I don't know who Alex Berezow is any more than I know who Joel M. Moskowitz is, but openly ridiculing the entire state of California for their stance on public health and safety in your opening paragraphs isn't the best way to sell yourself as a voice of reason in a discussion about public health and safety of 5G.
Edit: I was also prompted to spend ~30 seconds researching who ACSH are since everyone critiquing Moskowitz in this HN thread seem to be posting links from that website alone. Didn't take long to discover they're a privately funded pro-industry advocacy group.
I'm not an expert on this field, but I do know how to run the incidence numbers of cancer. One of his claims in the article is that for certain types of head-and-neck cancer, incidence rates are increasing. I cannot find any evidence for this:
I took the numbers from the country I'm familiar with (The Netherlands, which has excellent cell phone penetration), and no matter how I look, if I correct for age, they've only been decreasing. The Dutch registry is also one of the most complete of all European countries.
See https://imgur.com/a/FiNrVCQ, x-axis is year of diagnosis, y-axis is Incidence per 100.000. I used European Standardized Rate correction to correct for changes in age distribution, which is standard here. Top blue line is total, the other lines all denote different origins.
That article is very unprofessional in tone, and quite thin on content. I'm not on any side, but if that is the best criticism of him then I'm now very wary of this technology.
I'd rater people attack the argument than the person. 'Truther' and 'Denier' are weasel words designed to discredit and idea without addressing the actual argument. It's like saying "How are you?!" with nothing else to back it up.
The article is a bit suspect, the author seems to have a personal dislike on the guy. The author works for the American Council on Science and Health which is a nonprofit, but I couldn't find the sponsors.
The article uses personal insult (calling the guy a charlatan) but does not say much about why he disagrees with those positions.
I see no companies on the name of Joel M. Moskowitz, no products sold, no industry sponsors.
On the other hand, I see a guy with no industry ties being slandered online by no reason, weird.
I don't know anything about the guy, if anyone can chime in on why his opinion is not trustworthy I would like to learn more.
> at first glance, he looks like a reputable researcher.
The man been trying that "cellphones give you cancer" since at least 2009, with his earliest attacks being closer to some new age metaphysical bullshit, and only later he started to pull some scientific argument.
He has no real science background, no medical background, he is a psychologist. His "academic network" includes people going into homeopathy, antivaxing, GMO and something bordering on new age and conspiracy cults.
Why UC Berkley still keeps him around, I have no idea.
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.
Pretty sure anyone setting up CCTV does so on a wired network. Why the outrage now when your scenario has been possible for years (piping CCTV footage to a central location)?
Yes, I know it's been possible for years. But 5G would lower the deployment costs dramatically (assuming the operator gets a good flatrate data deal) and it enables connecting moving objects like buses and trains into the network.
You are right that the slippery slope has been started already a while ago.
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.
This is already the case. I highly recommend you attend any physical security exhibition, CCTV vendors will happily demonstrate the capacity of their facial recognition appliances. (And that’s business grade commercial, imagine mil-spec)
I'd be interested in seeing signatures from people at institutions I recognize and trust. There are a lot of people with degrees FROM credible institutions, but very little in terms of currently being researchers in the field AT credible institutions.
It's not hard to find 250 wackos if you pull random scientists working in random fields at random institutions. Most have no better way to know safety of 5G than I do.
Now, there's obviously some frequency band where we get into health risks. 5G jumps us from single-digit GHz to double-digit -- I'd guess you'd have to go at least past visible light before you run into safety issues, at least barring extremely high levels of exposure. Intuitively, it seems to me like that ought to still be safe, but I'm no expert.
But an appeal to experts -- with no real experts behind it -- doesn't do it for me. Neither does an appeal to papers based on volume, without a clear description of what they found and how. Most science is junk science.
The article explicitly calls the 200 participants the world's leading experts in non-ionizing radiation. I haven't researched their credentials or examined their research. But if all existing research points in one direction, that constitutes empirical evidence. Of course methodological and statistical problems abound across all academia. The article makes existing research seem unequivocal and argues we need to conduct further research for 4G as well as 5G health effects
Fortunately the article is wrong because the signers are almost all either: 1) long-retired and out of the game entirely, 2) not trained in the field or qualified at all, or 3) known quacks who have peddled this kind of thing for years, or some combination of the three, and the articles cited are all written by that same population (and often published in no-name journals that I could probably get published in) or don't say what the author claims they do (many of the articles explicitly state that they found no connection whatsoever).
So I guess the moral of the story is "don't believe everything you see in pop science magazines," although I would have hoped nobody did to begin with(?)
Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust? Columbia? Monash? McGill? Can we dispense with the tired ad hominems and talk about science? A self-proclaimed guess from a self-proclaimed non-expert seems ill placed in a credentialist diatribe.
Goalposts notwithstanding you have to admit the list is kind of hit or miss. Whenever their job isn't listed they're either retired or were never in a related field. For example you listed Harvard, Columbia, Monash, and McGill above. Half the people from those institutions are either unqualified, retired, or both.
Plus there's places like "ElectroSensitivity UK" which aren't scientific institutions.
PS - I fully admit that there are subject experts from trusted institutions included too. But you're being far too defensive for quite legitimate questions/criticisms.
It seemed that way to me as well, but the real point is that it's irrelevant how well or poorly we judge those people. What matters is the facts they or others present.
> you're being far too defensive
Defensive of what? I haven't even expressed a position yet, other than "logical fallacies are bad" and I'm pretty willing to stand by that one. Are you here to argue the converse? To the extent that people or motivations matter at all, why condemn me but not the one who created the digression?
> ...the real point is that it's irrelevant how well or poorly we judge those people. What matters is the facts they or others present.
This matters if your expertise are in the subject to which the facts belong, otherwise it means little, particularly in a subject which requires an incredible amount of knowledge of an an incredible array of subjects.
I can look a bunch of absolute facts regarding 5g signals and make an assumption, however, because my expertise lie far outside the realm of 5g, an expert can easily come along afterwards and show me why these facts–while accurate–mean nothing to the subject at hand and why a completely different set of facts are what one should be looking at.
Expertise absolutely matters. And this is coming from a person who is confident that a greater than zero amount of companies would happily pay people to add noise to a topic in order to poison us for a fraction of a percentage boost in their quarterly growth.
Expertise matters on complex subjects and attempting to pretend as if all ideas are equal no matter who they come from or who receives them is a recipe for disaster.
The collective We really need to get back to a place where we freely and happily say “It’s really outside my realm of expertise. You should track down an expert.” and way more often daily and regularly “I don’t know.”
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.
I can think of very few science cranks I've ever seen who didn't have some kind of data. That means nothing. Data isn't a magical, pure, and perfect substance that emerges from the aether.
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, you're assessing credibility, and affiliation and track record absolutely matter.
Perhaps I should have been more clear, apologies if I assumed it would be inferred.
To use your term data, with complex topics it isn’t simply having data. One must know which data is relevant to consider for which topic at which point. And even more importantly, one must understand which missing sets of information need to be considered.
There is a reason our society has come to place such a high value on experience and expertise. And it isn’t solely because someone had books of data stored on massive bookshelves. While these bookshelves are important, it is their understanding in the nuances of which books to hunt for answers.
Our new ability to store significantly more of these books and retrieve them more efficiently doesn’t remove our need for someone to use and contextualize the information contained in these books. New tech doesn’t change the fact that expertise matters.
Interestingly enough, we now face a sort of reverse of the problems we’ve faced for centuries: While we used to struggle to find enough information to feed to experts, now we face too much data and not enough experts to properly make use of it.
Again, apologies if my first post wasn’t clarifying enough.
"I haven't even expressed a position yet, other than "logical fallacies are bad" and I'm pretty willing to stand by that one."
Your fallacy is the "Fallacy Fallacy." If you can actually stand by your words (nobody in my nearly 40 years of life has been able to) you'd explode from the sheer paradox.
Wait, did the goalposts actually move at all? The original post said:
> There are a lot of people with degrees FROM credible institutions, but very little in terms of currently being researchers in the field AT credible institutions.
You responded literally saying that the institutions are credible:
> Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust? Columbia? Monash? McGill?
That wasn't the original objection; they even said in their objection that the institutions are credible. I don't understand how the goalposts moved.
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.
Is criticizing an expert's qualifications an ad hominem? Particularly when they're using their expertise to argue for an idea as here.
Seems like a double standard. They can use their expertise/reputation to endorse an idea but using that same expertise/reputation to qualify that endorsement is an "ad hominem."
To me discussing their expertise is core to their position, since their whole position is: "I'm an expert, I sign a letter based on my expertise for a specific course of action." If they aren't an expert it cuts right to the core of their position.
When the list of people also includes folks who claim to "customize clinical trials to support marketing claims"[0] it is hard to take even experts with solid credentials seriously.
Five out of five signers from my country are well-known EHS proponents, and at least three have financial ties to the illness. Having a Ph.D. degree from a well-known university does little to prevent later involvement in quackery.
"Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust?"
After their primary university admissions scandal? Absolutely not, not that I ever trusted them in the first place (Memphis has a far better medical program.)
... I found them, and that's exactly what raised flags.
If a faculty at HMS signed on, that'd be okay. If a ransom person with a degree from HMS does, that doesn't carry the same weight. I was pretty clear about "at" versus "from."
I would like to add to this that many academics who study wireless research, specifically MIMO beam forming - aren't particularly incentivized to find issue with 5G. I've spoken to a few who have dismissed health concerns whilst waving their hands about the actual Science. To them this is worth anything up to 10 years of funding and research opportunities in what can be a very competitive research area.
They receive A LOT of funding from cellular companies in particular, any research that throws doubt on 5G could lead to their funding being pulled. Not only this, but most of the interesting 5G hardware is coming from the cellular companies on loan.
My point is: You have a perfect storm for a rushed technology with potential for health risks. Almost every Country on the planet is investing lots of money into 5G and the technology itself requires a significant number more cellular towers to be built in closer proximity to people.
If there is any genuine question about 5G's safety, I would rather stay on the side of caution. It's not as if people will kill over if they don't have 5G immediately. Not only this, the technology will be more mature and the price will likely come down for infrastructure development.
This is often repeated, but I wonder if it's completely true. I'd completely understand if it was harder, and more expensive, to find such a control group, but it surprises me that it would be "impossible".
I can think of a few people I know that are much less exposed to 2/3/4g radiation, by living in the forest and not having a phone on them all the time. Isn't a control group that has been exposed to significantly less radiation still useful ?
There are large cellular areas not exposed to significant (read: detectable) levels of radiation if you're willing to travel. Third world Countries would be a good place to start.
>Now, there's obviously some frequency band where we get into health risks. 5G jumps us from single-digit GHz to double-digit -- I'd guess you'd have to go at least past visible light before you run into safety issues, at least barring extremely high levels of exposure. Intuitively, it seems to me like that ought to still be safe, but I'm no expert.
I highly doubt that 26+ GHz will receive much attention. You have no range, you need line of sight otherwise it won't work. At least 3.4GHz (and the other LTE bands) don't have that issue.
Why is being below visible light a factor? Different wavelengths have different properties that don't necessarily map linearly with frequency, such as the ability to pass through your body.
> Cancer is not the only risk as there is considerable evidence that RFR causes neurological disorders and reproductive harm, likely due to oxidative stress.
I mean it can't be good all this radiation exposure. As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.
I think so much can already be done with the network bandwidth we already have available. Just using a better protocol on top of HTTP, like everything switching to HTTP2 should be a huge improvement.
How much bandwidth more do we really need, we have hit the limits in terms of video on what is noticeable by the human eye already.
> As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.
As far as you know from what? This might sound harsh, but this is just fearmongering.
HV power lines are, in an electrical sense, very far away from you. Even if magnetic radiation had some health effects, (which as far as we know, it doesn't, which is why MRI's are incredibly non-invasive to people without metal implants of some sort), you are not getting any of that from an HV power line.
The only people I know spouting such things are either charlatans^W salesmen trying make a buck or people that have no understanding or training in electricity. It can't "jump out at you". A power line is not a radio.
There are plenty of microwave towers and satellites and cell phones to be irrationally afraid of. But power lines? Like it just screams "I do not understand electricity or am trying to make a buck off those that don't." There's no radiation coming off that power line that gets to you.
> HV power lines are, in an electrical sense, very far away from you
I've seen family houses literally next to high tension poles (not just regular poles, I mean those huge ones many times the height of the house), for example in Portugal.
I don't see any definitive conclusion online for the link between high voltage lines proximity and cancer, but I am not an expert. Seems to me the consensus is far from general.
The market is happy to sustain homeopathy and fake Faraday cages for your microwave-based electric and gas meters. Radium used to fetch a high price for its health "benefits"...
I am not sure pointing to random cons for sale on the marketplace really changes the fact that if high voltage power lines are next to your house, it is worth less.
Yea, the huge ones, many times the height of the house, are uh, really many times the height of the house above the house. According to [0], the maximum magnetic field from 275kV-400kV overhead power line (this would be measured much closer to the line than you could possibly get to without climbing the towers) is 100uT. Standing next to a running vacuum cleaner about 800uT. A standard clinical MRI is typically 1.5T, so about 10000 times the strength of the power line if you were a lineman sitting next to a live line. Typical field under the line: 3-5 uT. That's standing right under the line. The family underneath the line gets more radiation from leaving the TV on, or god forbid, the wifi or their cell phone.
Consensus is not far from general. You don't have to be an expert. If you are really afraid of radiation, talking about power lines really weakens your case. They do almost nothing compared to normal household appliances we use all the time. The inverse square rule is real.
I think to avoid your best bet would be joining an Amish community. And don't go outside, without covering up. The sun's radiation is like, actually proven to be harmful to skin and DNA, and is many times more powerful. Too bad getting sun is also clinically associated with many health benefits! Oh what will we do...
Even if current levels of radiation are harmless, it does not mean that the same applies to 5G.
Studies funded by the 5G industry are 10 times more likely to say there are no side effects on human, which is suspect and an indication that is an attempt to manipulate science going on - https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-cell-phone-radiation-c...
> Even if current levels of radiation are harmless, it does not mean that the same applies to 5G.
Good thing I'm talking about overhead powerlines and not 5G then. Unless your reply was meant for someone else.
Although I believe the chance that 5G is harmful is basically nil, mostly due to my EE degree and a basic understanding of "non-ionizing radiation" and "ionizing radiation", it is probably about 100X more rational than complaining about overhead powerlines.
Seriously I just don't get it what problem do people have with overhead powerlines. Saying overhead powerlines cause cancer is like, on par with calling aircraft contrails "chemtrails" and saying they are part of a nefarious government plot. There are plenty of real nefarious government plots, but you hear people talking again and again about chemtrails because they don't understand aircraft engines or heat or water. Just like there are real issues in the health system, but again and again people cut off the legs of their own argument by going off about overhead powerlines.
Lastly, WTF are those sources? Is nutritionfacts.org a leading independent organization on cancer causes? That is a 5-minute long video of someone doing zoom-highlights on excerpts from studies from 2011. The first comment is someone saying the WHO is bought-out by corporate interests, although, the WHO is like the main ethos argument from the video.
Do you use a cell phone? How do you hide from the other people using their cell phones, or the Wi-Fi rays coming from your computer? If you have a new router, 802.11ad already communicates in the 60Ghz band, that's a pretty big number if big frequency numbers are scary.
> The leading independent organization on cancer causes says that current cell phones are "possible carcinogens"
It is crucial to understand what this actually means. the IARC classifications are valid but — particularly to lay people — incredibly misleading and pretty much useless. All that “possible carcinogen” means is that we haven’t yet collected sufficient evidence to discount harm. It’s not evidence of carcinogenicity at all. If anything it’s the opposite, because it means that, despite the existence of relevant studies, there hasn’t been any consistent demonstration of carcinogenic effect.
Furthermore, IARC only classifies risk itself, not hazard [1], nor dosage effects.
For context, IARC classifies sunlight exposure and processed meat consumption as “definitely carcinogenic” [2]. Despite this, regular exposure to sunlight is crucial for your health, and regular meat consumption is known to have little absolute effect on cancer risk (in other words, although red meat does have an effect, the effect size is tiny).
The last question is interesting. Our eyes create an image with ~ 1 Gigapixel resolution at frame-rate equivalent > 120 Hz.
For real VR/AR, 5G is not fast enough, would have to work in the THz regime for wireless (wow, nature has a huge bandwidth requirement...). Interesting thing about THz is that most electronic materials breakdown and stop working.
The actual resolution of the human eye is much smaller than that and a lot of our perception is based on interpolation. It's pretty interesting to read up on this.
> I mean it can't be good all this radiation exposure.
The light bulbs in your home spew out radiation. The heating of your home is all spewing out radiation. "Radiation exposure" is meaningless without considering whether or not radiation at a given wavelength will interact with your body in detrimental ways at the given power levels (of course, if you heat your home too much, or set fire to it, the infrared radiation/heat will kill you; but we don't for that reason conclude heat is inherently bad) or not.
Talking about "radiation exposure" without being specific about those things is as meaningless as suggesting eating is bad for you because some things are toxic.
Some radiation is very bad for you. Some is essential for you to some extent and dangerous for you if you get too much. Some just won't interact with your body in any way that matters.
