullshit salesmen had way to much
""science"" on their side.

~~~
OJFord
And so a medically sick person who insists on (or at least is very much more
comfortable with) a homeopathy-certified doctor should be denied a medically
(and surgically) qualified doctor?

~~~
verall
They should not be denied anything, but no self-respecting medical doctor
should get a certification in homeopathy just because there is a market for
it. That just adds legitimacy to it and keeps the wheel spinning.

I would not get a certification in computer shamanism, even if it made my
clients feel better about me when I mumbled the Old Tongue and clapped my
hands above their laptop. If this was something people wanted, I'm sure others
with more compromised morals would be happy to set up a certification board
and oblige.

I have no ill feelings towards those that believe that computers or human
bodies are magic. This is not their fault. I have no respect for professionals
that are complicit in this. Shame on them. They are one short step away from
professionally proscribing homeopathy because it "makes the client feel
better, so the ends justify the means".

Hey, some people believe the placebo pill is ethical. I believe it violates
the letter and spirit of informed consent. I feel the same about homeopathy.
Homeopathy is bunk no matter how a sick person or salesman or doctor feels
about it.

------
Kaiyou
I don't know about other people, but unless it's proven to be safe beyond a
doubt, I'd be worried about deploying 5G. I don't think the small benefit
outweighs the possible risks.

------
ByzantineO6
The usual luddite/neoDruid garbage, all of it. The market for FUD is always a
bull market, you might say.

------
ByzantineO6
the usual luddite garbage.

------
bjornsing
Define safe.

------
mytailorisrich
He is not arguing that 5G is dangerous. He is pointing out that there does not
seem to be enough research available to state as a fact that it is safe and
that, as a consequence, we might want to be cautious.

That's a very reasonable general approach. Whether his proposal to stop 5G
deployments altogether is proportional to our understanding of the potential
risks, if any, is debatable, to say the least.

~~~
klmr
> _That 's a very reasonable general approach._

If made in good faith, yes. I’m not convinced that this is the case here,
however, given that the author is fundamentally at odds with the scientific
consensus on 2G, 3G and 4G safety, without acknowledging that he’s in the
clear minority. In fact, he claims that the majority of relevant experts have
signed the 5G moratorium, and this seems to not actually be the case. I
actually think that disagreeing with the consensus, based on limited but
potentially valid evidence, is completely acceptable. But he goes further and
pretends to be in the majority, and that contrary evidence only marginally
exists.

In sum, he makes demonstrably false claims about the current state of the
scientific consensus, which makes me sceptical of everything else he says.

~~~
mytailorisrich
I think this is a reasonable approach in general. Whether it is made in good
faith or not is a red herring and does not change anything.

What's more important, since you mention the 'scientific consensus' and his
claim that there isn't enough data is: What is the consensus on 5G (I suppose
that means mmWave) and what are the studies it is based on? That would allow
to make a factual comment on his claims about health hazards.

~~~
klmr
> * Whether it is made in good faith or not is a red herring and does not
> change anything.*

That’s true _only if_ we indeed know _nothing_ about 5G, and that’s
demonstrably not the case. In fact, the pretend open-mindedness is tantamount
to denialism, if we accept that findings on ≤4G translate to 5G, and there are
good scientific reasons for thinking so, based on our established
understanding of physics and biology. It’s _possible_ that 5G changes the
picture, and I am indeed open to the possibility. But at the same time
intellectual honestly compels me to describe the chance of this happening as
low, given what we generally know about the biological effects of non-ionising
radiation.

Put differently: Given what we know, it’s honest to say that 5G might carry
risks, but that there is currently no good reason to assume so. It is _not_
honest to claim, as the article does, that “we have no reason to believe 5G is
safe”.

~~~
mytailorisrich
You are replying beside the point when you keep focusing on that point.

This is a reasonable approach and it is a general approach. Now, about 5G,
again the question is what we know or don't know about any risks.

If there are no or very few studies about the effect of mmWave then it is
indeed reasonable to ask whether precautions should be taken.

You seem to suggest that there are indeed no such studies but that it can be
_assumed_ to be safe because emissions _in a different part of the spectrum_
are safe.

Whatever the reality is, this is simply not a scientific approach and does
suggest that you have no factual reason to believe that mmWaves are safe (or
dangerous actually, you simply don't know).

I am not saying that he is right, but scientifically we cannot just counter
his argument by "no, you're wrong".

------
championfetus
At the end of the day I think I can agree on one thing; That we should make an
attempt to definitively understand long term exposure.

