Gillian Jamieson’s recent Daily Sceptic article asks ‘How Safe Really is 5G?’ She rightly points out we cannot trust Government assurances that “there should be no consequences for public health”, one of the sad results of the way the Government has behaved during the Covid era. If we wish to form a view about the safety of 5G, we need to look for ourselves at some of the science on the subject.
The electromagnetic spectrum
Radio Frequency Radiation (RFR), as many of us learned at school, is made up of electromagnetic waves which come from all sorts of sources. Old fashioned radio used quite long waves. FM and DAB broadcasting use shorter waves. Television, mobile phones and many other devices use very short waves, some of them short enough to be called microwaves. And then there are short and very short waves, from visible light through to X-rays and Gamma rays. The diagram below indicates the range of this broad family of waves, all of the same type.
How dangerous are the different electromagnetic waves?
Snow storms can come in tiny flecks that you can hardly feel. But heavier precipitation can be larger, up to dangerously large lumps of hail. Electromagnetic waves are similar. Like snow, they come in lumps; they are called photons. Photons come in varying ‘sizes’ (energies). Very long waves on the left of the diagram, longer than the waves that make visible light, come in tiny, gentle lumps. Each individual photon has insufficient energy to break up (ionise) an atom (by liberating its orbiting electrons). So long-wave electromagnetic waves are said to be non-ionising. On the other hand, short waves, from the visible spectrum and above (on the right of the diagram) are like the hailstones. They come in photons large enough to ionise atoms.
Short wavelength ionising waves have dangerous properties because of the large photons. For instance, exposure to sunlight can lead to skin cancer and we know that X-rays and gamma-rays can destroy or damage living tissue.
Long wavelength, non-ionising electromagnetic waves, with their small, gentle photons, behave differently. The individual photons are too small to influence body chemicals directly. If we get enough of them, they can heat it up. When we sit in the sun, or by a radiant fire (coal, gas or electric), we enjoy the feeling of warmth. It’s obviously good for us because we like it. But too much will burn our skin.
Infrared can only penetrate a few millimetres into the body. It will give your steak a brown outside and leave the inside pink. But microwaves can penetrate further, heating to a greater depth and cooking more uniformly. The difference between microwaves and infrared is that microwaves are longer and more penetrating (though lower energy at a given intensity).
Radio waves are further left on the diagram and have longer wavelengths. They can be used for diathermy, to heat deep inside the body and promote healing, as can microwaves. Or, if the intensity is very high, they can cook tissue inside the body and be used, like high energy X-rays, to destroy cancerous tumours.
How does this relate to 5G?
The waves that are used for all mobile phone networks, 5G as much as any other, are all electromagnetic waves and part of this family of waves. Their range of wavelengths lies between the two dotted lines marked on the above diagram. These waves are short radio waves or, if you prefer, long microwaves. There is nothing new about the waves or their effects on living tissue. We’ve been using waves like this since the 1940s.
The waves used for 5G are non-ionising. They are electromagnetic snowflakes, not hailstones. All we know that they can do to human tissue is to heat it up. As for the most powerful 5G transmitter, at 150 watts it is less than a fifth of the power of a domestic microwave cooker and, since 5G aerials are at the top of poles, they are well away from human flesh. By the time they get to you, their intensity is tiny, well below anything that would cause a heating effect. If you want to identify much stronger sources of RF radiation in the home, turn the volume on a normal FM radio up and tune it somewhere between channels to a region on the dial where you just get a hiss. Then hold the radio next to a modern LED lamp. Most LED lights, not all, have electronic switches inside them which chop the mains 240 V supply up very quickly and feed it into a transformer for the lower voltages needed by the light emitting diodes. This chopping process produces RF radiation, which is transmitted everywhere from this type of LED lamp. You will hear the effect of this radiation on the FM radio.