> As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.
There is some very limited evidence that shows that strong electromagnetic fields may have some limited effect specifically for incidence rates of childhood Leukemia, but notably only at levels found at too few houses for the researchers to get a large enough sample size to be able to draw conclusions either way. In other words: We don't have any clear evidence of that. We have some research that may hint at some link under conditions to rare for us to have anything conclusive.
It's worth researching, because even a very minor increase in risk would have substantial long term effects, but it's not something that really has any relevance to the safety of 5G at all, any more than the fact that too much infrared radiation (heat) will burn you. They're different things.
[1] provides a detailed walk-through of different claims, sources of electromagnetic fields and radiation and what different studies say about this.
There was an increase in leukemia associated with proximity to electricity pylons at one point. They found that it was caused by the herbicides they were using to stop plants from growing up around them and getting in the way of maintenance. Change the herbicide and the leukemia goes away.
"Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology."
So this is, I assume, not by a Russian troll farm.
5G will likely increase IPv6 penetration, resulting in more stuff with public IP's, resulting in more stuff with ancient unpatched software vulnerable to attack.
Why would Russia argue against technology that would allow cyber warfare on an unprecedented scale?
More specifically, I meant the ancient software of the future -- not the stuff that's ancient today. I am convinced that IOT + a large-scale acceptance of IPv6 will result in the Internet being one big battleground.
He is not arguing that 5G is dangerous. He is pointing out that there does not seem to be enough research available to state as a fact that it is safe and that, as a consequence, we might want to be cautious.
That's a very reasonable general approach. Whether his proposal to stop 5G deployments altogether is proportional to our understanding of the potential risks, if any, is debatable, to say the least.
If made in good faith, yes. I’m not convinced that this is the case here, however, given that the author is fundamentally at odds with the scientific consensus on 2G, 3G and 4G safety, without acknowledging that he’s in the clear minority. In fact, he claims that the majority of relevant experts have signed the 5G moratorium, and this seems to not actually be the case. I actually think that disagreeing with the consensus, based on limited but potentially valid evidence, is completely acceptable. But he goes further and pretends to be in the majority, and that contrary evidence only marginally exists.
In sum, he makes demonstrably false claims about the current state of the scientific consensus, which makes me sceptical of everything else he says.
I think this is a reasonable approach in general. Whether it is made in good faith or not is a red herring and does not change anything.
What's more important, since you mention the 'scientific consensus' and his claim that there isn't enough data is: What is the consensus on 5G (I suppose that means mmWave) and what are the studies it is based on? That would allow to make a factual comment on his claims about health hazards.
> * Whether it is made in good faith or not is a red herring and does not change anything.*
That’s true only if we indeed know nothing about 5G, and that’s demonstrably not the case. In fact, the pretend open-mindedness is tantamount to denialism, if we accept that findings on ≤4G translate to 5G, and there are good scientific reasons for thinking so, based on our established understanding of physics and biology. It’s possible that 5G changes the picture, and I am indeed open to the possibility. But at the same time intellectual honestly compels me to describe the chance of this happening as low, given what we generally know about the biological effects of non-ionising radiation.
Put differently: Given what we know, it’s honest to say that 5G might carry risks, but that there is currently no good reason to assume so. It is not honest to claim, as the article does, that “we have no reason to believe 5G is safe”.
You are replying beside the point when you keep focusing on that point.
This is a reasonable approach and it is a general approach. Now, about 5G, again the question is what we know or don't know about any risks.
If there are no or very few studies about the effect of mmWave then it is indeed reasonable to ask whether precautions should be taken.
You seem to suggest that there are indeed no such studies but that it can be assumed to be safe because emissions in a different part of the spectrum are safe.
Whatever the reality is, this is simply not a scientific approach and does suggest that you have no factual reason to believe that mmWaves are safe (or dangerous actually, you simply don't know).
I am not saying that he is right, but scientifically we cannot just counter his argument by "no, you're wrong".
I spend a lot of time in public transport, and on internet in general. I never paid for 3G or 4G on my smartphone. Only wifi. OSMAnd for maps, etc.
5G is also pretty bad for the environment (netflix, instagram, snapchat are also pretty awful). The amount of energy and resources you need to make all those electronic is gigantic, not to mention the lifespan of a smartphones is so short, smartphones vendors are now trying to add more and more features to make customers replace their phones.
I'm really dying for any electronic brand to release durable hardware, and I'm also eager to have minimal smartphone OS that consume less CPU and memory.
I can't understand that race towards higher bigger everything.
>I can't understand that race towards higher bigger everything.
I think it's called growth-economy. Solving things creates new exciting possibilities, which have problems that need solving. We're never satisfied, and that's a good thing. Otherwise we would've stayed in caves
More like "growth-economy with massive hidden externalized costs" - from the obvious like pollution and climate disruption, to subtle ones like economic pato-incentives that distort markets and prevent them from doing their jobs...
> Otherwise we would've stayed in caves
Yeah, but we're long past that state. A cave man can safely externalize stuff like recycling, and even most of food production to NATURE. We can't.
I love growth-economy per se, but our current brand of it is messed up, and markets don't seem to be good enough at pricing all the nasty externalities. We need to invent quickly some extra devices that price this stuff in at a global scale (doing it per country CAN'T work!) IF we want to keep our beloved growth-economy!
Otherwise we'll default to the crappy solutions of ducktape-enviro-socialism + state-capitalism + islands of "free" markets here and there, dragging ourselves through a new f dark age from war to war...
We need to get smarter about the damage our progress does though. I am not saying we need to stop looking to better our lives. But the life we have now is at great cost to the environment and indeed our own species. The electronic gadget abundance specifically comes at a great human cost to those in third world countries. To say nothing of the environmental cost.
Would you prefer we revert to manufacturing plastic VHS tapes, then distribute them by diesel trucks like we used to in the good old days?
Would you prefer people get their morning news on broadsheets made from the bleached pulp of rainforest trees?
Or would you like to go back to the good old days of AM radio when the inadequacy of the receiver electronics was compensated for by sheer power at the transmitter, to the tune of megawatts of broadcast power?
You're probably one of those people who would prefer to breathe in lungfuls of woodsmoke rather than bathe your skin in the harmful rays of electric light.
One of the use cases I saw somewhere for 5G was "smart wine glasses".
Like glasses with sensors in them so the waiter at a restaurant would know where he needed to go to refill someone's glass.
This was in a context where it definitely was not an ironic jab at the overuse of technology.
I don't know if the product actually exists, but honestly. Honestly. Smart wine glasses! I think it's just like... a really, really dumb idea. And if that's the kind of thing that 5G is going to enable, I absolutely do think we should consider it a threat to the environment.
I've seen wireless thingies that would beep when your order is ready at kebab joints. Since the basic principle is the same (1-bit signaling), I'm pretty sure it could be just as well rolled out right now, unfortunately.
Is that water destroyed beyond repair?
Is there a water shortage where silicon is purified?
What would you do with that water if it was not used to purify silicone, bring it to Sahara?
It is certainly contaminated after being used. It has to be purified before hand too. The energy cost and environmental impact of manufacturing a single phone is tremendous.
Constantly replacing antennas, smartphones, having large datacenters, network infrastructure that consume a lot of energy is bad for the environment. Video is a big offender. Instagram and facebook feeds also consume a lot of memory and energy.
Even storing document as PDF instead of paper might be worse after all.
If at least smartphones would be designed to last 4 or 5 years it would make a big difference.
Wirth's law is also an excellent way to describe how computer software is most often horribly designed, and it also plays a huge role in how we could have cheaper and eco-friendly devices.
Is 5G tech at the same Millimeter waves frequencies as those used in airport scanners? I've heard mm scanners as considerably safer than the old backscatter x-rays (although full of false positives and no better than random chance at actually detecting things).
Yes, sort of. Backscatter X-ray is ionizing (much smaller than mm - about 0.0000001 millimeters, so something like EHz - ExaHertz). While 5G new radio is 60 GHz (5 mm), like WiMax supposed to be.
So far concerns are about insects (heating) and bacterium (antibiotic resistance "could" develop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21261425 ). Though the heating effect is probably negligible compared to how cities already radiate a lot more heat and insects are loving it.
Furthermore, if there is any serious new/strange/second-order effect on biology we would have already seen it, as people blasted lab animals with every kinds of EMF and we got only the coincidental expected flukes.
The fact that this is in Scientific American, even in the Opinion section, is simultaneously a testament to the openmindedness of science, and quite sad.
After reading his ideas, I think we should all feel a little lucky that Trump hasn't made hime the head of the FCC.
This is the second article I've read on SciAm's _blog_ platform that has disappointed me with its pseudo-scientific tone. The previous was a rant[1] against GMO which prompted considerable dissent[2]. I get that the blogs authors have more editorial freedom, but opinions that stray so far from the scientific mainstream puts the fine magazine's reputation at risk.
While the effects of the latter three are pretty well understood for certain kinds of radiation (ionizing and non-ionizing) ranging from "acute radiation sickness due to gamma burst" to "listening to the radio your whole life doesn't have a link to cancer", there is truth that a specific band of millimeter 5G has been less studied than others.
However, science follows patterns, and interpolating the existing data to this sub-infrared region opens a kind of wiggle room similar to, but in fact the opposite to, low dosimetry of ionizing radiation that has given the Linear No Threshold model a run for it's money. Except in this case, skeptics are typically concerned about chemical effects due to subdermal heating (not really as compelling as ionizing radiation effects), or debating the "non-ionizing-ness" (which is less common because its even less supported by evidence).
It comes down to a persons personal risk. In my opinion, the sun beats out all non ionizing radiation concerns, particularly when it comes to heating of the skin and subdermal tissues. Wear a hat and sunscreen (against the sun).
Still worth researching and acknowledging the data gap, as the EU does in its metastudy of 40+ years and X00 scientific papers [0], but there's no reason to be alarmed based on the existing corpus of evidence.
> 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 cannot opt out.
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?
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!
A hat and sunscreen does offer some protection against millimeter wave radiation - the had will block some (smallish but non-zero) percentage of the radiation, as will the sunscreen as long as you apply a thick layer.
As far as I know the exposure is a bit like a bell curve.
Right besides the tower you're in a blind spot, then it gets more intense as you move out of the blind spot and then it gets lower as you move further away.
5G requires more towers, closer to their end users. To quote the article:
> 5G will require cell antennas every 100 to 200 meters, exposing many people to millimeter wave radiation. 5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO) which pose unique challenges for measuring exposures.
No it wont require, it will be able to work on the same frequencies as 4G does.
It can use more towers at higher frequencies in really really crowded areas or industrial setups, but those work at lower power outputs, and penetrate the body less (due to higher frequencies).
My City has them or they are under permitting for "towers" (of 30 feet or so) on nearly every block. Some right next to residences, daycares, schools, offices, etc.
Isn't more cell antennas equivalent with much lower transmission power? Especially the phone needs to use way less power, so total amount of EM for humans nearby is going to be significantly lower.
Now compare to AM/FM transmitters that cover a huge geographic area. Those can be scary. FCC allows up to 50000 W transmission power. It's required because the antennas are spaced so far apart.
The sun is a 1000 watts per square meter exposure at your body, cell towers might be 100w if you hugged the antenna then inverse square law to distance to about 0.00000001 watt with a strong signal. Your cell device is a millwatts transmitter, equivalent to an LED light shining on you.
You don't need hat and sunscreen for street lights or flashlights nor would you need it for cellular power levels, orders of magnitude difference in exposure.
The Sun transfers orders of magnitude more heat to your body than cell towers or your phone.
The problem with every argument about radiation from cell phones being dangerous is that for every proposed mechanism, the Sun is orders of magnitude more damaging.
The obvious worries with cell phones are repeated stress injuries, insomnia and disruption of personal relationships. There's just no plausible mechanism for the radiation to be damaging, though.
This is a tangent, but it's crazy that we've built a communications network that relies on basically LEDs shining out of our pockets (with less interference from the sun, but still).
If it were a different color, yes. If each of them were a different color, your eye would still be able to, as long as you had enough focus. So the analogy holds pretty well.
Therefore, 99.9999038793% of the energy emitted is at wavelengths shorter than 1E-4m (0.1mm).
Or, across the entire continuous spectrum (0, 1e-4m], the total energy from the Sun is 0.0009612W, or 961uW.
You might complain that 961 uW is much more than 10nW, but again, you have to consider that 961 uW is across the entire spectrum (0,1E-4]. The Sun is less powerful at narrow spectrums because otherwise it'd drown out the cell phone tower (Or rather we pump power into the antenna to overcome the "noise" from the Sun).
I'd reproduce the numbers, but unfortunately my HP48 underflows at such narrow bandwidths.
And the "LED" at your face is, of course, much more powerful than the Sun since (as you pointed out) by the inverse square law, it has to pump out a lot of power to reach the tower.
Nor do I happen to think LEDs are harmless. Using LEDs to affect biological system is a very rich area of study.
Do I think non-ionizing radiation is harmful? I doubt it. But comparing a 1000W/m^2 @ 5400K black body radiator to a cell phone tower is dishonest.
Sure, ionizing vs non-ionizing but millimeter waves do do localized, penetrating, heating and the intensity of millimeter radiation from 5G is orders of magnitude stronger than that from the Sun.
Is it consequential? Probably not, but the OP's original comparison of 1000 W of Sun vs. 100W from a tower and nW from cell phone is disingenuous.
Exactly, the sun is mostly higher energy (approaching ionizing) terahertz radiation.
The concern with 5G seems to revolve around the uses of higher frequency millimeter wave radiation compared to 3G/4G which has shown no repeatable damaging results at normal power levels.
If higher frequency = bad, which is actually true, comparing 5G the sun is not dishonest IMO. I am trying to give some perspective to show how it seems odd to worry about extremely low power cellular radiation while giving little thought to the extremely powerful nuclear radiator in the sky.
Dosage matters, cellular frequency will cook you given enough power, so will visible light. The power levels we are talking about do not generate enough heat to damage our tissue, so if they do harm it would need to be through some other unknown process. Should we keep looking for possible other processes, yes of course. However I would be much more concerned about the much more powerful visible range artificial radiators around us every day, like the monitor I am staring at right now emitting a 100 times the radiation of my cellphone right at my face all day long.
You're falsely equivocating sun's wide spectrum to 5G's very narrow set of bands. Most of sun's spectrum at the surface is visible, infrared light, and a bit of UV.
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 things worth considering from many different angles.
1. To say this threat is nothing compared to the risks we face from the sun, completely ignores the fact that we have millions of years of evolutionary exposure to sunlight and because of that fact the immune system has become way more acclimated to dealing with it's carcinogenic properties. Of course, our immune systems aren't perfect but considering how much more exposure we all are to sunlight than any other carcinogen, if we didn't have a strong evolutionary tolerance to it; melanoma would obviously be the #1 leading cause of cancer. But it's not.
Now in hindsight, what we don't have evolutionary genetic tolerance for is microwave radiation. While i'm not in anyway an expert in biology or the physics of light, I do have enough insight to know that we should never underestimate the possible negative outcome of any potential problem when it's still just a mathematical theory we're playing with rather than a reality of nature we're all dying from.
I mean, we underestimate and miscalculate these kind of things all the time and it's kind of counter productive that the answer to the question of "When will we learn to stop doing this?" is always "Once, we underestimate and miscalculate, discover our error and become smarter because of it"...
2. The bigger issue this has when compared to the sun is the fact that all of us can agree while there is such a thing as getting too much sun. However, there isn't such a thing as internet that is too fast. We essentially all want to be able to download terabytes at the speed of light so that we can one day be on Mars and be able to seamlessly stream Netflix from Earth while were up there. And while of course there is a speed of light limitation of like i believe 8 minutes, that doesn't mean people aren't going to complain why they cant instantly stream from there.
This is what we need to understand about this issue. There is no limitation to how much radio wave radiation we want when we are thinking of that radiation in the language of the internet, as "Content".
3. When it comes to protecting ourselves from this, if it actually does turn out to be a substantial problem. All the solutions suck.
The radio wave EM shielding for example protects you from the potentially harmful waves. But it also creates like I said, a deadzone.
So putting it in your walls of your home, because you don't want you and your entire family constantly being exposed to the cell tower that might only be a football field length away from your house (as the one near my house is), also means you can't receive or make calls to and from your cell phone. This is a deal breaker for most people, and as far as i'm aware RF shielding isn't like sunscreen where it blocks out most of the harmful light while letting in the some you want. It's an all or nothing solution.
Which is why I think putting the RF shield in clothing like a hoodie would be an interesting venture idea. The shielding protects your body, while your phone is still outside of the shielded area. (although this obviously doesn't protect your face and i don't think RF shielded masks are going to find a market other than antifa)
And another reason why the implications of this would really suck, is that it means were stuck with crappy wires and the companies who own the rights to pumping internet to and fro over them. I am mostly looking forward to 5G because I view it as the primary means we are going to get ourselves out of the era of shitty...
> 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.
I have a wallet with RFID protection. Could we make cell phone cases and/or glass with shielding that blocks 5G signals, limiting exposure in part of the phone that wouldn't be need to be sending and receiving signals? Basically have a naked antenna and shielded everything else. I am not a mobile phone hardware wizard :)
I assume you're North American and so upset mainly by the absence of an 'MD'. MBChB is an equivalent.
