Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

androidpit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 68 posts

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#21

Post by EB66 »

sneak wrote: post #12
mac01021 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's going to harm wildlife, the technology should be forbidden, without qualification or exception. If not, I don't feel the need for faster speeds than what I get, but I would be very interested in getting more data per month at the same (or lower) monthly price. If a cellular provider could give me internet connectivity (LTE speeds) at a price of something like $1 per gigabyte I would drop my household's cable…

By that logic, we shouldn’t build cities or buildings. I am pretty sure most people do not agree with this position.

Not quite.

Cities and buildings provide tremendous benefits. These benefits, presumably, outweigh the costs of harming wildlife to construct them.

The OP is arguing that the benefits of 5G are objectively minor and therefore not worth the cost of causing mass harm to a broad swath of wildlife.

I agree with the OP's position -- I will gladly keep my ~50Mbit 4G speeds if it means we will prevent the collapse of various insect populations.

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#22

Post by saagarjha »

sneak wrote: post #12
mac01021 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's going to harm wildlife, the technology should be forbidden, without qualification or exception. If not, I don't feel the need for faster speeds than what I get, but I would be very interested in getting more data per month at the same (or lower) monthly price. If a cellular provider could give me internet connectivity (LTE speeds) at a price of something like $1 per gigabyte I would drop my household's cable…

By that logic, we shouldn’t build cities or buildings. I am pretty sure most people do not agree with this position.

Yeah, I feel that "without qualification or exception" is not a tenable position. We harm wildlife all the time: ideally, we don't excessively harm wildlife (where "excessive" is a constantly evolving standard).

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#23

Post by freyr »

orev wrote: post #10
ducttape12 wrote: post #2

I haven't much looked into 5G. Considering that 95% of the time I'm on WiFi anyway, I really don't get this push for faster and faster mobile speeds. (especially if there's potential to damage wildlife and us with it)

A very large part of it is Marketing people dying to have something new to sell people. LTE has reached market saturation, so 5G is the only thing they can use to sell people new phones and new data plans. They don’t care that they have setup this perverse system where they sell people on faster speeds, but then add data caps to deter them from using it. A less sinister take might be that faster speeds allow each dev…

> "Marketing people dying to have something new to sell people"

Not just marketing people. Everyone at companies making the equipment (Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei), the chipsets (Qualcomm), and rolling out the networks (e.g., AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint) wants a piece of the pie.

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#24

Post by devoply »

saagarjha wrote: post #20
devoply wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not boy who cried wolf, people just love their mobile internet and corporations and governments love their profit to care about the science: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high-exposure-...

Somewhat important to point out, I think: > “The exposures used in the studies cannot be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience when using a cell phone,” said John Bucher, Ph.D., NTP senior scientist. “In our studies, rats and mice received radio frequency radiation across their whole bodies. By contrast, people are mostly exposed in specific local tissues close to where they hold the phone. In addi…

> The lowest exposure level used in the studies was equal to the maximum local tissue exposure currently allowed for cell phone users. This power level rarely occurs with typical cell phone use. The highest exposure level in the studies was four times higher than the maximum power level permitted.

Does this mean in trains or public building where multiple phones are present, even hundreds of phones? 4x seems rather a small margin for harm considering every human is potentially carrying a device and using it at the same time occurs multiple times during the day.

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#25

Post by balp »

cadence- wrote: post #4

Interesting. I would like to see more research - especially with humans. That waves used in 4G cause harmful effects on humans was proved to be not true. But those mmWaves for 5G are much higher frequency, and they get absorbed by more materials. Perhaps by human body too? It wouldn’t be healthy to be constantly exposed to waves like that. I definitely would like to see more research in this.

Most, almost all animals are mostly water. About 2GHz you have a frequency that resonates with water, it's gets stopped by water, including rain. E.g. it's energy goes into the water, this is how the microwave operates.

