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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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

#321

Post by gus_massa »

coldtea wrote: post #63

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…

It is not about technology, it's about frequency. At low frequency (i.e. less than X-ray or perhaps UV) and low power, there is a strong evidence that EM radiation is safe. And the theoretical models agree with that. So it's not about 5G or 6G or 7G, the details of the technology doesn't matter.

It's strange the relation you pointed with anti-vaxers. I think that the fear to 5G and vaccines are very similar, but it a very emotionally load topic, so mixing them is a bad idea.

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

#322

Post by lucideer »

zeleza wrote: post #242
lucideer wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

> 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.

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

#323

Post by gjulianm »

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #183
refurb wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this take is a little unfair. Sure, calling scientists “wackos” with reviewing the publications is extreme, we also know there is a massive body of scientific evidence looking at the link between RF waves and cancer that has pretty much found zilch at this point.

If you'd read some of the research linked in the article, you'd perhaps found this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25749340 which clearly shows a link. Here's a longer list for you: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S138357421... though a lot of those studies are about DNA damage and not cancer per se. Though DNA damage is known to increase cancer risk. So no, not zilch, not at all.

> clearly shows a link

Clearly? The actual article (here's a full text: http://www.fraw.org.uk/data/esmog/lerchl_2015.pdf) doesn't seem to show that clear link. First, there's no dose-response effect, mice with higher doses didn't present higher rates of cancer (sometimes lower). Also, Table 1 with the actual findings is just crazy. For example, the group with no radiation has the second-highest incidence of lung carcinoma. The rate of lymphoma is the same at 0W/kg and 2W/kg, but doubles at 0.4W/kg.

I'm not going to say that the article is trash because it doesn't seem to be, but it is definitely not a clear link, there is a lot unanswered there. There is no mechanism proposed, there are a lot of carcinomas studied (high probability of finding something with a correlation) and there is no dose-response effect.

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

#324

Post by MertsA »

zaroth wrote: post #226
kevingadd wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would only apply to the phone transmitting, wouldn't it? The RX is broadcast from the nearest tower, and 5G uses beam-forming. If your device (or another device near you) is receiving from the tower then there's not much of a way to avoid getting exposure.

Not much way to avoid getting exposure to electro-magnetic waves ? You make it sound like EM waves aren’t being emitted or reflected by everything in the universe short of a black hole. And cell phone EM exposure levels for someone who isn’t carrying a phone - hopefully this person knows better than to walk outside, or stand near a window!

Black holes still emit hawking radiation.

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

#325

Post by kristjankalm »

pas wrote: post #196
kristjankalm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from where does this increase in cancer probability statistic come from? anyone have a link to a paper? tried googling but found nothing reliable sadly

https://ourworldindata.org/cancer#are-death-rates-from-cance... "In other words, the individual incidence of cancer deaths has actually fallen."

cheers, that seems properly sourced

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

#326

Post by rrss »

nabla9 wrote: post #64
notacoward wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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/.

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

#327

Post by manifestsilence »

eytgsf5et wrote: post #267
BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #90

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…

I find the HN community to be bi-modal with respect to technology: either they are very distrusting (luddites), or blindly in love with it (techno-utopians). 5G gets the techno-utopians in HN all excited about the possibilities of [INSERT THE POINT OF 5G] and they'll get mad at anything that threatens its introduction.

As a contrary data-point, I'm an increasingly luddite programmer who doesn't care at all about 5G, but I live in a town that is kind of a hotbed for conspiracy stuff and I tire of the latest scare always going round without a plausible causal mechanism.

You can find PHDs who believe just about anything (I saw one recently with a sign saying "sunspots cause global warming"), and PHDs publish papers. So you have to look at whether they were peer reviewed, in what journal, and what the findings and methods really were.

It's a lot of work to properly evaluate studies, but I think that meta-analysis is easily abused in this arena. The other big problem is the null publication bias. Have one hundred people roll dice, and if you're only interested in snake-eyes and only publish papers on where that happens, you'll get like 9 studies where they rolled snake-eyes and one responsible scientist who publishes a null result, and conclude that there's a 90% chance of snake-eyes on dice rolls...

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

#328

Post by 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...)

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.

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

#329

Post by ausjke »

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #90

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…

I actually read the article as I'm unsure this is about safe-for-human-body or safe-for-network-security.

What about the cell-phone-radiation-for-brain-cancer concern? Haven't heard about it for a while.

5G will work better in populated cities and I don't think it is a good fit for most areas in USA. Likely we will have 5G for very dense areas while 4G for the rest.

I will absolutely not live or work in close vicinity of any 5G towers.

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

#330

Post by everdev »

nroets wrote: post #279
hannob wrote: post #147

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 mar…

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

"Causes" implies that you will get cancer if you partake. Maybe you mean "increases the risk of". Agreed that your risk exposure might only be fractions of a percent and not worth abstaining or regulating.
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