Having an additional 'Cert' in homeopathy would be like having a CS degree but also certifying in AWS or Azure products, for example, which wouldn't even necessarily say that I endorse them, perhaps just that I have clients that might like to see that certification.
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 natural medicine but if you are a real (equivalent or otherwise) to a medical doctor and you certify in homeopathy you are legitimizing fake bullshit and you should be judged for it. Homeopathy preys on the sick and desperate and deserves no slack.
Maybe this seems overly harsh but people I care about have paid thousands for this bullshit and the smooth talking bullshit salesmen had way to much ""science"" on their side.
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.
They should not be denied anything, but no self-respecting medical doctor should get a certification in homeopathy just because there is a market for it. That just adds legitimacy to it and keeps the wheel spinning.
I would not get a certification in computer shamanism, even if it made my clients feel better about me when I mumbled the Old Tongue and clapped my hands above their laptop. If this was something people wanted, I'm sure others with more compromised morals would be happy to set up a certification board and oblige.
I have no ill feelings towards those that believe that computers or human bodies are magic. This is not their fault. I have no respect for professionals that are complicit in this. Shame on them. They are one short step away from professionally proscribing homeopathy because it "makes the client feel better, so the ends justify the means".
Hey, some people believe the placebo pill is ethical. I believe it violates the letter and spirit of informed consent. I feel the same about homeopathy. Homeopathy is bunk no matter how a sick person or salesman or doctor feels about it.
Since I got my CCS (Cert Cloud Shaman) status, not only have my ritual sacrifices gone more smoothly, I have experienced greater AZ uptime, job satisfaction and expanded networking opportunities. Memorizing AWS labels and esoterica is much easier if incorporated into a ritual chant.
Also, I can now add Blood Sacrifice as an optional extra for my clients, who see the fee as a small price to pay for covering all the bases.
wrong assumption, I'm from New Zealand and am aware of most of the reputable (mainstream scientific) research orgs here. The original article made a big deal about those who are supporting a call to action to give legitimacy to the concern. While I have no problem with further research, I was interested in seeing research from credible researchers that have some link to a credible research organization that I'm aware of. None of the New Zealand people meet that criteria (though they may still have done legit research).
"However, we have considerable evidence about the harmful effects of 2G and 3G. Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research."
This sounds like bullshit.
What were there changes between 3G and LTE that would make it more dangerous?
Different modulation techniques is the one they're claiming now. For some reason OFDM/CDMA is more dangerous than FM or amplitude modulation (AM) and there are huge biological differences, they claim.
"Along with the patterning and duration of exposures, certain characteristics of the signal (e.g., pulsing, polarization) increase the biologic and health impacts of the exposure."
"The latest cellular technology, 5G, will employ millimeter waves ... 5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO)"
Yeah, that one seemed a bit odd to me, but it's not clear that "massive" was being presented as part of the acronym. Could just be unrelated hyperbole.
FWIW, I don't have a fixed opinion on this issue one way or the other. I just really hate seeing supposedly intelligent people rely so heavily on ad hominem or similar distractions. If there really is a problem with the cited research, I'd appreciate it if somebody could point to where those are. Likewise if someone could cite sufficient contrary research to justify abandoning the precautionary principle. That's all fine. I'm willing to be persuaded, but not by appeals to or rejection of authority.
Well, I think what https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21311000 describes is the sane approach. Basically a Bayesian inference from the available data and our priors shaped by our understanding of physics, chemistry, biology, higher order effects, etc.
And yes, there are effects of 50-70 GHz EMF on biology, first one is heating, which is completely expected but might cause problems for insects. (But we already blast them with a lot of light at night, a lot of heat from the pavement and our buildings, and a lot of chemicals in the air.) Another interesting one is that cell bacterial division seems to be affected when combined with antibiotics. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21261425 )
There is even reason to think that newer modulations are safer precisely because they are more spread spectrum, with lower power and peak power at any particular frequency.
The towers are also spread more densely, with smaller cells and lower power, which also lowers peak exposure levels. For devices, just the fact they only have to transmit a short distance to a local tower tells you about the energy.
You are probably getting more cancer risk for stress hormones caused by the Instagram/Twitter on your phone than the electric field it generates, no matter how 'patterned' or polarised the field is.
5G covers a huge spectral range starting at, yes, 5 GHz.
5GHz is coming out of every home router built in the last couple years. If it was unsafe, we would probably know about it. (Let’s say ‘unsafe’ as in, “it is ‘unsafe’ to drive a car” since we need some baseline risk tolerance).
> If it was unsafe, we would probably know about it.
The article claims this is in fact the case. Quote:
"We are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation."
I've clicked a few cited papers and they are all behind a paywall, so I can't make my own opinion how justified this claim is.
We have heard about these increases since wireless landlines were introduced.
I would be more likely to believe this risk if it was showing up as hand tumors since most people are now carrying phones far more often then holding them up to the head.
It would however be interesting if the known decrease in male sperm count worldwide was actually attributed to cellular devices in the pocket.
It seems odd to associate risk with "NG". Any risks would be more likely related to the frequency spectrum being used and the signal power than to the modulation techniques and communications protocols. 5G can be deployed in the same frequency bands that are currently in use, although higher frequency bands are also anticipated.
With every new generation of cellular technology, this question comes up.
This started as early as CT, then DECT, GSM, 3G, 4G and now 5G.
After 30+ years of having consumer grade wireless telephony we are still debating whether the radio signals have any negative effect on living beings.
If we can't draw any conclusion from a sample size that big, then I must conclude that the effects of EM-radiation are so minimal (if any at all), that it is not something I should worry about.
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.
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?
You can also analyze the plausibility of the arguments. Cell phones do not produce ionizing radiation.
This is similar to homeopathy. Even if the state of research is not great, we're discussing a theory that is just not physically plausible. The default assumption should be that it is wrong.
It's not like smoking is subtle. Just ask any none smoker, or how people started with their first cigarette. Coughing, dry throat, WTF is happening, I've smoke in my lungs.
None of the characteristics you mention are actually related to cancer though. If we banned everything that caused dry throat or caused you to caught because “obviously they cause cancer”, where would we be today?
I mean we could ban 80% of all Indian food because first time westerners eat it they react much stronger to the spicy ness than they would to smoking.
Stating independent of the actual science that “It was always obvious that smoking caused cancer” isn’t any better than the people stating now that “obviously EM radiation causes cancer”.
I never claimed they cause cancer. They are just not the fun harmless looking fun that the cool Marlboro man makes it look like. At least not the first few times.
That is true. However we had multiple areas in the world where we could watch the mobile market basically explode within a short amount of time, there are people using phones for hours daily across time spans upwards of a decade and yet so far I haven't heard of any health statistic correlating with this trend.
Whereas with smoking we can see over ten times higher risks for certain types of cancer-related deaths. That doesn't mean there's no effect due to mobile phones, but I think if it were remotely comparable to smoking we'd see a significant impact by now.
A lot of cancer rates rising is pollution, but we generally believe most of it is chemical forms of pollution, not electromagnetic.
That said, I am sure there are structures in the body that can selective absorb or react to non-ionizing radiation that we may not yet know about. Our cellular mechanisms are impressively complex.
No, it is not acceptable, and I didn't say that it is.
It is a good thing that we spend research effort into identifying why this is happening.
All I'm saying is that I have concluded, for myself, that EM-radiation is the least of my worries when it comes to negative effects (including cancer).
And a rise in carcinogenic substances in air, water, and food. Maybe changes in the landscape of pathogens. You can't really rule out additional causes or contributers based on knowing some.
If there was an outbreak of cancers at the right side of the head (the place where we usually hold our phone while talking on it), we'd know. But there aren't.
The spectrum known as radio waves are anywhere from 10 to 100,000 meters long. 4 average size humans can fit inside the length of the smallest radio wave.
I see your point but I have a hyper sensitivity to EMF (among other things) and I turn off any wireless technology wherever I can (like Bluetooth, when I don't have any paring devices at home) and many devices aren't comfortable for me to keep, despite me working in an IT industry.
The symptom isn't classified as a disease at where I live, so it's hard to get any decent medial treatments and I'm afraid 5G might harm me even harder when higher frequency typically makes me feel worse without a way to get away from it.
Have you ever tried a double blind test of your symptoms? I'm not going to be judgmental at all, but my friend's father had this ~10 years ago, and (being a scientist) decided to participate in a double-blind study. Turned out he scored no better than chance on any of the tests. That was a big enough eye opener for him that he was pretty much "cured" of EHS.
That's interesting.
I could try it but I have plenty of cases where I see clear causes that make me unnecessarily tired and this is going on with me for 2 decades now.
- Turn off wireless signals like Bluetooth (I keep WiFi with low emission setting which isn't as bad as BT but 5Ghz is worse than 2.4Ghz, so I only use 2.4Ghz frequency.)
- Many of recent phones. (Bought iPhone X, Pixel 3a and those I can't keep close to me no matter how I tweak their settings, so they're away from me kept in boxes but I still need them for testing for my work.)
- LED displays keep me uneasy. I use fluorescent ones.
- IC chips used for credit cards and passports. I keep them minimum in my wallet.
These are from what I've bought and sold just to find what might feel better for me. I wish I could just keep what I want.
(Also not EM but chemical substances, just to say I've been living with hypersensitivity.
- Keeping clothes on after coming back home from outside. So I quickly wash and take shower.
- Need to clean wall every few weeks before I feel kind of choked, maybe due to glue used for the wallpapers.
- Very small amount of mold. I have to clean my air conditioner from a professional service every season.)
> And the character's suffering was depicted as entirely mental.
That's because it is entirely mental.
Blind tests were done on people, and their ability to recognise a radiation source was the same as random picking.
Anybody claiming to be able to sense radiation can be tested simply by taking two mobile phones, turning one off (leaving one connected to the internet and doing something online), putting both in a bag/under a bucket/..., having someone else randomly swap their position and trying to guess which is the one that is radiating at the moment. I can guarantee you're guesses will be around 50% in the long run, so basically random guesses.
My quality of sleep is much better with cell and wifi off. I live rural so there's less external sources too. It's significant enough that I turn it off every night as a habit. My issues with insomnia started back in 2000 when I first brought work into my small apartment.
Correlation is not causation. It could also be as simple as the light or vibrations from your phone at night disrupting your sleep. I've found blinking lights can make my sleep worse.
It's wifi too. I sleep with a mask and ear plugs. The very best sleep I get is with complete emf shielded and grounded clothing. The nights I don't do this are significantly worse. I'm tempted to get a sleep tracker but most are bluetooth. I've even tuned my router so it does less frequent heartbeats. If I ever build a house again I'd spend the money on shielding it entirely.
I feel better if I completely turn off WiFi or Bluetooth. I can see I'm exposed to plenty of other signals by living in a city but it doesn't mean they're nothing. It just removes the added damage being done and it makes quite a difference to quality of life which would be hard to imagine for you.
My ammature theory (5Ghz wifi feels worse than 2.4Ghz wifi) also says higher frequency for short range signals does more harm, thus it's more sensitive to turn those off than being exposed to other lower frequency used outside.
That doesn't sound like a great test since I don't think the apparatus is there to detect where signals are coming from, just (in theory) whether there are any.
I hate to admit it, but I seem to notice effects when I add wireless networks to my home. I think it's probably psychosomatic, but would like to do a blind test. I would situate myself between wireless devices, with all devices within 10 meters either being on or off, the test being to determine if any devices are on. I would feel weird asking anyone to help in this, so perhaps I'll rig something up with smart plugs or a programmable router.
I haven't taken any blind tests but if the testing environment isn't causing me problems to begin with (chemically or EM), like at home where I control the environment, I can tell what's good and bad. That's how I decide what to keep and what to sell when I buy something.
It just takes away my concentration and makes me look tired (which is almost the norm now) and my thinking gets clouded. Without controlling the environment to the point I remove any devices that cause me certain uncomfort, I can't have much time productively.
This also goes for chemical matters, as if I don't clean the floor, wall and clothes often, same happens.
I think northern Europe has recognized EM hypersensitivity as a symptom but last time I checked, it's not widely recognized worldwide.
I can completely say this is not mental. Like, say I get a new phone which I wanted to buy and then if it damages me, I regretfully have to sell it.
Also I can feel better by turning off Bluetooth, so there are clear physical causes for me.
TL;DR: We poisoned ourselves for about half a century.
> The episode describes how science, in particular the work of Clair Patterson (voiced in animated sequences by Richard Gere) in the middle of the 20th century, has been able to determine the age of the Earth.
> Patterson found that his results were contaminated by lead from the ambient environment...
> Tyson goes on to explain that Patterson's work in performing lead-free experiments directed him to investigate the sources for lead. Tyson notes how lead does not naturally occur at Earth's surface but has been readily mined by humans (including the Roman Empire), and that lead is poisonous to humans. Patterson examined the levels of lead in the common environment and in deeper parts of the oceans and Antarctic ice, showing that lead had only been brought to the surface in recent times. He would discover that the higher levels of lead were from the use of tetraethyllead in leaded gasoline, despite long-established claims by Robert A. Kehoe and others that this chemical was safe. Patterson would continue to campaign against the use of lead, ultimately resulting in government-mandated restrictions on the use of lead. Tyson ends by noting that similar work by scientists continues to be used to help alert mankind to other fateful issues that can be identified by the study of nature.
Genuine question: Is there a name for saying "past evidence hasn't shown this to be true, thus it's likely to remain untrue"?
I was debating a different technology with a friend and he made such a comment, but my response was that the frequency, scope and importance of past technological advancements won't hold a candle to those of the future.
5G is also fundamentally different in one important way. We are moving a way from fewer high powered towers, to a lot more low powered cells. Yes this existed in 4G, but 5G is taking it to the next level.
What I find particularly troubling: 4G is for me already more than good enough. 5G is really not so well thought out. They require a lot more cells. The exposure is much higher... They cost more (?).
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 tumours. However, this was a meta-analysis of case-control studies, which is the weakest form of study (worse even than a prospective observational cohort study). The problem here is they essentially had to ask people who did or not have tumours how much they used their mobile phones and trust them, which introduces the obvious issue that people with brain tumours who had heard that phones may cause cancer are probably going to report higher usage of mobile phones than those without tumours. Moskowitz even notes this in the discussion of his paper. He even notes that other, better, better, prospective cohort studies have found no evidence for a link between cellphones and cancer (https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/93/3/203/2906436), but dismisses the study because they looked at subscription data rather than examining 'actual exposure to mobile phones' (which his study didn't do either).
This fear mongering, with no a priori theoretical justification and no evidential basis from people who've checked anyway just to be safe, muddies the waters and distracts from real environmental problems like air pollution causing respiratory diseases. This isn't quite as bad as promoting antivaxxer positions, which are imbecilic because the benefits from vaccines obviously outweigh the costs even if they did cause autism, but it's getting awfully close.
> 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 have elsewhere) that the ACSH link is not from reputable org. It seems to be the only link people are posting and re-posting to rebut Moskowitz's research here on HN.
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.
We are talking about a form of energy which is other than being omnipresent naturally, was studied extensively for more than 100-150 years - including health hazards when it comes to ionising radiation.
While I do think that studies should be continued for a more definitive answer, and I personally don't feel a strong need for a 5G network as of now, I am more on the defaults to safe side.
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.
Wow. We’ve been in denial about potential health risks of mobile for years. But now there’s a risk that Chinese tech companies might corner this market, suddenly its time to worry about the health risks?
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 fall for hoaxes about the dangers of safe substances (vaccines, chemicals) and harmless technologies.
But it can also be thought-stopping, and more emotional based than empirical.
Hm. Sure, some people just point to how the same thing happened with GSM, 2G, 3G, 4G, WiFi... but that's just a fallacy, because we also know that gamma rays, X-rays and UV are harmful, so deductively there must be some grey zone between 3G and hard gamma rays. Since we can't simply infer the health effects with certainty from first principles (let's say from physics/chemistry) we should demand relevant data.
But we have a lot of data (even if not as an enormous pile as about WiFi), and we know that so far the evidence points to no unexpected effects. There are interesting avenues of inquiry about
the effects of 50-70 GHz on biology (heating of insects, interference with bacterial growth), of course those effects are a lot smaller than what we already do from air pollution to manufacturing an dumping lot of chemicals everywhere, heating our cities, and so on.
Visible light is between 3G and gamma rays. Gama rays are dangerous because they can yank electrons out of atoms and thus change their chemical makeup.
Between Gamma rays and 3G is UV. Between UV and 3G is visible light. Between visible light and 3G is IR, one of which is the heat human bodies give off. Do warm blooded animals cause cancer? Because they're still a far higher frequency than 3G and the wattage of a human at rest is 100W which is roughly equivalent.
Do hugs cause cancer? If yes, then we can start narrowing it down to 3G/5G more after that. But by that stage I think we're doomed as a species anyway.
No, we can quite safely say that visible light also does not cause cancer, seeing as how we're bathed in it daily.
So any proposed grey area would in fact have to be a total surprise outlier, where EM far less energetic then visible light tripped over some biological weak spot.
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.
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 their research "bullshit" or "impossible", call the people "thruthers" or claiming "Russian troll farms" are behind this story.
