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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”

#581

Post by htfu »

mortdeus wrote: post #212
Someone1234 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There is such a thing as RF shielding that uses copper or other conductive metals in a grated screen as a means to block out radio frequencies. While the application is typically used as a means to create telecommunication dead zones, i could easily see somebody capitalizing on this kind of health scare by putting copper shielding in say clothing like a hoodie. I think when comparing this to the sun there are lots of…

> Now in hindsight, what we don't have evolutionary genetic tolerance for is microwave radiation.

Nor would such a thing be possible unless we could somehow drastically reduce our water content.

But speaking of miscalculation, mentioning Mars before starting to go on about tinfoil hoodies is, well, there's a lot of actually definitely dangerous radiation on Mars and a whole lot more on the way there.

One last note, higher speed or bandwidth has not scaled linearly (or really at all, outside early 3g?) with antenna power.

But if you do want to shield your house, most telcos offer seamless wifi calling these days. Then again wifi runs on the same freq as microwave ovens.

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

#582

Post by markus92 »

pergadad wrote: post #515
markus92 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See this review (which includes your study) for a counterpoint: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.7306

This is not at all a counterpoint. This review basically says "We need more data" and says the reason not to draw conclusions yet is that we don't even know how much exposure we experience in daily life.

They cite some issues with the study. One of them is that the confidence intervals don't seem to add up and the incidence numbers don't look like the general populace for the control group.

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

#583

Post by mac01021 »

Gnarl wrote: post #494
tboyd47 wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

How will 5g fix this for them?

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

#584

Post by SuoDuanDao »

djsumdog wrote: post #390
flatline wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a few people who have lost a lot of weight on Atkins/keto. I think they are successful diets because they provide bright-line rules for people to follow, but they are also extreme and potentially dangerous. None of them could maintain those diets long-term because they developed things like kidney pain. Caloric restriction, eating a good balance of fat/carbs/protein, laying off saturated fats, sugar, and booze…

> kidney pain I've had trouble finding good studies on this. I don't think it's true. I've been on pretty hard keto for over two years at a time. I know other friends who have and have never heard of kidney trouble. You occasionally have a day or two where you eat out with friends or have some fried chicken every month, and initially there is a period where you feel sick for a week as your body withdraws from sugar,…

Anecdotally: my father did have kidney issues when he went Keto, but that's because he had too high a proportion of his calories from protein. He switched to more leaves and fats and that seems to have cleared up.

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

#585

Post by vizzah »

epanchin wrote: post #108
vizzah wrote: post #92

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.

have you conducted a double blind test? Label two which are streaming, and two which aren’t. Ask a friend to pick two at random. Repeat many times and record results. Many people have been studied who present with these symptoms. They are consistently unable to detect the presence of fields. PS I can already see fault with the experiment in which the streaming devices are likely to be warmer.

I haven't done a double test, so will definitely try it. Re: device temperature - don't even need to hold the device. It could be just very close to me if the bandwidth is high.

Once I set at the table next to my friend's open laptop and started feeling those head 'cramps' immediately as he started downloading a large ISO. Put on pause - the feeling subsides in a minute.

Doesn't feel like a pain, def. not sharp pain, but a significant discomfort, sort of a little brain earthquake. I don't know why EMF sensitivity is not properly studied, as it's def. not a myth!

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

#586

Post by strainer »

abstrakraft wrote: post #567
strainer wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get a lower exponent than the square with a beam. For a perfectly parallel beam the exponent is technically 0 (same intensity regardless of distance - like a laser pointer) For a focused beam intensity will actually increase with distance up to the focal point. Some energy can be absorbed by the medium (air/moisture/rain), but that is not covered by the inverse square law.

Not with a planar or linear array. I'm skeptical, but prepared to learn something: what sort of array can generate a square beam? Even lasers spread. This guy agrees with me: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-light-from-lasers-reduced-by-th...

The cross section of the beam can be any shape, the important thing is the signal source is an area not a point. The value of the inverse square (of distance from source) is dominates power density when the signal source is effectively a point - this becomes the situation for a laser or anything at long enough distance, but at distances where it is effectively a beam, the strength of power density does not dissipate by that value. The geometry of the beam concentrates the power density at its focal point, which can be far behind the source or in front of it. For an ideal beam focused to infinity (parallel rays) its power would never dissipate with distance - as all of the power goes in the same direction. We don't need to form an ideal beam to say its doesn't follow the inverse square rule, any focusing of rays breaks the rule (at scales where it is reasonable to treat it as a beam and not just rays emanating from a point)

I hope that helps picture the situation. My original comment that a beam can have a different exponent was incorrect except in some approximate sense. The inverse square value will still apply, but from the beams real or imaginary focal point (if it is a point) But it the case of a transmitter beaming a signal at another, that focal length can be far beyond the reciever, so the 'rule' can be completely confounded.

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

#587

Post by leereeves »

Gnarl wrote: post #494
tboyd47 wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

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

#588

Post by tboyd47 »

blub wrote: post #575
manicdee wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus correlation is not causation.

Correlation is not an excuse to completely ignore findings either. As the original study said: more data/analysis is needed.

Agreed. The "correlation != causation" mantra does not match the context here.

It's true that correlation studies are not as conclusive as laboratory experiments in general, but when we're talking about negative long-term health effects on humans, you can't establish causation without doing something unethical. But does that mean science becomes useless? I don't think so.

There are times when it's appropriate to infer causation from a correlation and act on that conclusion. For example, the famous lead toxicity studies are correlation studies. One such study, cited over 1000 times, [0] meets only 6 out of 9 criteria for inferring causation [1], and people are comfortable making that inference.

A good next step would be to go through the PowerWatch list of studies [2] and evaluate these studies based on these criteria (or a similar list).

---

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199001113220203 [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003591576505800... [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl...

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

#589

Post by notacoward »

the_snooze wrote: post #270
notacoward wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as if all ideas This isn't about ideas. It's about data . The quality of data is independent of where it came from, so it actually is equal in that sense. > You should track down an expert. Yes, we should refer people to experts more often. Why? Because they have data , not because they have titles or affiliations. Information is what makes them experts, and information can be shared.

Data doesn't speak for itself. It has to be properly contextualized and positioned for an intended audience and message. It's for that reason that you don't ever see scientific papers that are just tables of numbers alone. If you're outside a particular area of expertise, the intellectually honest thing to do is to say "I'm not knowledgeable enough to assess these findings" and defer to someone who is. At that point,…

> It has to be properly contextualized and positioned

Contextualization and positioning are themselves information that an expert can pass on.

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

#590

Post by katmannthree »

carapace wrote: post #526
katmannthree wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 / vehem…

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.

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.

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