Brains and RFR
Though there has been no evidence of RF radiation affecting body chemicals directly, there is a mechanism by which RF radiation can affect body chemicals indirectly. The physical part of the brain is not very different from a man-made computer, since it is an arrangement of individual components connected electrically. Radio frequency waves affect currents in circuits; that’s how we detect them. RF radiation can disturb the brain and, via the brain’s control on the body, affect body chemistry. The growing brains of children might particularly be affected.
What does it mean to be ‘safe’?
What should we make of the argument that, since 5G uses some waves we haven’t used much before, we should stop the rollout of 5G on the precautionary principle, even though those adverse effects have not, so far, been reliably demonstrated? How safe really is 5G?
It is difficult to find anything that cannot be criticised as being unsafe. We use cars without many worries but they kill people. Are they safe? What about sunlight? As we know, our bodies need it to produce essential vitamin D but it also causes skin cancer. Is it safe? The recent experiments with electric scooters have floundered in some cities because they are considered to be unsafe. Pretty much everything that we use or are exposed to has aspects that we could consider to be unsafe. We can only get a useful idea of safety by comparing the potential risk of RF radiation with other risks with which we are familiar. Readers of this blog are familiar with the risks of Covid and vaccines. It is useful to use these as a rough safety scale – or what I think is easier to think of as an ‘unsafeness’ scale.
For a man between 65 and 70, the chance of dying in the coming year is about 1%. By simple subtraction, his chance of surviving is 99%. So life isn’t safe; it’s 99% safe and 1% fatal for a 65-70 year old. That’s an unsafeness of 1%, or 1 in 100. Most men in that age group consider that life is safe enough, at least to keep most of their savings in the bank for for future years and not to assume that this year is the last.
During the Covid era, mortality for all age groups was about 1.08 times the normal mortality. So the chance of dying for a 65-70 year old went up from 1% to 1.08% and the chance of living dropped from 99% to 98.92%. Covid raised the unsafety of these recent retirees from 1% to 1.08%, which is less than 1 in 1,000. In the early Covid years, 65-70 year olds who had been happily living with life’s unsafeness of 1% had a tiny bit of extra unsafeness to cope with. Of course the danger of Covid is real and unfortunate for those badly affected by it but it is very much less than other dangers we happily live with. For the life of me I couldn’t understand any of the fuss of lockdowns, handwashing and masks.
What about vaccines? How unsafe are they? The NHS website blithely says that COVID-19 vaccination is safe. This bland reassurance from the Government is worse than useless. Vaccines have side-effects, some of which are fatal. A Nature report on the risk of death following Covid vaccination found that, at the worst stages in the process, vaccinated females faced an increase in risk of roughly 1 in 10,000, a figure strongly tinged with the risks associated with the now-withdrawn AstraZeneca vaccine. Clearly vaccines are not ‘safe’ but have a figure for their real unsafeness. The unsafeness of a vaccine is the crucial determinant of whether to vaccinate or not: it makes no sense to vaccinate children against a Covid unsafeness of 1 in 1,000,000 with a vaccine having an unsafeness of 1 in 100,000, part of the reason why the NHS now seems to be promoting vaccination only to the over-75s.
This table gives us a feel of a range of unsafenesses. We notice those things with large unsafeness. We are aware of child accidental deaths but less aware of the ten times less rare pedestrian road deaths.
So is 5G safe?
Of course not. Nothing is. Like everything else, the 5G deployment will have a figure for its own unsafeness. But the evidence for 5G harms is low. Not only do we have no clinching studies demonstrating harms, artificially-produced electromagnetic waves have been in use for a hundred years. 5G is new and obvious but we’ve had television transmitters a thousand times more powerful than 5G for decades. We know from the above table that things with significant unsafenesses are noticeable and we have noticed no noticeable unsafeness so far from any existing RF radiation. To regard 5G as a risk worth worrying about would need a stronger case than Jamieson presents.
If we are still worried?
