41–50 of 613 posts
> 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. J…
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).
Airport mm-wave machines are somewhere around 24-30 GHz (so around 10mm). (source: https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_l... )
So far concerns are about insects (heating) and bacterium (antibiotic resistance "could" develop - 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.
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).
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
> 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. J…
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.
Interestingly, this is apparently a story that a lot of Russian troll farms are pushing hard at the moment.
This story links to sources and is written by:
"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."
So this is, I assume, not by a Russian troll farm.
Joel Moskovitz was co-author on a meta-analysis (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), 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.
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... 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 i…
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.
Check at the bottom > ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) > Joel M. Moskowitz
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?
The man been trying that "cellphones give you cancer" since at least 2009, with his earliest attacks being closer to some new age metaphysical bullshit, and only later he started to pull some scientific argument.
He has no real science background, no medical background, he is a psychologist. His "academic network" includes people going into homeopathy, antivaxing, GMO and something bordering on new age and conspiracy cults.
Why UC Berkley still keeps him around, I have no idea.