Straying a little off today to discuss 5G and specifically concerns about 5G safety. By now most of you are familiar with new 5G networks being rolled out in various parts of the world and the expected benefits. Many people are voicing concern about its safety and a large number of groups opposing its deployment due to health concerns are growing. This is too big a topic to cover here entirely, so I’ll just give my 2 cents. But before I do that you’ll find the following article as one of the better summaries of the various concerns.
https://www.5gradar.com/features/5g-dangers-discover-the-fact-and-the-fiction
While it favours 5G proponents it does a reasonable job of discussing the concerns various people and organizations are having.
On initial review of 5G’s capabilities and a general overview of 5G shows its using millimeter band ~30 GHz to 300 GHz and also make use of centimeter frequencies similar to existing cellular networks. So higher frequency allows for higher speeds and the ability to support many more devices. Downside is it requires many stations mostly because millimeter frequencies don’t penetrate objects as well as lower frequencies and the transmit power levels are low compared older technologies. While this means there’s be towers all over the place like giant mushrooms the rest of that picture sound attractive.
If you read the 5gradar article you’ll note that they only discuss ionizing radiant testing, which given what I just stated I would expect the results to be negative (no cancer risk). This picture is missing the following: 1) that 5G supports beam forming, 2) penetration of the skin is only about a millimeter or less so all the energy is absorbed in a smaller volume, 3) there are likely other ways to harm living tissue beyond just damaging the DNA of critical organs and causing cancer.
Beam Forming
5G employs advanced beam forming to concentrate antenna radiant energy direction to the receiver (and receive lobes will also be formed). This is good in that less energy is needed, and the surrounding environment will have dramatically less energy. It implies that the towers know where the devices are and can point the energy directly at that device. How accurate it unclear but we can assume it will improve dramatically over time. This means a malicious entity that controls the tower can target a person with much higher concentrations of energy. Can this be enough to reach ionizing levels? Haven’t come across any thing that says its not possible. It does mean every effort must be made to make it impossible for malicious entities from controlling the network and its towers.
Skin Penetration
Previously 2G,3G, and 4G frequencies would large pass through a target body and the energy absorbed would be spread throughout the volume of the body. At higher frequencies the energy will be absorbed in a thin layer in the case of humans the skin. So, while internal organs are beyond the reach of 5G signals the concentration of all the energy in the skin will occur. So even if the towers transmit less energy the amount of energy per volume in the skin could still be higher then for the old systems. I haven’t found any research to investigate this, so if anyone is familiar with some papers or research results on this question it would be appreciated.
Non-cancer Damage
We know that non-cancer damage is possible because that’s how microwave ovens work. The microwaves are absorbed by the water molecules and vibrate at a higher energy state that we observe as the target object heating up. So that’s one case where water molecules can absorb radiant energy that could harm someone. I don’t think its likely that the beam forming could be tight enough to a living creature to cause water in the body to superheat from a distance using the apparatus being built. However, it has also been demonstrated that living cells can be vibrated at their natural frequency until they burst using radiant energy. Some forms of therapy have been developed to target undesirable cells in the body as shown in the following Ted talk:
So, its not hard to visualize a bad actor using this sort of technique to shatter parts of the body. Now doing that outdoors with people walking around is a far cry from a control lab experiment discussed in the Ted talk, so the risk that this is possible is low.
Conclusion
I have other concerns beyond health that have more to do with national security that I think are just as important. The communication infrastructure is critical to the safety and viability of any nation, and with 5G foreign companies from countries that may have hostile intent. So allowing every device to be connected to the network implies the host country must have complete control of the 5G network infrastructure and its maintenance. Some countries are just waking up to this concern which I will expand on in a later post.
Hopefully that makes clear my current position on 5G, but if you have an issue or see something missing please let me know in the reply section. As my position changes over time I’ll let you know where I stand.
Thanks for reading, cheers!