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

blogs.scientificamerican.com

151–160 of 613 posts

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

#151
post #48

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 ) that claimed to find a link between mobile phone use and brain…

Mutagenic effects can come from many sources, not just direct modification of DNA. Anything that interrupts or interferes with the replication process can easily influence the quality of the output. Tumor Treating Fields [1], for example, use ~150-200kHz alternating electrical fields to mechanically disturb microtubule formation to corrupt mitosis and destroy cells in the process of reproducing. There's nothing remotely ionizing about this process but on the fringes of effect it could result in damaged but not destroyed cells.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035531/

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s one hell of an ad hominem you’re getting away with.

Is it though? Is it ad hominem to identify and separate people who know something about a thing from those who don’t?

You raise a good point. When an appeal to authority has already made credentials etc. the issue, challenging that appeal becomes valid. The problem is that OP wasn't just an appeal to authority. It did not open that door. It did make arguments other than identity, and linked to fuller expositions of those arguments. Thus, addressing only identity and ignoring any arguments in either direction remains ad hominem.

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

#153
post #87
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

No, however a program that encourages applied homeopathy should not be legitimized by associating it with an applied standard medical degree. Homeopathy can be treated as an open area of research at any evidence based program but certification implies a step beyond academic.

A layman looking for medical attention should not be responsible for having to make that distinction. The fact that a layman conflates the two is the issue at hand.

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

#154
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.

I've had someone in my flat make almost exactly that claim. They made it while unknowingly sat immediately next to a busy WiFi router. The claim did not go well for them.

Also worth noting that an iPad playing high bitrate video will be warmer than one which isn't; I could probably tell the difference too.

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

#155
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly the protection is the inverse square law. Provided you're not holding the device next to your head the exposure is tiny.

5G requires far more towers than 4G or 3G before it, and if biological damage is possible accumulated risk when measured over an entire population can still be problematic. Ultimately this isn't simply an issue of "personal risk." If there's no danger, there's no danger. But if there is and you live in a major city simply not owning a cellular device may only lower your exposure.

None of what you say is false, but without numbers it's impossible to compare to other sources of danger. And like ionising radiation, you need to compare to background levels. How does it compare to, say, the sun? Or EMC emissions from motor vehicles?

(Yes, they're not zero: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/44876/m... )

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

#156
post #7

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.

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.

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.

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

#157
post #71

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…

Mostly the protection is the inverse square law. Provided you're not holding the device next to your head the exposure is tiny.

Cell modems are around 300 milliwatts transmit, it would be like holding a LED light up to your head that flickers on and off when sending data.

Extremely tiny exposure of non ionizing radiation, you probably get more from the monitor your looking at right now.

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

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, I think your conclusion is correct, but on the other hand, it took quite some time to establish the health risks of smoking. Because there were concerted disinformation campaigns etc.

Not really, it was known to be harmful for a long time, whereas there’s no evidence yet that RF waves used by cellphones are harmful.

The trouble is, there's lots of evidence, and also lots of evidence that it isn't. The only way to draw a conclusion is by making a judgement about which evidence is better: which scientific experiments are better designed?

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

#160

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…

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.

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