I don't think I've ever seen so much non-scientific HN comments on a science article.
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. However everybody who points to a possible answer is shot down without much investigation. Sad, really.
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.
Well, if you could point me to a good scientific study that makes a link between higher life expectancy and cancer, I'd be inclined to believe it. Until then, I think the cancer incidence rise is shocking, and can't be explained by rise in life expectancy alone.
Before we go any further, are you a scientist or a doctor? You're arguing on a thread where there are a bunch of scientists who have fairly deep knowledge in this area (it's still an area that a lot of people who come from external areas, like physics, struggle with frequently).
Cancer rates are strongly driven by age- cancer incidence increases exponentially as people age (stochastically, of course).
cancer incidence rising strongly correlates with our ability to detect as well as the push to look for it.
I also believe many of the cancers we successfully treat would be non issues if left alone. (all the young women who found lumps and become breast cancer survivors)
Unfortunately the hunch you have just spendt 30 seconds thinking about is sadly incorrect. The increase in life expectancy doesn't account for the increased incidence of cancers. There are other factors at play, which need to be investigated (some that we know: obesity, pollution, cigarettes).
I checked this for you, and what appears to be the best meta study I could find shows that the only correlation found was that long sleep duration increases the risk of one type of cancer:
The present meta-analysis suggested that neither short nor long sleep duration was significantly associated with risk of cancer, although long sleep duration increased risk of with colorectal cancer.
"After just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep," Walker tells The Guardian, "your natural killer cells—the ones that attack the cancer cells that appear in your body every day—drop by 70%." Sleep deprivation has such serious outcomes that "the World Health Organisation has classed any form of night-time shift work as a probable carcinogen."
^Matthew Walker, presumably the 70% drop is from work at his Berkeley lab
You are looking at cancer deaths, which indeed have gone down from better treatments and better screening. This does not imply less incidence of cancer.
It leads to in increase in cancers detected before the person dies of non-cancer causes.
Situation: person has an almost undetectable cancer. They see a doctor, no cancer detected, later that week they are shot by police at a routine road stop.
We get in our time machine, go back a week and a bit, and supply the doctor with a better detection kit.
Situation 2: person has an almost undetectable cancer. They see a doctor who refers them to a specialist, cancer detected, another notch on the cancer tally board. Later that week they are shot by police at a routine road stop.
Nothing has changed except in the second case there’s another cancer detected. The person is still dead from non-cancer causes, just in one scenario they died as a haver-of-cancer and in the other they didn’t.
Better/earlier detection will necessarily lead to a decrease in cancers that are never detected (which I interpret as an increase in cancers detected before mortality from other causes), otherwise it’s not better/earlier detection.
Agreed, but there are plenty of factors with a better-explained causal mechanism than non-ionizing radiation. Like the three you listed.
My money is on diet and pesticides/preservatives/etc. being another big one. With this, too, there is little official evidence that, say, Roundup, causes cancer, but there is, imo, a stronger lobby against a positive outcome in those studies, and they don't necessarily control for interactions such as Roundup combined with the surfactant that it is typically mixed with that increases cell penetration.
I agree with your comment in principle but the specific example of Roundup is rather weak. Yes, glyphosate is usually studied in isolation rather than as a commercial formulation including surfactants etc., but we have decades’ worth of epidemiological studies showing that proper use of Roundup has, at most, a marginal effect on tumour incidence. Conversely, the most-discussed studies that purport to show Roundup’s carcinogenicity have well-known, glaring methodological flaws (including some that formed the basis of the IARC report). The case of Roundup is made more complicated by the fact that Monsanto/Bayer has been caught red-handed skewing the publication record without disclosure of conflict of interest, and lobbying scientific journals. But the same is true for the opposition: for instance, the now-retracted 2012 Séralini study also failed to disclose the authors’ conflict of interest. And beyond improper publication practices (which, yes, is serious), there’s no evidence that Monsanto/Bayer actually falsified information.
In sum, I’d rank the risk of Roundup being carcinogenic on roughly the same level as that of 5G: possible but unlikely, given the best available evidence.
Ok, fair enough. I have enough other reasons to be against roundup without needing to cling to believing it's carcinogenic. Thanks!
For the record, the other reasons are to do with the larger ecological impact of roundup-based practices, such as harm to soil fungi and bacteria, and collateral damage from runoff or wind. Plus, there were some studies finding it may cause harm to intestinal lining and such, even if it's not actually a carcinogen.
Agroindustrial farming practices have led to most of our produce in stores becoming more caloric but less nutritionally dense. Interesting idea that perhaps our food plants are becoming more "obese-yet-malnourished" and this change in food plants could be at the root of a number of health risks.
Cigarette smoking has fallen a LOT in the US in the past few decades, though there does seem to be a resurgence lately with "vaping".
Pollution is lower too (again, in the US): cars used to pollute a LOT more. Smog used to be far, far worse in the LA area decades ago, so even with more people and more cars, pollution is lower, particularly localized pollution that affects people more. Of course, global warming pollution is certainly higher, but that isn't localized and shouldn't have any effect on you (it's just CO2).
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
A big confounder in studies based on diagnosis numbers is that you can confuse better diagnosis with higher incidence, and earlier diagnosis with longer survival. No room for confusion with Death though, it's very cut and dried.
Suppose that today the average person tells their doctor about a symptom of Example Cancer (which is incurable) six months before it kills them. 1 million people per year in Standard Country die of Example Cancer, with an average of six months between diagnosis and death.
Now, let's imagine I invent a machine, it can scan seemingly healthy people and tell them if they've got Example Cancer on average 12 months earlier. Nothing changed in terms of whether people get Example Cancer, it's still incurable, but now we've improved time between Diagnosis and Death by 200% but even scarier the incidence of Example Cancer, the number of people who know they have it, has also increased by 200%. It's an epidemic!
That machine is pretty unrealistic. A more realistic machine also gives false positives for Example Cancer. Now the number of people living with Example Cancer has increased by 500% but good news, most of those people don't die of it, because they had what medics would call "Sub-clinical incidence" meaning, sure, you had the disease but it didn't actually affect your life so who cares?
A big confounding factor in counting incidence based on cancer deaths would be improved treatment. Whether by medical advances or simple earlier diagnosis having better cure rates.
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.
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.
I've coined the term "orchard picking" for this. If the subject is climate or vaccines, most people will yell "learn the facts" and "follow the science" and generally act as though dissenters deserve every ounce of contempt we can pour on them. On those topics I generally agree, except maybe for that last part. But somehow on other topics - e.g. most discussions of programmer productivity or effects of technology - it's all "meh, here's my anecdote instead" and other forms of pseudo-skepticism. There I tend to break from the crowd. I believe science is a mode of thought, not just another rhetorical club to pick up when it's convenient and set down again when it's not.
Perhaps because everyone here knows there's very little actual, proper science on programmer productivity, and even less of that is applicable in workplace environment.
There is no break from the pattern in this thread. People still call for following the science - they just consider this article's science to be the RF engineering equivalent of Wakefield study.
People don’t click the link because they already know better.
We are bathed in radiation everyday.
So guess what, the people who say 5G is unsafe, are also the same people that will say flying is unsafe, or using a microwave is unsafe, or eating a banana is unsafe, or being in your car is unsafe, or using your phone is unsafe. Because all these things emit radiation.
Do people care about that though? No. The effects of radiation are grossly exaggerated, and frankly any negligible effects we feel are just the price we pay for living in high tech times. I doubt anyone wants to go back to a tech free lifestyle just so they can live maybe a few more years only to die of something else anyway.
So yes, it’s quackery to say 5G is unsafe and the only reason an article like this would rise to the top is so people could come out and trash it. You want to see scientific comments then go to more interesting articles.
You conflated ionising and non-ionising radiation (flying/banana/chest x-ray vs. radio waves, wifi, light from lightbulbs).
Just so you know.
Your point still stands though, although i would say we're bathed in more intense radiation than 5G and have been bathing in it for millenias - sunlight is radiation as well!
Better live underground, i guess.
Oh, oh, but what about skin cancer you say? That's caused by sunlight, right, so radiowaves could harm you, right? Yeah, but skin cancer is caused by ultraviolet, high energy, high frequency EM radiation (3-30PHz). Petahertz, Coral! That's several orders of magnitude less than most extreme 5G!
Don't even get me started on the power levels of sun vs a base station!
So yeah, the claims of health impact are bullshit.
Other points: while excessive radiation is bad, below a certain point it is not harmful, and in fact is beneficial. There's some good reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model
Most scientists today would say that below a threshold, there is no negative effect to radiation (or rather, you can't predict the effect in a stochastic way as a function of dose) and also that within certain regimes, radiation is beneficial (mutations leading to evolution).
> Most scientists today would say that below a threshold, there is no negative effect to radiation
Every time I was enticed to look up more about hormesis, I see the same issue: an intrinsically linear effect of a factor is studied, with a precise linear generator of the factor, but outside of the generator there is a background component to the factor which is ignored, which causes a misinterpretation of non-linearity.
A concrete example, suppose you have a light sensor in a "dark" enclosure, then at large enough intensities the current through the photodiode is linear with the incident illumination, but if there is some light leaking (or alternatively thermal radiation, and hence temperature, and hence dark current) then as the light generator is set to lower and lower levels, the light sensor will no longer linearly approach 0, since the signal starts to delve below the noise floor (so it will allways be measurable, but require more and more oversampling to decrease the noise floor). To confuse this effect which has nothing to do with photons getting converted to electron hole pairs, it is a misinterpretation to consider the effect "non-linear" close to the noise floor, and an even bigger misinterpretation to consider it "beneficial". Sure even high levels of ionizing radiation can be beneficial to the offspring of a colony of bacteria, fungi, or plants as a group, but it most certainly is harmful to the the individual bacteria, fungi or plants individually.
In the case of the light sensor, the current through the reverse biased photodiode will still be ideally linear with the total incident illumination, just no longer linear with the illumination of the non-dominant light source.
Humans kinda need sunlight to generate enough vitamin D. So if you live in a cave, that's not going to be good for you either. But sunlight causes cancer too, so what should you do?
I think it should be pretty obvious that we can't avoid radiation, and we were evolved to handle a certain amount of it.
Really, complete bullshit for 100% of the population no questions asked? With all the wrong information Science has helped spread when it comes to Diet (example: eating fat makes you fat) is it really fair to say a study that says we need more studies is automatically bullshit?
Really, complete bullshit, just like "vaccines cause autism" or "MSG causes chinese restaurant syndrome". Do we need more studies to again disprove what already has been disproven? Bad bullshit science exists and "we need more studies" is its lifeline that keeps the gullible populace feeding it.
Oh and also. To make a scientific claim, you have to make a hypothesis. Not just a claim "5G causes cancer", but "5G causes cancer by this and this method". Without method of action best you can do is a corelational study, which is jus one step higher a case study, which is basically an anecdote.
> 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. However everybody who points to a possible answer is shot down without much investigation. Sad, really.
Plentiful nutrition which has led to 90% of the population of the USA being overweight, obese, or overfat is another potential culprit. Women suffering from anorexia developed fewer tumors. Similar experiments on lab animals in a controlled setting have the same result. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11246846 I believe there are other changing risk factors in behavior as well, for instance women who have never had a child are more likely to develop breast cancer and fertility rates have dropped dramatically over the last 100 years.
Cell phones have only been widely deployed in the last two decades, and I don’t think those trends in cancer rates you’re referencing correlate very well to cellular deployment.
I’d still be curious to see more research happening in the field of millimeter waves, personally I don’t see this technology as very useful right now either compared to traditional cellular due to its lack of penetration.
I don't understand why people are downvoting me when I'm literally quoting the stats from the agency that defines this. If you're downvoting, can you at least reply to provide some technical signal so I can update my knowledge?
EDIT: I misread the original message and thought it was referring to just obesity, not obesity/overweight.
It's anecdotal, but a friend of mine with cancer switched to a keto diet and he had one tumor shrink, to the point where his doctor said they could (and should) now operate on it.
The large increase in sugar and starch in our diet does contribute to fast growing cancer cells and there are studies that link being overweight/obesity with cancer.
We weren't this fat decades ago. Some may blame more office work, but the biggest factor is the amount of sugar/carbs in our diets. It's grown tremendously and yet no one seems to take it seriously, discrediting things like Adkins/Keto as "fad diets" when they were closer/more consistent with American and Western European diets for several decades.
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, will fix 95% of people's dietary problems, but for people with weight/eating issues the middle ground is often just too difficult a path to tread.
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, but other than that I've never had kidney issues and my blood work has always come back fine.
With Adkins you do start reintroducing some carbs eventually, but you still keep it under a limit, and go back down if you start getting unhealthy.
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.
I don't think you can say that they are dangerous more than you can say that for example vegan diets are extreme and dangerous. They CAN be dangerous but there are many who are successfully are eating that way and it is even a treatment against epilepsy seizures for some.
My (very limited) understanding is that tumours need glucose to survive and grow, so presumably a keto diet or fasting could potentially stop a tumour from growing.
The article says, "more than 500 studies, have found harmful biologic or health effects from exposure to RFR at intensities too low to cause significant heating." The link to the 500 articles is https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl....
Conclusion of 1) Despite the improved exposure assessment approach used in this study, no clear associations were identified. However, the results obtained for recent exposure to RF electric and magnetic fields are suggestive of a potential role in brain tumor promotion/progression and should be further investigated.
Conclusion of 2) Ever use of wireless phones was not significantly associated with risk of adult glioma, but there could be increased risk in long-term users.
They both read as, "we found no significant effect".
Careful, you’re misinterpreting the document. The two studies you’ve picked are listed as “neither evidence of an effect or a null finding”, they are not included in the “more than 500 studies” finding harmful effects. Those studies are prefixed by “P” in the document and, although I haven’t counted, a rough estimate based on the number of pages makes it plausible that there are > 500.
That said, given the scientific consensus from rigorous meta-analyses, I expect that these “positive” studies are mostly of low quality and/or limited sample size. And scepticism is generally warranted when advocates start listing large numbers of studies instead of referring to a few meta-studies. As it happens, the best available meta-studies come to the opposite conclusion (namely, that there’s probably no harm from mobile EMF), so this long list is essentially bogus.
The first didn't have a conclusion and the results were just the measured RF power in an apartment.
The conclusion of the second is, "A total of 900-MHz EMF applied in middle and late adolescence may cause changes in the morphology and biochemistry of the rat ovarium.", which makes no sense. "A total of 900-MHz EMF" is gibberish. The complete text is not freely available.
>> P This study reported effects from the exposure or radiation category (effects can be either positive or
negative and may be primary or secondary outcomes)
>> N This study reported no effects from the exposure or radiation category
>> - This study offered important insights or findings but is neither evidence of an effect or a null finding
I'll be honest, this ordering seems dubious to me. P (for positive?) can show either positive or negative effects. N (for negative) shows no effects. - (for neither?) shows neither evidence of an effect or a null finding. I would think that P needs to be subdivided better to show which papers show a positive or negative effect.
Can someone do a count on the number of each category?
> 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.
Couldn't it simply be that we are curing/reducing the incidence of most other diseases? Cancer is something that typically doesn't occur until the later years of life. By reducing the number of people who die of other causes, you are increasing the potential population of people who end up getting cancer.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29268055 Can't get the full article, but I only see mentions of a 900MHz source (inside 3G frequency band) and no mention of power. Also it's a biochemical study on rats. Slim evidence.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26017559 This study talks about the effect of intensive radiation (3x the FCC limit for mobile phones, during 8 months) and it looks like it's actually beneficial for Alzheimer's disease. Funnily enough, it links in the abstract a lot of studies showing either inconsistent or no association between RF and cancer.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427287/ An study from the department of ¿Psychology and Psychiatry? that finds changes in EEG activity due to mobile phone use, only when the phone is placed near the ear. Little mention of whether the RF radiation can interfere in the EEG measurement.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25738972 Mentions the CERENAT study, which shows increased risk with really heavy mobile phone usage (as in calls). The only one with actual positive effects and looking like a serious study.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25918601 Finds decreased sperm quality, but also discusses other studies finding no effect, and also says "A point of limitation in this study is the inability to assess [...] whether sperm affections are time related or not".
That's just off the first page and a half. Probably someone should do a more thorough review, but it does not give me any assurance that most of the studies with reported positive effects are done by people not in the related fields, have no relation to the problem or do not answer the actual important questions.
> And nobody knows why. However everybody who points to a possible answer is shot down without much investigation. Sad, really.
Mobile phones are not the only thing that has changed radically in the last years.
The petition of 240 'scientists' on (emfscientist.org) ask for
6. medical professionals be educated about the biological effects of electromagnetic energy and be provided training on treatment of patients with electromagnetic sensitivity;
This is coo coo science that NO reputable person would put their name behind. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is trivial to check, for low cost. Yet no one in the world has proven it exists.
Yes, the 240 scientist's are "bullshit".
I can't believe Scientific American allowed this blog article, or perhaps I can but are more saddened by it.
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.
Then there are people like me, who are in love with technology, but work with it and science so closely we have a very good understanding of when and how technology can have risks, and when it can have benefits. And when it's impossible to predict.
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...