For this reason it's traditionally considers useless as radio transmission. And turned into a global free frequency span. Making this radio space used by all kinds of devices that you have at home. Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. There is tons of research of how radio and other waves effect the human body.

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#26

Post by fnord77 »

brunoTbear wrote: post #19

What I want to know is who is behind the 5G fear-mongering. I see this all the time and from different places. My poor conspiracy-minded elderly uncle in western Pennsylvania has been had by Fox News and the rest of the insane-right. He sends me stuff like this all the time. What I want to understand is who stands to benefit from 5G not coming to pass. Is it a just one of many conspiracy theories cooked by a Kremlin…

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-safety-h...

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#27

Post by KirinDave »

fnord77 wrote: post #26
brunoTbear wrote: post #19

What I want to know is who is behind the 5G fear-mongering. I see this all the time and from different places. My poor conspiracy-minded elderly uncle in western Pennsylvania has been had by Fox News and the rest of the insane-right. He sends me stuff like this all the time. What I want to understand is who stands to benefit from 5G not coming to pass. Is it a just one of many conspiracy theories cooked by a Kremlin…

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/science/5g-phone-safety-h...

So you're suggesting RT is behind a Swiss study?

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#28

Post by freyr »

cadence- wrote: post #4

Interesting. I would like to see more research - especially with humans. That waves used in 4G cause harmful effects on humans was proved to be not true. But those mmWaves for 5G are much higher frequency, and they get absorbed by more materials. Perhaps by human body too? It wouldn’t be healthy to be constantly exposed to waves like that. I definitely would like to see more research in this.

> But those mmWaves for 5G are much higher frequency, and they get absorbed by more materials

4G is on the order of 10^9 Hz (1 GHz), and 5G is on the order of 10^10 - 10^11 Hz. Both are non-ionizing radiation, and in the overall scheme of things, relatively close in frequency.

Ionizing radiation causes cell mutation. It starts with UV radiation at 10^16 Hz. X-rays are around 10^18 Hz.

We can't say with certainty that 5G can't possibly have some negative effects, but so far, we have no reason to believe it.

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#29

Post by mac01021 »

sneak wrote: post #12
mac01021 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's going to harm wildlife, the technology should be forbidden, without qualification or exception. If not, I don't feel the need for faster speeds than what I get, but I would be very interested in getting more data per month at the same (or lower) monthly price. If a cellular provider could give me internet connectivity (LTE speeds) at a price of something like $1 per gigabyte I would drop my household's cable…

By that logic, we shouldn’t build cities or buildings. I am pretty sure most people do not agree with this position.

You're right, I articulated my position extremely poorly. The needs of people and civilization should often win out over the needs of wildlife. But almost always in a way that sacrifices only wildlife within a confined spatial region and almost never in a way that threatens an entire species.

If there are species living around the globe that might not be able to continue their current role in the global ecosystem in a world where 5G is pervasive, then we should not allow the use of 5G in the vast majority of the world. The consequences, for humans, via trophic cascade or whatever, would be extremely uncertain. Are the benefits of 5G really compelling enough to brave them? Certainly they are not compelling enough to me.

Re: New Swiss studies claim 5G increases body temperature of insects

#30

Post by gsich »

balp wrote: post #25
cadence- wrote: post #4

Interesting. I would like to see more research - especially with humans. That waves used in 4G cause harmful effects on humans was proved to be not true. But those mmWaves for 5G are much higher frequency, and they get absorbed by more materials. Perhaps by human body too? It wouldn’t be healthy to be constantly exposed to waves like that. I definitely would like to see more research in this.

Most, almost all animals are mostly water. About 2GHz you have a frequency that resonates with water, it's gets stopped by water, including rain. E.g. it's energy goes into the water, this is how the microwave operates. For this reason it's traditionally considers useless as radio transmission. And turned into a global free frequency span. Making this radio space used by all kinds of devices that you have at home. Wi…

Above 20GHz you mean.
Post reply on HN