And yes, I am sure that 5G is designed by some brilliant people. Anyone getting that close to the Shannon limit is smarter than me. My hat is off to them.
But the reality is that this stuff just hasn't been trialed in any real way. Sure, the US government found 600 adults to get zapped for a few hours and only injured eight of them. But how about living with it for ten years? What about different frequencies? 100 nm is a world away from 300nm which is a world away from 500nm. Sure, they trialed 95 GHz and it was fine. What about 48 GHz? 25 GHz? All the other frequencies being used? What about with 256 antennae transmitting at higher power than anything before, right next to you, day in and day out for a decade?
One big claim is that all this 5G radiation is blocked by the skin, so we'll all be fine! Oh wait, what about babies? Turns out babies' skin is thin enough that mm waves can penetrate the dermis...
Furthermore, ionizing radiation and heating are not the only two ways EM can harm you. Just look at all the news about blue light for one example! EM radiation in the mm-wave range is still far understudied compared to the cm wave range.
Look, I think that 5G is probably going to be fine, health wise. But for something as big as this, it absolutely deserves at least one good longitudinal study. Of which there have been zero.
I still respectfully disagree, but that's more because I trust the experts who designed and authorized 5G deployment, including regulations on transmit power than because of extensive knowledge on my part. The risk is never zero, but I think it is low enough for immediate deployment.
On top of that the military uses absolutely enormous energies in their RADARs and there's still little if any evidence of risk even including powers where you might as well have you head in a microwave oven
... What? I have no idea what "full" would be, but by any definition they are certainly not. Just a bit of air is enough to attenuate mm waves of even high power. (That's why we need so many towers!) There is not a lot of ionizing radiation out there, that's why we're not all dead (and why x-ray film even works.)
Maybe you're thinking of outer space? But it's not even true there - for an obvious example, visible light, which there is very little of by human standards pretty much everywhere in the universe.
"The military used it for some time and nobody died so let's put it pointing everywhere in our homes and offices" strikes me as a very weak argument for something's safety. As just a simple counterexample for why you cannot use that to demonstrate safety, consider that while mmwaves do not penetrate the adult human dermis, babies' skin is thinner and is easily penetrated by mmwaves.
> "The military used it for some time and nobody died so let's put it pointing everywhere in our homes and offices"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales
This is a 2.5MW Phased Array. If there was any provable health risks to these (there are ~10 of them in the west) we would know - there have been suspicions, but they have been investigated and no evidence has been found.
Why do we care about microwaves in particular when there are huge installations like these operating at much longer wavelengths which as you say penetrate further?
If there was immediate danger from electromagnetic radiation it would have been observed years ago - powerful microwave emitters have been in use in very proximity to humans since the second world war (Randall and Boot developed their magnetron in 1940)
I have quite a few of the papers that 5G nuts cite, and they are not convincing in this slightest - there is not a single paper that is both dealing with radiation within FCC limits, on animal test subjects, and have any macroscopic threat to health. This also doesn't include the issue that these papers are usually reports of fairly limited research so there is no discussion of the relative risk of their findings if there are any at all (Historical Evidence as mentioned previously sets an upper bound on that risk too).
Well, first of all, "the electromagentic spectrum" is "in use" everywhere in the universe, and includes things like radios and the sun. What I think you meant to imply is that humans have been living with mm-waves before for extended periods of time. Which is absolutely false. The problem is that mm-waves are attenuated by air, or clothing, or buildings, or the atmosphere, or what have you. There are some mm-wave sources that humans have messed around with, but always for short durations (usually on the order of hours/days) and nearly always with a strongly attenuated signal (air, cars, buildings in the way.)
The reality is that no group of humans have ever lived their normal lives with a mm-wave source, period. The closest you can get is police speed guns, the vast majority of which are in the 10-25 mW range at 10-35 GHz. They are pointed away from the user; either you're the cop aiming them at someone, or you're the person in the car being tracked (if you're in the car, 35 GHz won't penetrate.) Even if you're a cop that decided to just point the radar gun at your face 40hr/week for ten years, that's far, far less exposure than someone living in a city equipped with 5G.
So nobody's lived their lives with a mm-wave source, OK. In order for mm-waves to ever actually get -to- your body, you would have to propose a new massively expensive system deploying massive amounts of unprecedented power mm-wave radios closer to humans than ever before: in other words, 5G.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales (and the rest of your comment)
Come on, that's completely different from what we're talking about here - that's a centimeter wave system. Humans have lived with the presence of centimeter waves for a while, and we are fairly sure they're safe. Cell phones, microwave ovens, RC cars, everything uses centimeter waves.
>> I have quite a few of the papers that 5G nuts cite, and they are not convincing in this slightest
Well, I'd like to point out I'm not a 5G nut. I typically don't bother clicking on those weird rabbit holes of conspiracy blogs tied together with red string based on some inconclusive data. I'm also not saying 5G is dangerous. I simply believe it's unknown. We simply do not know, as a species, what living our lives bombarded with unprecedented amounts of mm-waves will do, as nobody has done it before. Likely it will be harmless; however, there is a chance it will not be. As with many things, it may be the cumulative dose over many years that is harmful.
I wasn't accusing you. They're usually well-meaning rather than overly conspiratorial - although there are a few near me who, let's just say don't mention the Rothschild family near them.
In line with your final paragraph I suppose I agree that we don't know for sure, but it's unlikely.
As to high frequency radio waves specifically, Fighter aircraft have had millimetre band radars which people have worked with for half a century at least now (along with microwave links in the cities and satellite links etc.).
I feel like it's important to point out that long term exposure can't be too long term in the sense that the phenomenon has to be weak enough to have not yet been observed yet strong enough to outpace the churning of biological material in effects.
As a final remark, here is some actual data about 5G exposure in relation to local limits (UK in this case) i.e. fractions of a percent of the ICNIRP guidelines at most. Also, no one I'm aware of has proposed a mechanism as to why the wavelength matters at this scale?
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/190005/...
And yet a domestic microwave at 800W is enough to both burn the skin in minutes and cause nerve cell damage in few seconds.
I don't have a study on hand but I expect the effect to be less than lower frequency waves.
First thing to get out of the way, these are not ionizing radiation. Basically, the only thing electromagnetic waves up to visible light can do is heat. UV is borderline.
The question is what they heat. The general idea is that the lower the wavelength, the deeper the penetration. 2/3/4G frequencies will heat your insides, 50 GHz will only heat your skin. Of course the power is so that under normal conditions, the heating is negligible.
As for the effect of millimeter waves, while testing this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System they subjected people to massive (100kW!) doses of 95 GHz radiation. High enough to actually burn you, and yet, the adverse effects were minimal.
If you are talking about technical problems, like interference, and how to deal with radio waves that are starting to act a bit like light. I guess that 5G is designed by people who know what they are doing. Simply that we are able to make it work is almost like a miracle to me.