I work around RF sources professionally. I'm intensely interested in any biological effect of the radiation I work around. I have access to journals through work and my old university, and I read primary sources with great interest (and some knowledge, being an electrical engineer). I have yet to find any credible link between gigahertz RF and health problems (except the neck problems that come from staring at a phone).
I feel like the most damning lack of evidence is the lack of correlation between cell phone adoption and the purported ill effects. In the last 20 years pretty much the whole world started holding RF transmitters up to their head, from basically zero beforehand. If there was an effect, it would be epidemic.
Who here actually gets excited about 5G? Everything I see about 5G is just full of business buzzwords. No one can explain why [a technical person outside of the mobile telecom industry] should care. Why the hell is there a new "G" if LTE was supposed to mean "Long Term Evolution" anyway?
the best explanation for why more people get cancer is fewer people are dying of other diseases. Also, more people are surviving cancer. Note: I'm a scientist, and one of the reasons I'm not clicking on links in the article is that I've already done my own looking into IARC and I've concluded they are non-scientific.
Note: I'm a biophysicist who has studied cancer and RF at the graduate level, and postdoctorate level, I can read the literature, and also make reasoned efforts at evaluating whether the literature provides any useful information that would affect the roll out of 5G from health perspectives. I am unable to find any reliable evidence that would indicate that this rollout will actually have "crisis" levels of health impact.
Now. On to the next step: I completely support high quality research done by high quality scientists on non-ionizing radiation. I would, like many other scientists, to see convincing evidence about the nature of damage that could be done by 5G. So far, nearly everything has been indirect in a way that does not inspire enough confidence to propose policy changes.
To be fair, there’s also quite a few published studies showing a positive effect for various pseudoscientific medical practices. Those studies just tend to be very poorly designed, executed, controlled, and don’t represent the actual literature trend.
You really do have to spend significant time investigating the literature to actually.
> The scientists who signed this appeal arguably constitute the majority of experts on the effects of nonionizing radiation. They have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on EMF in professional journals.
The pioneers behind reverse transcriptase were ridiculed by their peers for years. As DNA could only travel in one direction. Francis Crick even called the scientist a wacko. But in the end, the 'wacko' was proven correct and won the Nobel Prize for being so. His name is Howard Temin.
Learned all about him from Malcom Gladwell's podcast this weekend. A really fascinating story of someone that wouldn't give in to peer-pressure, because he was convinced:
The article writer is a known "truther" of the field. But I like his view, I believe we need opinions from his end of the spectrum, but I've also read a few times comments such as this:
>"Academia: Where Crazy People Can't Get Fired - Dr. Moskowitz disgraces the University of California-Berkeley in precisely the same way Dr. Oz and Mark Bittman disgrace Columbia University: They are charlatans who wrap themselves in the prestige of academia to peddle foolishness to anxious parents."
To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised (in a good way!!) that Moskowitz got published on Scientific American at all.
Anyway, I have my fair share of worries on large density mmwave equipment environments, mostly focused on other things, as in, not on its effects on us, but on microbial life, bacterial life, not the focus of this article, so I won't derail, but at least for me, Moskowitz isn't this zero sum game as he may be to some field agents.
>>Little is known the effects of exposure to 4G, a 10-year-old technology, because governments have been remiss in funding this research.
One thing's for sure: there _is_ paucity of research on this topic - judging by a brief search on scholar.google.com for "4G technology health effects humans".
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.
>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.
People live too long, and don't die of stuff like pneumonia or tuberculosis or syphilis or yellow fever much anymore.
Over a long enough time span, your probability of getting some form of cancer goes to 100%. Probably more like 200% or 300%, since there are so many types that they can cut out or beat back relatively successfully these days, at least until you get too old and decrepit.
We have already solved all the worlds problems, unified quantum mechanics with classical physics, cured cancer and figured out how to factor primes. None of these works will ever see the light of day or be taken seriously because of the sources.
That may sound like hyperbole but somehow I doubt it's far from the mark. Tons of modern advances were from novices or unaccredited. Flight, Relativity, Baysian and Boolean logic; Two hicks, a patent clerk, a preacher, and a self-taught math nerd.
Doesn't help that the article is written in a kind of exaggerated, fear mongering way. E.g.:
"
5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO)
"
MIMO is multiple inputs, multiple outputs, not massive. If the author is bending terminology to enhance his case, that makes the case look weaker...
Yeah. If an average person thinks MIMO stands for Massive Inputs and Outputs that's not a bad mistake. If someone purporting to speak with authority on the subject of RF radiation thinks that, it's grounds to suspect them of being a blithering fool.
Don't fight a knee jerk reaction with one from your own.
> Cancer have risen to 1 in 5 in women and 1 in 3 in men, and nobody knows why
'Nobody knows why', seriously? Did we not establish that the likelihood of cancer increase with lifespan? When you only gets to live to 50 of course you don't die of cancer and heart disease nearly as easily. Your risk of cancer increase each year of age lived after a certain age, and any increase in life expectancy will result in more people eventually dying in cancer.
The dissonance runs high here on the subject of 5G, the only thing I can think of that comes close is vaccinations.
Once religion is out as a guide to navigate the world, there's really not much left except science to cling to.
Despite plenty of evidence that everyone and everything can be bought, despite plenty of respected researchers raising their voices against, despite all the proof you could want of how these situations tend to play out long term.
Once you give up blind belief in science, there's nothing left to hold on to; and that's obviously a scary thought for many.
As a biochemist, I just want to chime in that I think part of the reason for an apparent increase rise in cancer rates is that we have eliminated many other causes of death already - we have to die of something, and cancer is something that is not "curable" in the sense of other disorders.
After looking at the list of publications purported to be evidence, I have to agree with the other comments here casting doubt. Most, if not all, of these publications are in no-name journals with few citations. I found one paper where the author listed a gmail email address (are they unaffiliated with any institution?)
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I have worked with world-class scientists where the author only had a gmail address (untill we gave them an appointment at Berkeley).
Of course, a gmail address in and of itself is not an indicator of quality, however on a single author paper it certainly makes me wary.
Just out of curiosity, what field was that in? I could certainly see some scientific disciplines having unaffiliated world-class scientists, but others it would be virtually impossible to do high quality research outside of a lab
bioinformatics/computational biology. Specifically, multiple sequence alignment and HMMs for protein recognition. The author was previously a physicist (PhD) who left physics due to the low number of jobs in the 70s-80s, founded a database company, sold it to Intel, and then visited Berkeley and saw a cool talk and volunteered.
There were already a few codes in the area and plenty of papers, and he was mathematically inclined, so it didn't take long for him to become an expert. Once he was an expert, he pointed out major problems in existing codes (both functional and performance).
This is an area where you're working with fairly straightforward data and math (linear strings from a chosen alphabet, probabilistic model is well-established). You don't need to understand the underlying biology in detail to contribute.
Thanks for the answer - I figured it would be some bioinformatics/mathematics/statistics leaning field - you can definitely do more as a lone wolf there than say, biology.
> I think part of the reason for an apparent increase rise in cancer rates is that we have eliminated many other causes of death already
Where did you read "an apparrent increase rise in cancer rates" ? in this article or in one of the articles it references? which one?
I am not a biochemist, but I would assume academics are referring to incidence rates, not causes of deaths... If you did actually witness such a confusion in the papers, it's important to point it out, but if you didn't it would be equivalent to a physicist suspecting a colleague of confusing mu (the reduced mass of a binary system) with mu (a muon)... rather incredulous if you ask me...
Every academic discipline expects its disciples to be at least proficient in disambiguating words from context, so when one refers to a "cancer rate" in the context of causation, that it would refer to "incidence rates" i.e. the transition probability per surviving individual per unit time. This is independent of deaths by other causes.
> 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.
Which suggests that there is an apparent increase in cancer rates. So yes, I was referring to an incident rate. Regardless, the semantics here don't change the meaning of my statement. We have solved (for lack of a better word) many of the lower hanging fruits of human disorders. As such, we can't effectively control for incidence rates over time
>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.
There is a clear and well known pair of reasons for this. First people are living longer and the longer you live the more prone to cancer you are. People who died of small pox did not die of cancer.
Second, more controversially, atmospheric bomb testing in the 50's and 60's.
> 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.
I'm not sure exactly what time interval you're making that claim over, but isn't a large part of it people not dying from plague and flu and having good medical care to live into old age in the first place?
I think the title of the link is phrased badly. "We have no reason to believe 5G is safe" makes me want to comment that "we have no reason to believe 5G is unsafe" without even reading it. Maybe the title should be more specific. For example: pointing out that millimeter waves are not present in <=4G.
To be fair, it doesn't seem unreasonable to start with the assumption that something is unsafe and work to prove that it is safe. Seems safer ;)
If this was some technology where not having it would be a major impediment to society, then maybe it would be a different story. But 5G just doesn't seem that important to me.
If we were to do this, it would cause large numbers of techologies to never ever reach the public because people couldn't do the work to "prove" that something is safe. I would only recommend this policy towards things that we could reasonably expect to have catastrophic outcomes.
Like I said, the reason it seems reasonable in this case is because 5G really just doesn't seem like it's super important. The telcos just need a new thing to market, and it seems totally reasonable for us to expect them to ensure it's safe, especially give the ubiquity of cell phones and the fact that most people will probably eventually be upgraded to 5G without even needing to opt in.
>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.
Annual invasive cancer incidence rates have been declining in the U.S. for over two decades.
Frankly, that's SOP on Hacker News. Half the people are commenting on something they haven't read, and the other half are complaining that news from reputable sources isn't free and/or complain that they can't read it with NoScript in Lynx on Arch Linux.
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!
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.
I used to get a very sharp pain in my head, above my ear, when making outbound calls, just before the recipient would pick up. Nobody seems to believe me, and I have never had the motivation to try to prove it to anyone, but it got to the point where I would hold the phone away from my head until the person answered.
It began with a Sony Ericsson, but happened across a couple of different phone brands over the years. Still happens extremely occasionally now (maybe twice a year) with my iPhone.
I'd be interested to know if the signal strength is suddenly spiked when a call is connected.
Not when it comes to GSM, it has consistent timeslots for active calls. The dial tone is modulated the same way as speech data and can be considered active.
I get a sharp pain in my head above my ear from my glasses. The skin right there is very sensitive. Just rubbing things (including phones) causes the same senstation.
I agree with other suggestions: do a proper double-blind test. Others mentioned temperature difference, but I'd also suggest coil whine as an alternative hypothesis - and it's known that many electronic devices emit audible noise that's picked up (and really uncomfortable to) small subset of the population, especially when under load.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 502 ms ] thread> ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
> Joel M. Moskowitz
Argue it then. Many readers will have never heard this name.
Edit: I was also prompted to spend ~30 seconds researching who ACSH are since everyone critiquing Moskowitz in this HN thread seem to be posting links from that website alone. Didn't take long to discover they're a privately funded pro-industry advocacy group.
I took the numbers from the country I'm familiar with (The Netherlands, which has excellent cell phone penetration), and no matter how I look, if I correct for age, they've only been decreasing. The Dutch registry is also one of the most complete of all European countries.
See https://imgur.com/a/FiNrVCQ, x-axis is year of diagnosis, y-axis is Incidence per 100.000. I used European Standardized Rate correction to correct for changes in age distribution, which is standard here. Top blue line is total, the other lines all denote different origins.
Does he have industry ties that we should be aware of, reputation issues, conflicts of interest, something else?
[0] https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/28/uc-berkeley-psychologis...
The article uses personal insult (calling the guy a charlatan) but does not say much about why he disagrees with those positions.
I see no companies on the name of Joel M. Moskowitz, no products sold, no industry sponsors.
On the other hand, I see a guy with no industry ties being slandered online by no reason, weird.
I don't know anything about the guy, if anyone can chime in on why his opinion is not trustworthy I would like to learn more.
[0] https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Council_on_Sc...
The man been trying that "cellphones give you cancer" since at least 2009, with his earliest attacks being closer to some new age metaphysical bullshit, and only later he started to pull some scientific argument.
He has no real science background, no medical background, he is a psychologist. His "academic network" includes people going into homeopathy, antivaxing, GMO and something bordering on new age and conspiracy cults.
Why UC Berkley still keeps him around, I have no idea.
He is a wifi / cell phone radiation "truther" who thinks the EMF in everyday devices causes cancer
https://www.acsh.org/news/2007/02/16/cell-phone-dangers-stil...
After reading his ideas, I think we should all feel a little lucky that Trump hasn't made hime the head of the FCC.
edit: posting as primary reply, because the point is important, but was downvoted because of how obliquely it was made.
I hadn't heard of ACSH, so checked their about page:
> a pro-science consumer advocacy organization
A consumer advocacy org. Not a scientific research council, as —I would argue—their name highly implies.
Their about page also says:
> We do not represent any industry. We were created to be the science alternative to “news”
The top-3 links in the references section of their Wikipedia page that seem to contradict this line:
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/0...
- https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/american-counci...
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/10/09/magazine/obam...
The higher bandwidth (up to 10 Gbps) and higher cell density should support quite a few simultaneous video feeds to a central government location.
You are right that the slippery slope has been started already a while ago.
It's not hard to find 250 wackos if you pull random scientists working in random fields at random institutions. Most have no better way to know safety of 5G than I do.
Now, there's obviously some frequency band where we get into health risks. 5G jumps us from single-digit GHz to double-digit -- I'd guess you'd have to go at least past visible light before you run into safety issues, at least barring extremely high levels of exposure. Intuitively, it seems to me like that ought to still be safe, but I'm no expert.
But an appeal to experts -- with no real experts behind it -- doesn't do it for me. Neither does an appeal to papers based on volume, without a clear description of what they found and how. Most science is junk science.
So I guess the moral of the story is "don't believe everything you see in pop science magazines," although I would have hoped nobody did to begin with(?)
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 talk about science? A self-proclaimed guess from a self-proclaimed non-expert seems ill placed in a credentialist diatribe.
Plus there's places like "ElectroSensitivity UK" which aren't scientific institutions.
PS - I fully admit that there are subject experts from trusted institutions included too. But you're being far too defensive for quite legitimate questions/criticisms.
It seemed that way to me as well, but the real point is that it's irrelevant how well or poorly we judge those people. What matters is the facts they or others present.
> you're being far too defensive
Defensive of what? I haven't even expressed a position yet, other than "logical fallacies are bad" and I'm pretty willing to stand by that one. Are you here to argue the converse? To the extent that people or motivations matter at all, why condemn me but not the one who created the digression?
This matters if your expertise are in the subject to which the facts belong, otherwise it means little, particularly in a subject which requires an incredible amount of knowledge of an an incredible array of subjects.
I can look a bunch of absolute facts regarding 5g signals and make an assumption, however, because my expertise lie far outside the realm of 5g, an expert can easily come along afterwards and show me why these facts–while accurate–mean nothing to the subject at hand and why a completely different set of facts are what one should be looking at.
Expertise absolutely matters. And this is coming from a person who is confident that a greater than zero amount of companies would happily pay people to add noise to a topic in order to poison us for a fraction of a percentage boost in their quarterly growth.
Expertise matters on complex subjects and attempting to pretend as if all ideas are equal no matter who they come from or who receives them is a recipe for disaster.
The collective We really need to get back to a place where we freely and happily say “It’s really outside my realm of expertise. You should track down an expert.” and way more often daily and regularly “I don’t know.”
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.
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, you're assessing credibility, and affiliation and track record absolutely matter.
Contextualization and positioning are themselves information that an expert can pass on.
To use your term data, with complex topics it isn’t simply having data. One must know which data is relevant to consider for which topic at which point. And even more importantly, one must understand which missing sets of information need to be considered.
There is a reason our society has come to place such a high value on experience and expertise. And it isn’t solely because someone had books of data stored on massive bookshelves. While these bookshelves are important, it is their understanding in the nuances of which books to hunt for answers.
Our new ability to store significantly more of these books and retrieve them more efficiently doesn’t remove our need for someone to use and contextualize the information contained in these books. New tech doesn’t change the fact that expertise matters.
Interestingly enough, we now face a sort of reverse of the problems we’ve faced for centuries: While we used to struggle to find enough information to feed to experts, now we face too much data and not enough experts to properly make use of it.
Again, apologies if my first post wasn’t clarifying enough.
Your fallacy is the "Fallacy Fallacy." If you can actually stand by your words (nobody in my nearly 40 years of life has been able to) you'd explode from the sheer paradox.
> There are a lot of people with degrees FROM credible institutions, but very little in terms of currently being researchers in the field AT credible institutions.
You responded literally saying that the institutions are credible:
> Is Harvard Medical School an institution you recognize and trust? Columbia? Monash? McGill?
That wasn't the original objection; they even said in their objection that the institutions are credible. I don't understand how the goalposts moved.
Seems like a double standard. They can use their expertise/reputation to endorse an idea but using that same expertise/reputation to qualify that endorsement is an "ad hominem."
To me discussing their expertise is core to their position, since their whole position is: "I'm an expert, I sign a letter based on my expertise for a specific course of action." If they aren't an expert it cuts right to the core of their position.
0: http://energymedicineri.com/
After their primary university admissions scandal? Absolutely not, not that I ever trusted them in the first place (Memphis has a far better medical program.)
If a faculty at HMS signed on, that'd be okay. If a ransom person with a degree from HMS does, that doesn't carry the same weight. I was pretty clear about "at" versus "from."
