“We have no reason to believe 5G is safe” • Hacker News Board

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#61

Post by notacoward » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:46 AM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #10

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.…

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

Likewise for a list of relevant papers:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl...

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.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#62

Post by Someone1234 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:47 AM UTC

cjslep wrote: post #27

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", the…

> 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.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#63

Post by coldtea » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:48 AM UTC

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.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#64

Post by nabla9 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:49 AM UTC

notacoward wrote: post #61

murgindrag wrote: post #10

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.…

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 Likewise for a list of relevant papers: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl... Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust? Columbia? Monash? McGill? Can we dispense with the tired ad hominems and ta…

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

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#65

Post by jiggawatts » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:49 AM UTC

jokoon wrote: post #20

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 tryi…

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.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#66

Post by mensetmanusman » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:49 AM UTC

avian wrote: post #51

mensetmanusman wrote: post #40

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).

> 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.

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.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#67

Post by vfc1 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:49 AM UTC

verall wrote: post #46

vfc1 wrote: post #13

> 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 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…

> 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.

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#68

Post by rahidz » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:49 AM UTC

_bz2r wrote: post #23

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…

To be fair, his views don't have enough of a pro-business bias to them for the current (or most) administrations.

Speaking of a pro-business bias, the ACSH: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Council_on_Sc...

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#69

Post by notacoward » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:50 AM UTC

Jonnax wrote: post #38

"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?

From TFA:

"Along with the patterning and duration of exposures, certain characteristics of the signal (e.g., pulsing, polarization) increase the biologic and health impacts of the exposure."

"The latest cellular technology, 5G, will employ millimeter waves ... 5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO)"

Re: “We have no reason to believe 5G is safe”

#70

Post by maxmunzel » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 11:51 AM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #53

vfc1 wrote: post #13

> 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…

The last question is interesting. Our eyes create an image with ~ 1 Gigapixel resolution at frame-rate equivalent > 120 Hz. For real VR/AR, 5G is not fast enough, would have to work in the THz regime for wireless (wow, nature has a huge bandwidth requirement...). Interesting thing about THz is that most electronic materials breakdown and stop working.

The actual resolution of the human eye is much smaller than that and a lot of our perception is based on interpolation. It's pretty interesting to read up on this.