------
harryf
Wow. We’ve been in denial about potential health risks of mobile for years.
But now there’s a risk that Chinese tech companies might corner this market,
suddenly its time to worry about the health risks?

~~~
hnarn
> We’ve been in denial about potential health risks of mobile for years.

Citation needed.

------
vfc1
> Cancer is not the only risk as there is considerable evidence that RFR
> causes neurological disorders and reproductive harm, likely due to oxidative
> stress.

I mean it can't be good all this radiation exposure. As far as I know, people
living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of
cancer already.

I think so much can already be done with the network bandwidth we already have
available. Just using a better protocol on top of HTTP, like everything
switching to HTTP2 should be a huge improvement.

How much bandwidth more do we really need, we have hit the limits in terms of
video on what is noticeable by the human eye already.

~~~
verall
> As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension
> poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.

As far as you know from what? This might sound harsh, but this is just
fearmongering.

HV power lines are, in an electrical sense, very far away from you. Even if
magnetic radiation had some health effects, (which as far as we know, it
doesn't, which is why MRI's are incredibly non-invasive to people without
metal implants of some sort), you are not getting any of that from an HV power
line.

The only people I know spouting such things are either charlatans^W salesmen
trying make a buck or people that have no understanding or training in
electricity. It can't "jump out at you". A power line is not a radio.

There are plenty of microwave towers and satellites and cell phones to be
irrationally afraid of. But power lines? Like it just screams "I do not
understand electricity or am trying to make a buck off those that don't."
There's no radiation coming off that power line that gets to you.

~~~
vfc1
> HV power lines are, in an electrical sense, very far away from you

I've seen family houses literally next to high tension poles (not just regular
poles, I mean those huge ones many times the height of the house), for example
in Portugal.

I don't see any definitive conclusion online for the link between high voltage
lines proximity and cancer, but I am not an expert. Seems to me the consensus
is far from general.

~~~
verall
Yea, the huge ones, many times the height of the house, are uh, really many
times the height of the house above the house. According to [0], the maximum
magnetic field from 275kV-400kV overhead power line (this would be measured
much closer to the line than you could possibly get to without climbing the
towers) is 100uT. Standing next to a running vacuum cleaner about 800uT. A
standard clinical MRI is typically 1.5T, so about 10000 times the strength of
the power line if you were a lineman sitting next to a live line. Typical
field under the line: 3-5 uT. That's standing right under the line. The family
underneath the line gets more radiation from leaving the TV on, or god forbid,
the wifi or their cell phone.

Consensus is not far from general. You don't have to be an expert. If you are
really afraid of radiation, talking about power lines really weakens your
case. They do almost nothing compared to normal household appliances we use
all the time. The inverse square rule is real.

I think to avoid your best bet would be joining an Amish community. And don't
go outside, without covering up. The sun's radiation is like, actually proven
to be harmful to skin and DNA, and is many times more powerful. Too bad
getting sun is also clinically associated with many health benefits! Oh what
will we do...

[0]
[https://www.nationalgridet.com/document/82871/download](https://www.nationalgridet.com/document/82871/download)

~~~
vfc1
Even if current levels of radiation are harmless, it does not mean that the
same applies to 5G.

Studies funded by the 5G industry are 10 times more likely to say there are no
side effects on human, which is suspect and an indication that is an attempt
to manipulate science going on - [https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-cell-
phone-radiation-c...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-cell-phone-
radiation-cause-cancer/)

The leading independent organization on cancer causes says that current cell
phones are "possible carcinogens" \- [https://nutritionfacts.org/video/cell-
phone-brain-tumor-risk...](https://nutritionfacts.org/video/cell-phone-brain-
tumor-risk/)

~~~
klmr
> _The leading independent organization on cancer causes says that current
> cell phones are "possible carcinogens"_

It is crucial to understand what this actually means. the IARC classifications
are valid but — particularly to lay people — incredibly misleading and pretty
much useless. All that “possible carcinogen” means is that we haven’t yet
collected sufficient evidence to discount harm. It’s not evidence of
carcinogenicity _at all_. If anything it’s the opposite, because it means
that, despite the existence of relevant studies, there hasn’t been any
consistent demonstration of carcinogenic effect.

Furthermore, IARC only classifies risk itself, not hazard [1], nor dosage
effects.

For context, IARC classifies sunlight exposure and processed meat consumption
as “definitely carcinogenic” [2]. Despite this, regular exposure to sunlight
is crucial for your health, and regular meat consumption is known to have
little absolute effect on cancer risk (in other words, although red meat
_does_ have an effect, the effect size is tiny).

[1] [https://worksmart.org.uk/health-advice/health-and-
safety/haz...](https://worksmart.org.uk/health-advice/health-and-
safety/hazards-and-risks/what-difference-between-hazard-and-risk) [2]
[https://monographs.iarc.fr/list-of-
classifications/](https://monographs.iarc.fr/list-of-classifications/)