Science isn't a democracy.
They receive A LOT of funding from cellular companies in particular, any research that throws doubt on 5G could lead to their funding being pulled. Not only this, but most of the interesting 5G hardware is coming from the cellular companies on loan.
My point is: You have a perfect storm for a rushed technology with potential for health risks. Almost every Country on the planet is investing lots of money into 5G and the technology itself requires a significant number more cellular towers to be built in closer proximity to people.
If there is any genuine question about 5G's safety, I would rather stay on the side of caution. It's not as if people will kill over if they don't have 5G immediately. Not only this, the technology will be more mature and the price will likely come down for infrastructure development.
I can think of a few people I know that are much less exposed to 2/3/4g radiation, by living in the forest and not having a phone on them all the time. Isn't a control group that has been exposed to significantly less radiation still useful ?
I highly doubt that 26+ GHz will receive much attention. You have no range, you need line of sight otherwise it won't work. At least 3.4GHz (and the other LTE bands) don't have that issue.
I mean it can't be good all this radiation exposure. As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.
I think so much can already be done with the network bandwidth we already have available. Just using a better protocol on top of HTTP, like everything switching to HTTP2 should be a huge improvement.
How much bandwidth more do we really need, we have hit the limits in terms of video on what is noticeable by the human eye already.
As far as you know from what? This might sound harsh, but this is just fearmongering.
HV power lines are, in an electrical sense, very far away from you. Even if magnetic radiation had some health effects, (which as far as we know, it doesn't, which is why MRI's are incredibly non-invasive to people without metal implants of some sort), you are not getting any of that from an HV power line.
The only people I know spouting such things are either charlatans^W salesmen trying make a buck or people that have no understanding or training in electricity. It can't "jump out at you". A power line is not a radio.
There are plenty of microwave towers and satellites and cell phones to be irrationally afraid of. But power lines? Like it just screams "I do not understand electricity or am trying to make a buck off those that don't." There's no radiation coming off that power line that gets to you.
I've seen family houses literally next to high tension poles (not just regular poles, I mean those huge ones many times the height of the house), for example in Portugal.
I don't see any definitive conclusion online for the link between high voltage lines proximity and cancer, but I am not an expert. Seems to me the consensus is far from general.
If nothing else, it looks ugly.
Consensus is not far from general. You don't have to be an expert. If you are really afraid of radiation, talking about power lines really weakens your case. They do almost nothing compared to normal household appliances we use all the time. The inverse square rule is real.
I think to avoid your best bet would be joining an Amish community. And don't go outside, without covering up. The sun's radiation is like, actually proven to be harmful to skin and DNA, and is many times more powerful. Too bad getting sun is also clinically associated with many health benefits! Oh what will we do...
[0] https://www.nationalgridet.com/document/82871/download
Studies funded by the 5G industry are 10 times more likely to say there are no side effects on human, which is suspect and an indication that is an attempt to manipulate science going on - https://nutritionfacts.org/video/does-cell-phone-radiation-c...
The leading independent organization on cancer causes says that current cell phones are "possible carcinogens" - https://nutritionfacts.org/video/cell-phone-brain-tumor-risk...
Good thing I'm talking about overhead powerlines and not 5G then. Unless your reply was meant for someone else.
Although I believe the chance that 5G is harmful is basically nil, mostly due to my EE degree and a basic understanding of "non-ionizing radiation" and "ionizing radiation", it is probably about 100X more rational than complaining about overhead powerlines.
Seriously I just don't get it what problem do people have with overhead powerlines. Saying overhead powerlines cause cancer is like, on par with calling aircraft contrails "chemtrails" and saying they are part of a nefarious government plot. There are plenty of real nefarious government plots, but you hear people talking again and again about chemtrails because they don't understand aircraft engines or heat or water. Just like there are real issues in the health system, but again and again people cut off the legs of their own argument by going off about overhead powerlines.
Lastly, WTF are those sources? Is nutritionfacts.org a leading independent organization on cancer causes? That is a 5-minute long video of someone doing zoom-highlights on excerpts from studies from 2011. The first comment is someone saying the WHO is bought-out by corporate interests, although, the WHO is like the main ethos argument from the video.
Do you use a cell phone? How do you hide from the other people using their cell phones, or the Wi-Fi rays coming from your computer? If you have a new router, 802.11ad already communicates in the 60Ghz band, that's a pretty big number if big frequency numbers are scary.
It is crucial to understand what this actually means. the IARC classifications are valid but — particularly to lay people — incredibly misleading and pretty much useless. All that “possible carcinogen” means is that we haven’t yet collected sufficient evidence to discount harm. It’s not evidence of carcinogenicity at all. If anything it’s the opposite, because it means that, despite the existence of relevant studies, there hasn’t been any consistent demonstration of carcinogenic effect.
Furthermore, IARC only classifies risk itself, not hazard [1], nor dosage effects.
For context, IARC classifies sunlight exposure and processed meat consumption as “definitely carcinogenic” [2]. Despite this, regular exposure to sunlight is crucial for your health, and regular meat consumption is known to have little absolute effect on cancer risk (in other words, although red meat does have an effect, the effect size is tiny).
[1] https://worksmart.org.uk/health-advice/health-and-safety/haz... [2] https://monographs.iarc.fr/list-of-classifications/
For real VR/AR, 5G is not fast enough, would have to work in the THz regime for wireless (wow, nature has a huge bandwidth requirement...). Interesting thing about THz is that most electronic materials breakdown and stop working.
Researchers are using this effect now with mobile camera sensors and can image on the 100 nm length scale using interpolation.
The light bulbs in your home spew out radiation. The heating of your home is all spewing out radiation. "Radiation exposure" is meaningless without considering whether or not radiation at a given wavelength will interact with your body in detrimental ways at the given power levels (of course, if you heat your home too much, or set fire to it, the infrared radiation/heat will kill you; but we don't for that reason conclude heat is inherently bad) or not.
Talking about "radiation exposure" without being specific about those things is as meaningless as suggesting eating is bad for you because some things are toxic.
Some radiation is very bad for you. Some is essential for you to some extent and dangerous for you if you get too much. Some just won't interact with your body in any way that matters.
> As far as I know, people living near large electrical wire high tension poles are at a higher risk of cancer already.
There is some very limited evidence that shows that strong electromagnetic fields may have some limited effect specifically for incidence rates of childhood Leukemia, but notably only at levels found at too few houses for the researchers to get a large enough sample size to be able to draw conclusions either way. In other words: We don't have any clear evidence of that. We have some research that may hint at some link under conditions to rare for us to have anything conclusive.
It's worth researching, because even a very minor increase in risk would have substantial long term effects, but it's not something that really has any relevance to the safety of 5G at all, any more than the fact that too much infrared radiation (heat) will burn you. They're different things.
[1] provides a detailed walk-through of different claims, sources of electromagnetic fields and radiation and what different studies say about this.
[1] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...
This story links to sources and is written by:
"Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, is director of the Center for Family and Community Health in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been translating and disseminating the research on wireless radiation health effects since 2009 after he and his colleagues published a review paper that found long-term cell phone users were at greater risk of brain tumors. His Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website has had more than two million page views since 2013. He is an unpaid advisor to the International EMF Scientist Appeal and Physicians for Safe Technology."
So this is, I assume, not by a Russian troll farm.
Why would Russia argue against technology that would allow cyber warfare on an unprecedented scale?
I wonder if moving to IPv6 will in fact mean more cyberwarfare.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That's a very reasonable general approach. Whether his proposal to stop 5G deployments altogether is proportional to our understanding of the potential risks, if any, is debatable, to say the least.
If made in good faith, yes. I’m not convinced that this is the case here, however, given that the author is fundamentally at odds with the scientific consensus on 2G, 3G and 4G safety, without acknowledging that he’s in the clear minority. In fact, he claims that the majority of relevant experts have signed the 5G moratorium, and this seems to not actually be the case. I actually think that disagreeing with the consensus, based on limited but potentially valid evidence, is completely acceptable. But he goes further and pretends to be in the majority, and that contrary evidence only marginally exists.
In sum, he makes demonstrably false claims about the current state of the scientific consensus, which makes me sceptical of everything else he says.
What's more important, since you mention the 'scientific consensus' and his claim that there isn't enough data is: What is the consensus on 5G (I suppose that means mmWave) and what are the studies it is based on? That would allow to make a factual comment on his claims about health hazards.
That’s true only if we indeed know nothing about 5G, and that’s demonstrably not the case. In fact, the pretend open-mindedness is tantamount to denialism, if we accept that findings on ≤4G translate to 5G, and there are good scientific reasons for thinking so, based on our established understanding of physics and biology. It’s possible that 5G changes the picture, and I am indeed open to the possibility. But at the same time intellectual honestly compels me to describe the chance of this happening as low, given what we generally know about the biological effects of non-ionising radiation.
Put differently: Given what we know, it’s honest to say that 5G might carry risks, but that there is currently no good reason to assume so. It is not honest to claim, as the article does, that “we have no reason to believe 5G is safe”.
This is a reasonable approach and it is a general approach. Now, about 5G, again the question is what we know or don't know about any risks.
If there are no or very few studies about the effect of mmWave then it is indeed reasonable to ask whether precautions should be taken.
You seem to suggest that there are indeed no such studies but that it can be assumed to be safe because emissions in a different part of the spectrum are safe.
Whatever the reality is, this is simply not a scientific approach and does suggest that you have no factual reason to believe that mmWaves are safe (or dangerous actually, you simply don't know).
I am not saying that he is right, but scientifically we cannot just counter his argument by "no, you're wrong".
5G is also pretty bad for the environment (netflix, instagram, snapchat are also pretty awful). The amount of energy and resources you need to make all those electronic is gigantic, not to mention the lifespan of a smartphones is so short, smartphones vendors are now trying to add more and more features to make customers replace their phones.
I'm really dying for any electronic brand to release durable hardware, and I'm also eager to have minimal smartphone OS that consume less CPU and memory.
I can't understand that race towards higher bigger everything.
I think it's called growth-economy. Solving things creates new exciting possibilities, which have problems that need solving. We're never satisfied, and that's a good thing. Otherwise we would've stayed in caves
More like "growth-economy with massive hidden externalized costs" - from the obvious like pollution and climate disruption, to subtle ones like economic pato-incentives that distort markets and prevent them from doing their jobs...
> Otherwise we would've stayed in caves
Yeah, but we're long past that state. A cave man can safely externalize stuff like recycling, and even most of food production to NATURE. We can't.
I love growth-economy per se, but our current brand of it is messed up, and markets don't seem to be good enough at pricing all the nasty externalities. We need to invent quickly some extra devices that price this stuff in at a global scale (doing it per country CAN'T work!) IF we want to keep our beloved growth-economy!
Otherwise we'll default to the crappy solutions of ducktape-enviro-socialism + state-capitalism + islands of "free" markets here and there, dragging ourselves through a new f dark age from war to war...
Would you prefer we revert to manufacturing plastic VHS tapes, then distribute them by diesel trucks like we used to in the good old days?
Would you prefer people get their morning news on broadsheets made from the bleached pulp of rainforest trees?
Or would you like to go back to the good old days of AM radio when the inadequacy of the receiver electronics was compensated for by sheer power at the transmitter, to the tune of megawatts of broadcast power?
You're probably one of those people who would prefer to breathe in lungfuls of woodsmoke rather than bathe your skin in the harmful rays of electric light.
I agree.
Remember: reduce, reuse, recycle is a hierarchy. Reduction is far more effective than the other two.
Like glasses with sensors in them so the waiter at a restaurant would know where he needed to go to refill someone's glass.
This was in a context where it definitely was not an ironic jab at the overuse of technology.
I don't know if the product actually exists, but honestly. Honestly. Smart wine glasses! I think it's just like... a really, really dumb idea. And if that's the kind of thing that 5G is going to enable, I absolutely do think we should consider it a threat to the environment.
That use case is already enabled by existing 802.15.4 protocols, no need to wait for 5G.
Drinking water shortages are certainly common enough.
Even storing document as PDF instead of paper might be worse after all.
If at least smartphones would be designed to last 4 or 5 years it would make a big difference.
Wirth's law is also an excellent way to describe how computer software is most often horribly designed, and it also plays a huge role in how we could have cheaper and eco-friendly devices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
> You're probably one of those people
Lowering yourself to snarky comments is not helping your argument.
Airport mm-wave machines are somewhere around 24-30 GHz (so around 10mm). (source: https://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/opinions_l... )
So far concerns are about insects (heating) and bacterium (antibiotic resistance "could" develop - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21261425 ). Though the heating effect is probably negligible compared to how cities already radiate a lot more heat and insects are loving it.
Furthermore, if there is any serious new/strange/second-order effect on biology we would have already seen it, as people blasted lab animals with every kinds of EMF and we got only the coincidental expected flukes.
He is a wifi / cell phone radiation "truther" who thinks the EMF in everyday devices causes cancer
https://www.acsh.org/news/2007/02/16/cell-phone-dangers-stil...
The fact that this is in Scientific American, even in the Opinion section, is simultaneously a testament to the openmindedness of science, and quite sad.
After reading his ideas, I think we should all feel a little lucky that Trump hasn't made hime the head of the FCC.
That brings to mind the old saying, "don't be so open-minded your brain falls out."
Also, I'm pretty sure Trump is very much not in the group of "cell phones/EMF/etc. cause cancer" believers.
Speaking of a pro-business bias, the ACSH: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Council_on_Sc...
it's a true statement, though, that conventional scientists and experts in EMF don't feel there is any real risk of these wavelengths.
[1] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/broccoli-i...
[2] https://kfolta.blogspot.com/2019/08/scientific-american-dest...
* Frequency of radiation
* Power of exposure
* Duration of exposure
* Where in the human body absorption is occurring
While the effects of the latter three are pretty well understood for certain kinds of radiation (ionizing and non-ionizing) ranging from "acute radiation sickness due to gamma burst" to "listening to the radio your whole life doesn't have a link to cancer", there is truth that a specific band of millimeter 5G has been less studied than others.
However, science follows patterns, and interpolating the existing data to this sub-infrared region opens a kind of wiggle room similar to, but in fact the opposite to, low dosimetry of ionizing radiation that has given the Linear No Threshold model a run for it's money. Except in this case, skeptics are typically concerned about chemical effects due to subdermal heating (not really as compelling as ionizing radiation effects), or debating the "non-ionizing-ness" (which is less common because its even less supported by evidence).
It comes down to a persons personal risk. In my opinion, the sun beats out all non ionizing radiation concerns, particularly when it comes to heating of the skin and subdermal tissues. Wear a hat and sunscreen (against the sun).
Still worth researching and acknowledging the data gap, as the EU does in its metastudy of 40+ years and X00 scientific papers [0], but there's no reason to be alarmed based on the existing corpus of evidence.
[0] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
Edit to add citation
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 cannot opt out.
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.
(Yes, they're not zero: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0029/44876/m... )
And in either way - more towers, less power per tower.
Extremely tiny exposure of non ionizing radiation, you probably get more from the monitor your looking at right now.
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!
Right besides the tower you're in a blind spot, then it gets more intense as you move out of the blind spot and then it gets lower as you move further away.
> 5G will require cell antennas every 100 to 200 meters, exposing many people to millimeter wave radiation. 5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO) which pose unique challenges for measuring exposures.
It can use more towers at higher frequencies in really really crowded areas or industrial setups, but those work at lower power outputs, and penetrate the body less (due to higher frequencies).
Now compare to AM/FM transmitters that cover a huge geographic area. Those can be scary. FCC allows up to 50000 W transmission power. It's required because the antennas are spaced so far apart.
You don't need hat and sunscreen for street lights or flashlights nor would you need it for cellular power levels, orders of magnitude difference in exposure.
A simple power comparison is not a great measure of affect.
The problem with every argument about radiation from cell phones being dangerous is that for every proposed mechanism, the Sun is orders of magnitude more damaging.
The obvious worries with cell phones are repeated stress injuries, insomnia and disruption of personal relationships. There's just no plausible mechanism for the radiation to be damaging, though.
Therefore, 99.9999038793% of the energy emitted is at wavelengths shorter than 1E-4m (0.1mm).
Or, across the entire continuous spectrum (0, 1e-4m], the total energy from the Sun is 0.0009612W, or 961uW.
You might complain that 961 uW is much more than 10nW, but again, you have to consider that 961 uW is across the entire spectrum (0,1E-4]. The Sun is less powerful at narrow spectrums because otherwise it'd drown out the cell phone tower (Or rather we pump power into the antenna to overcome the "noise" from the Sun).
I'd reproduce the numbers, but unfortunately my HP48 underflows at such narrow bandwidths.
And the "LED" at your face is, of course, much more powerful than the Sun since (as you pointed out) by the inverse square law, it has to pump out a lot of power to reach the tower.
Nor do I happen to think LEDs are harmless. Using LEDs to affect biological system is a very rich area of study.
Do I think non-ionizing radiation is harmful? I doubt it. But comparing a 1000W/m^2 @ 5400K black body radiator to a cell phone tower is dishonest.
Shorter wavelengths have higher photon energy. It's the short stuff that you have to worry about.
Is it consequential? Probably not, but the OP's original comparison of 1000 W of Sun vs. 100W from a tower and nW from cell phone is disingenuous.
The concern with 5G seems to revolve around the uses of higher frequency millimeter wave radiation compared to 3G/4G which has shown no repeatable damaging results at normal power levels.
If higher frequency = bad, which is actually true, comparing 5G the sun is not dishonest IMO. I am trying to give some perspective to show how it seems odd to worry about extremely low power cellular radiation while giving little thought to the extremely powerful nuclear radiator in the sky.
Dosage matters, cellular frequency will cook you given enough power, so will visible light. The power levels we are talking about do not generate enough heat to damage our tissue, so if they do harm it would need to be through some other unknown process. Should we keep looking for possible other processes, yes of course. However I would be much more concerned about the much more powerful visible range artificial radiators around us every day, like the monitor I am staring at right now emitting a 100 times the radiation of my cellphone right at my face all day long.
I think when comparing this to the sun there are lots of things worth considering from many different angles.
1. To say this threat is nothing compared to the risks we face from the sun, completely ignores the fact that we have millions of years of evolutionary exposure to sunlight and because of that fact the immune system has become way more acclimated to dealing with it's carcinogenic properties. Of course, our immune systems aren't perfect but considering how much more exposure we all are to sunlight than any other carcinogen, if we didn't have a strong evolutionary tolerance to it; melanoma would obviously be the #1 leading cause of cancer. But it's not.
Now in hindsight, what we don't have evolutionary genetic tolerance for is microwave radiation. While i'm not in anyway an expert in biology or the physics of light, I do have enough insight to know that we should never underestimate the possible negative outcome of any potential problem when it's still just a mathematical theory we're playing with rather than a reality of nature we're all dying from.
I mean, we underestimate and miscalculate these kind of things all the time and it's kind of counter productive that the answer to the question of "When will we learn to stop doing this?" is always "Once, we underestimate and miscalculate, discover our error and become smarter because of it"...
2. The bigger issue this has when compared to the sun is the fact that all of us can agree while there is such a thing as getting too much sun. However, there isn't such a thing as internet that is too fast. We essentially all want to be able to download terabytes at the speed of light so that we can one day be on Mars and be able to seamlessly stream Netflix from Earth while were up there. And while of course there is a speed of light limitation of like i believe 8 minutes, that doesn't mean people aren't going to complain why they cant instantly stream from there.
This is what we need to understand about this issue. There is no limitation to how much radio wave radiation we want when we are thinking of that radiation in the language of the internet, as "Content".
3. When it comes to protecting ourselves from this, if it actually does turn out to be a substantial problem. All the solutions suck.
The radio wave EM shielding for example protects you from the potentially harmful waves. But it also creates like I said, a deadzone.
So putting it in your walls of your home, because you don't want you and your entire family constantly being exposed to the cell tower that might only be a football field length away from your house (as the one near my house is), also means you can't receive or make calls to and from your cell phone. This is a deal breaker for most people, and as far as i'm aware RF shielding isn't like sunscreen where it blocks out most of the harmful light while letting in the some you want. It's an all or nothing solution.
Which is why I think putting the RF shield in clothing like a hoodie would be an interesting venture idea. The shielding protects your body, while your phone is still outside of the shielded area. (although this obviously doesn't protect your face and i don't think RF shielded masks are going to find a market other than antifa)
And another reason why the implications of this would really suck, is that it means were stuck with crappy wires and the companies who own the rights to pumping internet to and fro over them. I am mostly looking forward to 5G because I view it as the primary means we are going to get ourselves out of the era of shitty...
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.
Tracy Chandler, BSc (Hons) MBChB FRNZCGP FNZSCM, PGDipSEM, Cert Dermoscopy, Cert Homeopathy, MACNEM member.
Homeopathy? ummm...red flag.... ok... maybe an anomaly.... who else from NZ?, huh, no one from any credible research org.
Having an additional 'Cert' in homeopathy would be like having a CS degree but also certifying in AWS or Azure products, for example, which wouldn't even necessarily say that I endorse them, perhaps just that I have clients that might like to see that certification.
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 natural medicine but if you are a real (equivalent or otherwise) to a medical doctor and you certify in homeopathy you are legitimizing fake bullshit and you should be judged for it. Homeopathy preys on the sick and desperate and deserves no slack.
Maybe this seems overly harsh but people I care about have paid thousands for this bullshit and the smooth talking bullshit salesmen had way to much ""science"" on their side.
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.
I would not get a certification in computer shamanism, even if it made my clients feel better about me when I mumbled the Old Tongue and clapped my hands above their laptop. If this was something people wanted, I'm sure others with more compromised morals would be happy to set up a certification board and oblige.
I have no ill feelings towards those that believe that computers or human bodies are magic. This is not their fault. I have no respect for professionals that are complicit in this. Shame on them. They are one short step away from professionally proscribing homeopathy because it "makes the client feel better, so the ends justify the means".
Hey, some people believe the placebo pill is ethical. I believe it violates the letter and spirit of informed consent. I feel the same about homeopathy. Homeopathy is bunk no matter how a sick person or salesman or doctor feels about it.
Also, I can now add Blood Sacrifice as an optional extra for my clients, who see the fee as a small price to pay for covering all the bases.
Autism researcher from Harvard Medical School is not convincing.
This sounds like bullshit. What were there changes between 3G and LTE that would make it more dangerous?
More efficient use of spectrum?
I don't think you'll see a lot of reputable schools taking this on though. But this effect should be easy to replicate at least.
"Along with the patterning and duration of exposures, certain characteristics of the signal (e.g., pulsing, polarization) increase the biologic and health impacts of the exposure."
"The latest cellular technology, 5G, will employ millimeter waves ... 5G also employs new technologies (e.g., active antennas capable of beam-forming; phased arrays; massive inputs and outputs, known as MIMO)"
FWIW, I don't have a fixed opinion on this issue one way or the other. I just really hate seeing supposedly intelligent people rely so heavily on ad hominem or similar distractions. If there really is a problem with the cited research, I'd appreciate it if somebody could point to where those are. Likewise if someone could cite sufficient contrary research to justify abandoning the precautionary principle. That's all fine. I'm willing to be persuaded, but not by appeals to or rejection of authority.
And yes, there are effects of 50-70 GHz EMF on biology, first one is heating, which is completely expected but might cause problems for insects. (But we already blast them with a lot of light at night, a lot of heat from the pavement and our buildings, and a lot of chemicals in the air.) Another interesting one is that cell bacterial division seems to be affected when combined with antibiotics. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21261425 )
The towers are also spread more densely, with smaller cells and lower power, which also lowers peak exposure levels. For devices, just the fact they only have to transmit a short distance to a local tower tells you about the energy.
You are probably getting more cancer risk for stress hormones caused by the Instagram/Twitter on your phone than the electric field it generates, no matter how 'patterned' or polarised the field is.
5G covers a huge spectral range starting at, yes, 5 GHz.
5GHz is coming out of every home router built in the last couple years. If it was unsafe, we would probably know about it. (Let’s say ‘unsafe’ as in, “it is ‘unsafe’ to drive a car” since we need some baseline risk tolerance).
The article claims this is in fact the case. Quote:
"We are seeing increases in certain types of head and neck tumors in tumor registries, which may be at least partially attributable to the proliferation of cell phone radiation."
I've clicked a few cited papers and they are all behind a paywall, so I can't make my own opinion how justified this claim is.
I would be more likely to believe this risk if it was showing up as hand tumors since most people are now carrying phones far more often then holding them up to the head.
It would however be interesting if the known decrease in male sperm count worldwide was actually attributed to cellular devices in the pocket.
This started as early as CT, then DECT, GSM, 3G, 4G and now 5G.
After 30+ years of having consumer grade wireless telephony we are still debating whether the radio signals have any negative effect on living beings.
If we can't draw any conclusion from a sample size that big, then I must conclude that the effects of EM-radiation are so minimal (if any at all), that it is not something I should worry about.
Edit: typo
This is similar to homeopathy. Even if the state of research is not great, we're discussing a theory that is just not physically plausible. The default assumption should be that it is wrong.
I mean we could ban 80% of all Indian food because first time westerners eat it they react much stronger to the spicy ness than they would to smoking.
Stating independent of the actual science that “It was always obvious that smoking caused cancer” isn’t any better than the people stating now that “obviously EM radiation causes cancer”.
Same with asbestos, lead in gas/paint, uranium lipsticks, &c.
Whereas with smoking we can see over ten times higher risks for certain types of cancer-related deaths. That doesn't mean there's no effect due to mobile phones, but I think if it were remotely comparable to smoking we'd see a significant impact by now.
Cancer rates are rising and we're not sure why. Is that acceptable?
That said, I am sure there are structures in the body that can selective absorb or react to non-ionizing radiation that we may not yet know about. Our cellular mechanisms are impressively complex.
It is a good thing that we spend research effort into identifying why this is happening.
All I'm saying is that I have concluded, for myself, that EM-radiation is the least of my worries when it comes to negative effects (including cancer).
* People get older
* Cancer detection is improving
* Cancer mortality is sinking
https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html
The symptom isn't classified as a disease at where I live, so it's hard to get any decent medial treatments and I'm afraid 5G might harm me even harder when higher frequency typically makes me feel worse without a way to get away from it.
- Turn off wireless signals like Bluetooth (I keep WiFi with low emission setting which isn't as bad as BT but 5Ghz is worse than 2.4Ghz, so I only use 2.4Ghz frequency.)
- Many of recent phones. (Bought iPhone X, Pixel 3a and those I can't keep close to me no matter how I tweak their settings, so they're away from me kept in boxes but I still need them for testing for my work.)
- LED displays keep me uneasy. I use fluorescent ones.
- IC chips used for credit cards and passports. I keep them minimum in my wallet.
These are from what I've bought and sold just to find what might feel better for me. I wish I could just keep what I want.
(Also not EM but chemical substances, just to say I've been living with hypersensitivity.
- Keeping clothes on after coming back home from outside. So I quickly wash and take shower.
- Need to clean wall every few weeks before I feel kind of choked, maybe due to glue used for the wallpapers.
- Very small amount of mold. I have to clean my air conditioner from a professional service every season.)
I can keep going but those are some.
Sadly the only other mention I've ever seen is the fictional series "Better Call Saul". And the character's suffering was depicted as entirely mental.
That's because it is entirely mental.
Blind tests were done on people, and their ability to recognise a radiation source was the same as random picking.
Anybody claiming to be able to sense radiation can be tested simply by taking two mobile phones, turning one off (leaving one connected to the internet and doing something online), putting both in a bag/under a bucket/..., having someone else randomly swap their position and trying to guess which is the one that is radiating at the moment. I can guarantee you're guesses will be around 50% in the long run, so basically random guesses.
My ammature theory (5Ghz wifi feels worse than 2.4Ghz wifi) also says higher frequency for short range signals does more harm, thus it's more sensitive to turn those off than being exposed to other lower frequency used outside.
I hate to admit it, but I seem to notice effects when I add wireless networks to my home. I think it's probably psychosomatic, but would like to do a blind test. I would situate myself between wireless devices, with all devices within 10 meters either being on or off, the test being to determine if any devices are on. I would feel weird asking anyone to help in this, so perhaps I'll rig something up with smart plugs or a programmable router.
I think northern Europe has recognized EM hypersensitivity as a symptom but last time I checked, it's not widely recognized worldwide.
I can completely say this is not mental. Like, say I get a new phone which I wanted to buy and then if it damages me, I regretfully have to sell it. Also I can feel better by turning off Bluetooth, so there are clear physical causes for me.
While I understand that you might want to silence vocal minorities for business reasons, I've only stated facts from my past 20 years of life.
Also, what has lead in gasoline to do with EM-radiation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clean_Room
TL;DR: We poisoned ourselves for about half a century.
> The episode describes how science, in particular the work of Clair Patterson (voiced in animated sequences by Richard Gere) in the middle of the 20th century, has been able to determine the age of the Earth.
> Patterson found that his results were contaminated by lead from the ambient environment...
> Tyson goes on to explain that Patterson's work in performing lead-free experiments directed him to investigate the sources for lead. Tyson notes how lead does not naturally occur at Earth's surface but has been readily mined by humans (including the Roman Empire), and that lead is poisonous to humans. Patterson examined the levels of lead in the common environment and in deeper parts of the oceans and Antarctic ice, showing that lead had only been brought to the surface in recent times. He would discover that the higher levels of lead were from the use of tetraethyllead in leaded gasoline, despite long-established claims by Robert A. Kehoe and others that this chemical was safe. Patterson would continue to campaign against the use of lead, ultimately resulting in government-mandated restrictions on the use of lead. Tyson ends by noting that similar work by scientists continues to be used to help alert mankind to other fateful issues that can be identified by the study of nature.
Emphasis added.
I was debating a different technology with a friend and he made such a comment, but my response was that the frequency, scope and importance of past technological advancements won't hold a candle to those of the future.
Something which was true/false for 10 years is more likely to remain so for the next 10 than another thing which was true/false for 1 year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect
What I find particularly troubling: 4G is for me already more than good enough. 5G is really not so well thought out. They require a lot more cells. The exposure is much higher... They cost more (?).
Why are we having this technology?
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 tumours. However, this was a meta-analysis of case-control studies, which is the weakest form of study (worse even than a prospective observational cohort study). The problem here is they essentially had to ask people who did or not have tumours how much they used their mobile phones and trust them, which introduces the obvious issue that people with brain tumours who had heard that phones may cause cancer are probably going to report higher usage of mobile phones than those without tumours. Moskowitz even notes this in the discussion of his paper. He even notes that other, better, better, prospective cohort studies have found no evidence for a link between cellphones and cancer (https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/93/3/203/2906436), but dismisses the study because they looked at subscription data rather than examining 'actual exposure to mobile phones' (which his study didn't do either).
This fear mongering, with no a priori theoretical justification and no evidential basis from people who've checked anyway just to be safe, muddies the waters and distracts from real environmental problems like air pollution causing respiratory diseases. This isn't quite as bad as promoting antivaxxer positions, which are imbecilic because the benefits from vaccines obviously outweigh the costs even if they did cause autism, but it's getting awfully close.
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 have elsewhere) that the ACSH link is not from reputable org. It seems to be the only link people are posting and re-posting to rebut Moskowitz's research here on HN.
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.
While I do think that studies should be continued for a more definitive answer, and I personally don't feel a strong need for a 5G network as of now, I am more on the defaults to safe side.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5035531/
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/r...
Citation needed.
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 fall for hoaxes about the dangers of safe substances (vaccines, chemicals) and harmless technologies.
But it can also be thought-stopping, and more emotional based than empirical.
But we have a lot of data (even if not as an enormous pile as about WiFi), and we know that so far the evidence points to no unexpected effects. There are interesting avenues of inquiry about the effects of 50-70 GHz on biology (heating of insects, interference with bacterial growth), of course those effects are a lot smaller than what we already do from air pollution to manufacturing an dumping lot of chemicals everywhere, heating our cities, and so on.
Do hugs cause cancer? If yes, then we can start narrowing it down to 3G/5G more after that. But by that stage I think we're doomed as a species anyway.
Of course that's one thing that we know about, we can reason about, and that's why people are not getting boiled.
> the wattage of a human at rest is 100W which is roughly equivalent.
We know these pretty well, but they are not trivial (due to non-linearity creeping in).
So any proposed grey area would in fact have to be a total surprise outlier, where EM far less energetic then visible light tripped over some biological weak spot.
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.
MIMO is Multi-Input Multi-Ouput, surely?
There does appear to be such a thing as Massive MIMO, which they might mean?
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 their research "bullshit" or "impossible", call the people "thruthers" or claiming "Russian troll farms" are behind this story.
I don't think I've ever seen so much non-scientific HN comments on a science article.
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. However everybody who points to a possible answer is shot down without much investigation. Sad, really.
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.
"In other words, the individual incidence of cancer deaths has actually fallen."
Cancer rates are strongly driven by age- cancer incidence increases exponentially as people age (stochastically, of course).
I also believe many of the cancers we successfully treat would be non issues if left alone. (all the young women who found lumps and become breast cancer survivors)
We live in an increasingly sleepless society and lack of sleep is effectively a carcinogen.
The present meta-analysis suggested that neither short nor long sleep duration was significantly associated with risk of cancer, although long sleep duration increased risk of with colorectal cancer.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3762769/
^Matthew Walker, presumably the 70% drop is from work at his Berkeley lab
"In other words, the individual incidence of cancer deaths has actually fallen."
Situation: person has an almost undetectable cancer. They see a doctor, no cancer detected, later that week they are shot by police at a routine road stop.
We get in our time machine, go back a week and a bit, and supply the doctor with a better detection kit.
Situation 2: person has an almost undetectable cancer. They see a doctor who refers them to a specialist, cancer detected, another notch on the cancer tally board. Later that week they are shot by police at a routine road stop.
Nothing has changed except in the second case there’s another cancer detected. The person is still dead from non-cancer causes, just in one scenario they died as a haver-of-cancer and in the other they didn’t.
Better/earlier detection will necessarily lead to a decrease in cancers that are never detected (which I interpret as an increase in cancers detected before mortality from other causes), otherwise it’s not better/earlier detection.
My money is on diet and pesticides/preservatives/etc. being another big one. With this, too, there is little official evidence that, say, Roundup, causes cancer, but there is, imo, a stronger lobby against a positive outcome in those studies, and they don't necessarily control for interactions such as Roundup combined with the surfactant that it is typically mixed with that increases cell penetration.
In sum, I’d rank the risk of Roundup being carcinogenic on roughly the same level as that of 5G: possible but unlikely, given the best available evidence.
For the record, the other reasons are to do with the larger ecological impact of roundup-based practices, such as harm to soil fungi and bacteria, and collateral damage from runoff or wind. Plus, there were some studies finding it may cause harm to intestinal lining and such, even if it's not actually a carcinogen.
Pollution is lower too (again, in the US): cars used to pollute a LOT more. Smog used to be far, far worse in the LA area decades ago, so even with more people and more cars, pollution is lower, particularly localized pollution that affects people more. Of course, global warming pollution is certainly higher, but that isn't localized and shouldn't have any effect on you (it's just CO2).
Obesity is significantly worse, however.
"In other words, the individual incidence of cancer deaths has actually fallen."
Suppose that today the average person tells their doctor about a symptom of Example Cancer (which is incurable) six months before it kills them. 1 million people per year in Standard Country die of Example Cancer, with an average of six months between diagnosis and death.
Now, let's imagine I invent a machine, it can scan seemingly healthy people and tell them if they've got Example Cancer on average 12 months earlier. Nothing changed in terms of whether people get Example Cancer, it's still incurable, but now we've improved time between Diagnosis and Death by 200% but even scarier the incidence of Example Cancer, the number of people who know they have it, has also increased by 200%. It's an epidemic!
That machine is pretty unrealistic. A more realistic machine also gives false positives for Example Cancer. Now the number of people living with Example Cancer has increased by 500% but good news, most of those people don't die of it, because they had what medics would call "Sub-clinical incidence" meaning, sure, you had the disease but it didn't actually affect your life so who cares?
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.
"the biological activity of any specific type of EMF is inversely proportional to its frequency and proportional to its intensity"
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.
There is no break from the pattern in this thread. People still call for following the science - they just consider this article's science to be the RF engineering equivalent of Wakefield study.
You don't think living longer has anything to do with this?
Those 240 scientist have not published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields"
They are mostly experts in other fields.
We are bathed in radiation everyday.
So guess what, the people who say 5G is unsafe, are also the same people that will say flying is unsafe, or using a microwave is unsafe, or eating a banana is unsafe, or being in your car is unsafe, or using your phone is unsafe. Because all these things emit radiation.
Do people care about that though? No. The effects of radiation are grossly exaggerated, and frankly any negligible effects we feel are just the price we pay for living in high tech times. I doubt anyone wants to go back to a tech free lifestyle just so they can live maybe a few more years only to die of something else anyway.
So yes, it’s quackery to say 5G is unsafe and the only reason an article like this would rise to the top is so people could come out and trash it. You want to see scientific comments then go to more interesting articles.
Just so you know.
Your point still stands though, although i would say we're bathed in more intense radiation than 5G and have been bathing in it for millenias - sunlight is radiation as well!
Better live underground, i guess.
Oh, oh, but what about skin cancer you say? That's caused by sunlight, right, so radiowaves could harm you, right? Yeah, but skin cancer is caused by ultraviolet, high energy, high frequency EM radiation (3-30PHz). Petahertz, Coral! That's several orders of magnitude less than most extreme 5G!
Don't even get me started on the power levels of sun vs a base station!
So yeah, the claims of health impact are bullshit.
Every time I was enticed to look up more about hormesis, I see the same issue: an intrinsically linear effect of a factor is studied, with a precise linear generator of the factor, but outside of the generator there is a background component to the factor which is ignored, which causes a misinterpretation of non-linearity.
A concrete example, suppose you have a light sensor in a "dark" enclosure, then at large enough intensities the current through the photodiode is linear with the incident illumination, but if there is some light leaking (or alternatively thermal radiation, and hence temperature, and hence dark current) then as the light generator is set to lower and lower levels, the light sensor will no longer linearly approach 0, since the signal starts to delve below the noise floor (so it will allways be measurable, but require more and more oversampling to decrease the noise floor). To confuse this effect which has nothing to do with photons getting converted to electron hole pairs, it is a misinterpretation to consider the effect "non-linear" close to the noise floor, and an even bigger misinterpretation to consider it "beneficial". Sure even high levels of ionizing radiation can be beneficial to the offspring of a colony of bacteria, fungi, or plants as a group, but it most certainly is harmful to the the individual bacteria, fungi or plants individually.
In the case of the light sensor, the current through the reverse biased photodiode will still be ideally linear with the total incident illumination, just no longer linear with the illumination of the non-dominant light source.
I think it should be pretty obvious that we can't avoid radiation, and we were evolved to handle a certain amount of it.
Oh and also. To make a scientific claim, you have to make a hypothesis. Not just a claim "5G causes cancer", but "5G causes cancer by this and this method". Without method of action best you can do is a corelational study, which is jus one step higher a case study, which is basically an anecdote.
Plentiful nutrition which has led to 90% of the population of the USA being overweight, obese, or overfat is another potential culprit. Women suffering from anorexia developed fewer tumors. Similar experiments on lab animals in a controlled setting have the same result. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11246846 I believe there are other changing risk factors in behavior as well, for instance women who have never had a child are more likely to develop breast cancer and fertility rates have dropped dramatically over the last 100 years.
Cell phones have only been widely deployed in the last two decades, and I don’t think those trends in cancer rates you’re referencing correlate very well to cellular deployment.
I’d still be curious to see more research happening in the field of millimeter waves, personally I don’t see this technology as very useful right now either compared to traditional cellular due to its lack of penetration.
Yeah I’m gonna need some data to believe that one. 90% obese / overweight? I’m calling bullshit.
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...
Please note the table you showed the 73% is combination of "overweight" and "obese" while the row that shows obese is the same number as my citation.
EDIT: I misread the original message and thought it was referring to just obesity, not obesity/overweight.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm
Edit: I should have said adults in the parent post though, this statistic doesn’t apply to kids.
The large increase in sugar and starch in our diet does contribute to fast growing cancer cells and there are studies that link being overweight/obesity with cancer.
We weren't this fat decades ago. Some may blame more office work, but the biggest factor is the amount of sugar/carbs in our diets. It's grown tremendously and yet no one seems to take it seriously, discrediting things like Adkins/Keto as "fad diets" when they were closer/more consistent with American and Western European diets for several decades.
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, but other than that I've never had kidney issues and my blood work has always come back fine.
With Adkins you do start reintroducing some carbs eventually, but you still keep it under a limit, and go back down if you start getting unhealthy.
https://www.epilepsy.com/learn/treating-seizures-and-epileps....
I checked the "conclusions" of the first two: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29996112 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29709736
Conclusion of 1) Despite the improved exposure assessment approach used in this study, no clear associations were identified. However, the results obtained for recent exposure to RF electric and magnetic fields are suggestive of a potential role in brain tumor promotion/progression and should be further investigated.
Conclusion of 2) Ever use of wireless phones was not significantly associated with risk of adult glioma, but there could be increased risk in long-term users.
They both read as, "we found no significant effect".
That said, given the scientific consensus from rigorous meta-analyses, I expect that these “positive” studies are mostly of low quality and/or limited sample size. And scepticism is generally warranted when advocates start listing large numbers of studies instead of referring to a few meta-studies. As it happens, the best available meta-studies come to the opposite conclusion (namely, that there’s probably no harm from mobile EMF), so this long list is essentially bogus.
To partly redeem myself, I followed the links to the first two articles prefixed by "P". They were https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29725476 and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29268055
The first didn't have a conclusion and the results were just the measured RF power in an apartment.
The conclusion of the second is, "A total of 900-MHz EMF applied in middle and late adolescence may cause changes in the morphology and biochemistry of the rat ovarium.", which makes no sense. "A total of 900-MHz EMF" is gibberish. The complete text is not freely available.
>> Study Effect Codes:
>> P This study reported effects from the exposure or radiation category (effects can be either positive or negative and may be primary or secondary outcomes)
>> N This study reported no effects from the exposure or radiation category
>> - This study offered important insights or findings but is neither evidence of an effect or a null finding
I'll be honest, this ordering seems dubious to me. P (for positive?) can show either positive or negative effects. N (for negative) shows no effects. - (for neither?) shows neither evidence of an effect or a null finding. I would think that P needs to be subdivided better to show which papers show a positive or negative effect.
Can someone do a count on the number of each category?
Couldn't it simply be that we are curing/reducing the incidence of most other diseases? Cancer is something that typically doesn't occur until the later years of life. By reducing the number of people who die of other causes, you are increasing the potential population of people who end up getting cancer.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29725476 The article only measures exposition, no conclusion on effects other than a literature review.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29268055 Can't get the full article, but I only see mentions of a 900MHz source (inside 3G frequency band) and no mention of power. Also it's a biochemical study on rats. Slim evidence.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25747364 One author, talks about wildlife orientation.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26017559 This study talks about the effect of intensive radiation (3x the FCC limit for mobile phones, during 8 months) and it looks like it's actually beneficial for Alzheimer's disease. Funnily enough, it links in the abstract a lot of studies showing either inconsistent or no association between RF and cancer.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4427287/ An study from the department of ¿Psychology and Psychiatry? that finds changes in EEG activity due to mobile phone use, only when the phone is placed near the ear. Little mention of whether the RF radiation can interfere in the EEG measurement.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25738972 Mentions the CERENAT study, which shows increased risk with really heavy mobile phone usage (as in calls). The only one with actual positive effects and looking like a serious study.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25885019 Decreased nasal mucose in rats. No mention of whether thermal effects were at use here.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25918601 Finds decreased sperm quality, but also discusses other studies finding no effect, and also says "A point of limitation in this study is the inability to assess [...] whether sperm affections are time related or not".
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25531835 This one is about nicotine sulfate + RF exposition in frog embryos, and doesn't find effects of RF alone.
That's just off the first page and a half. Probably someone should do a more thorough review, but it does not give me any assurance that most of the studies with reported positive effects are done by people not in the related fields, have no relation to the problem or do not answer the actual important questions.
> And nobody knows why. However everybody who points to a possible answer is shot down without much investigation. Sad, really.
Mobile phones are not the only thing that has changed radically in the last years.
The list of peer reviewed articles is from Powerwatch - Who we know all about - https://www.badscience.net/2007/05/so-simple-a-child-could-s...
The petition of 240 'scientists' on (emfscientist.org) ask for
6. medical professionals be educated about the biological effects of electromagnetic energy and be provided training on treatment of patients with electromagnetic sensitivity;
This is coo coo science that NO reputable person would put their name behind. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is trivial to check, for low cost. Yet no one in the world has proven it exists.
Yes, the 240 scientist's are "bullshit".
I can't believe Scientific American allowed this blog article, or perhaps I can but are more saddened by it.
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.
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...
I feel like the most damning lack of evidence is the lack of correlation between cell phone adoption and the purported ill effects. In the last 20 years pretty much the whole world started holding RF transmitters up to their head, from basically zero beforehand. If there was an effect, it would be epidemic.
Note: I'm a biophysicist who has studied cancer and RF at the graduate level, and postdoctorate level, I can read the literature, and also make reasoned efforts at evaluating whether the literature provides any useful information that would affect the roll out of 5G from health perspectives. I am unable to find any reliable evidence that would indicate that this rollout will actually have "crisis" levels of health impact.
Now. On to the next step: I completely support high quality research done by high quality scientists on non-ionizing radiation. I would, like many other scientists, to see convincing evidence about the nature of damage that could be done by 5G. So far, nearly everything has been indirect in a way that does not inspire enough confidence to propose policy changes.
You really do have to spend significant time investigating the literature to actually.
> The scientists who signed this appeal arguably constitute the majority of experts on the effects of nonionizing radiation. They have published more than 2,000 papers and letters on EMF in professional journals.
That’s a pretty strong group.
Learned all about him from Malcom Gladwell's podcast this weekend. A really fascinating story of someone that wouldn't give in to peer-pressure, because he was convinced:
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/40-the-obscure-virus-...
>"Academia: Where Crazy People Can't Get Fired - Dr. Moskowitz disgraces the University of California-Berkeley in precisely the same way Dr. Oz and Mark Bittman disgrace Columbia University: They are charlatans who wrap themselves in the prestige of academia to peddle foolishness to anxious parents."
https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/02/28/uc-berkeley-psychologis...
To be honest, I'm somewhat surprised (in a good way!!) that Moskowitz got published on Scientific American at all.
Anyway, I have my fair share of worries on large density mmwave equipment environments, mostly focused on other things, as in, not on its effects on us, but on microbial life, bacterial life, not the focus of this article, so I won't derail, but at least for me, Moskowitz isn't this zero sum game as he may be to some field agents.
One thing's for sure: there _is_ paucity of research on this topic - judging by a brief search on scholar.google.com for "4G technology health effects humans".
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.
I mean, what else is there left to kill us?
I think the push to make these scientist seam like wackos, is all the money loss for the new tech(and even existing tech)
Oh, and more important than the studies is who is doing them and who is funding them.
Over a long enough time span, your probability of getting some form of cancer goes to 100%. Probably more like 200% or 300%, since there are so many types that they can cut out or beat back relatively successfully these days, at least until you get too old and decrepit.
That may sound like hyperbole but somehow I doubt it's far from the mark. Tons of modern advances were from novices or unaccredited. Flight, Relativity, Baysian and Boolean logic; Two hicks, a patent clerk, a preacher, and a self-taught math nerd.
MIMO is multiple inputs, multiple outputs, not massive. If the author is bending terminology to enhance his case, that makes the case look weaker...
Diagnosis has simultaneously increased, especially in cancers where the rationale for treatment is low (e.g. prostate cancer in most men).
(work in cancer research)
> Cancer have risen to 1 in 5 in women and 1 in 3 in men, and nobody knows why
'Nobody knows why', seriously? Did we not establish that the likelihood of cancer increase with lifespan? When you only gets to live to 50 of course you don't die of cancer and heart disease nearly as easily. Your risk of cancer increase each year of age lived after a certain age, and any increase in life expectancy will result in more people eventually dying in cancer.
Once religion is out as a guide to navigate the world, there's really not much left except science to cling to.
Despite plenty of evidence that everyone and everything can be bought, despite plenty of respected researchers raising their voices against, despite all the proof you could want of how these situations tend to play out long term.
Once you give up blind belief in science, there's nothing left to hold on to; and that's obviously a scary thought for many.
After looking at the list of publications purported to be evidence, I have to agree with the other comments here casting doubt. Most, if not all, of these publications are in no-name journals with few citations. I found one paper where the author listed a gmail email address (are they unaffiliated with any institution?)
Just out of curiosity, what field was that in? I could certainly see some scientific disciplines having unaffiliated world-class scientists, but others it would be virtually impossible to do high quality research outside of a lab
There were already a few codes in the area and plenty of papers, and he was mathematically inclined, so it didn't take long for him to become an expert. Once he was an expert, he pointed out major problems in existing codes (both functional and performance).
This is an area where you're working with fairly straightforward data and math (linear strings from a chosen alphabet, probabilistic model is well-established). You don't need to understand the underlying biology in detail to contribute.
Where did you read "an apparrent increase rise in cancer rates" ? in this article or in one of the articles it references? which one?
I am not a biochemist, but I would assume academics are referring to incidence rates, not causes of deaths... If you did actually witness such a confusion in the papers, it's important to point it out, but if you didn't it would be equivalent to a physicist suspecting a colleague of confusing mu (the reduced mass of a binary system) with mu (a muon)... rather incredulous if you ask me...
Every academic discipline expects its disciples to be at least proficient in disambiguating words from context, so when one refers to a "cancer rate" in the context of causation, that it would refer to "incidence rates" i.e. the transition probability per surviving individual per unit time. This is independent of deaths by other causes.
> 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.
Which suggests that there is an apparent increase in cancer rates. So yes, I was referring to an incident rate. Regardless, the semantics here don't change the meaning of my statement. We have solved (for lack of a better word) many of the lower hanging fruits of human disorders. As such, we can't effectively control for incidence rates over time
There is a clear and well known pair of reasons for this. First people are living longer and the longer you live the more prone to cancer you are. People who died of small pox did not die of cancer.
Second, more controversially, atmospheric bomb testing in the 50's and 60's.
I'm not sure exactly what time interval you're making that claim over, but isn't a large part of it people not dying from plague and flu and having good medical care to live into old age in the first place?
If this was some technology where not having it would be a major impediment to society, then maybe it would be a different story. But 5G just doesn't seem that important to me.
Annual invasive cancer incidence rates have been declining in the U.S. for over two decades.
https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html
Also, the lifetime risk of incidence is about 40% for both men and women:
https://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2016/browse_csr.php?section...
https://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2016/browse_csr.php?section...
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.
It has been widely studied and no proof of such an ability exists. Would love to see some proof of this from you
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.
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!
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.
It began with a Sony Ericsson, but happened across a couple of different phone brands over the years. Still happens extremely occasionally now (maybe twice a year) with my iPhone.
I'd be interested to know if the signal strength is suddenly spiked when a call is connected.