It is in fact our own phones, not phone towers, that give us the most RF radiation. Imagine having a conversation with a friend 100 metres away. You shout to him, producing a noise for yourself and anyone nearby. Then he shouts back and you hear the tiny little bit of sound left after it has travelled the distance from him to you, only just loud enough to hear him where you are. What is most likely to deafen you – your friend’s shouting or your own?
Well, if you stand by your friend, he won’t have to shout, so your friend won’t deafen you. And if you are a hundred metres away, he may be shouting but he won’t deafen you because you are such a long way away.
It is exactly the same with mobile phones. Our biggest source of RF radiation comes from our own phone as it sends out a radio frequency signal ‘loud enough’ to be received accurately by the phone mast. The phone mast and its equipment does indeed ‘shout back’ electronically, but it continuously modifies the shout and only shouts back with just enough power to be received by your phone. Even if you live close to a 5G phone mast, it’s still some metres away, whereas your phone is a few centimetres away from you. If you want to minimise, or want your children to minimise RF radiation exposure, the further you get from your phone, the better. How do you achieve that?
For a long time the recommendation has been that those who are concerned about RF radiation from mobile phones should use a standard wired headset. That way the distance between the phone and the head of the user is increased from a few centimetres to half a metre or so, making the RF radiation to the brain a thousand times smaller, minimising brain exposure. Ear buds, however, are a source of RFR themselves, since they are wirelessly connected to phones with bluetooth.
In practice, our children have already dealt with concerns about their exposure to phone RF radiation. No longer do the young talk into phones. Try spotting a young person with a phone to an ear. Texting is their way, with the phone well aware from the head. With that increased physical distance, we need not concern ourselves about child exposure to phone RF radiation.
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If you wish to nerd-out on the topic further, Spartacus’ substack is for you. The author also goes into a lot of depth in the comments section so he seems to be well read on the subject. Apparently Switzerland have stopped their 5G roll-out.
”People have been raising concerns over 5G wireless networks for a while, now, citing the use of higher frequencies than old GSM standards as a potential source of danger. Some of these concerns seem unfounded, at first glance. Technically, high-frequency EMF over 10 GHz has a very shallow penetration depth in the body. It barely gets through the skin. There is simply too much water in the way. This is one of the things that flummoxes the Internet of Bodies guys trying to get THz radiation to penetrate the skin; its penetration depth is even shallower than the 5G high band, quite literally fractions of a millimeter.
Does this mean that there is no risk from EMF, especially for COVID-19 sufferers? Well, the true picture here is a bit more complex than that. As it turns out, COVID-19 and EMF injury have an overlapping etiology of disease. They share an initiating event, in the form of excess calcium being drawn into cells through ion channels.
Most of these concerns, however, are not specific to 5G. That is to say, if radiation from 5G base stations is a threat to human health, then so is practically every other source of RF. Wi-Fi base stations, Bluetooth headsets, VHF marine radios, anything. It’s an area of study that needs continued investigation, and there are still a lot of unknowns in terms of the actual biological effects of non-ionizing radiation.”
https://iceni.substack.com/p/wireless-radiation-and-covid-19
However did CoVid -19 get into the party? Might as well go the whole hog and implicate climate change and Trump.
Is that because it is not being studied extensively, are there industry-funded studies that find no harms or are there independent studies that could not find any problems?
If the concern relates to non-thermal effects of long-term exposure then perhaps to some extent it’s still early days.
Probably it’s because radiation and its effects have been studied extensively for over a hundred years, and whilst understanding is not complete, we are in the logarithmic phase… diminishing returns, the amount out for the amount in is marginal.
And. Despite the very clear account given in the article, people still cannot grasp that we are bombarded continually with radiation – electromagnetic and particulate – from Manmade and natural and have been all our lives.
It is impossible to carry out meaningful ‘clinical trials’ which represent real-life situations for specific wavelengths, nit only on ethical grounds but since it is impossible to remove the plethora of background radiation from all other sources to exclude any effects it might have.
The likelihood of being in close proximity to a transmitter has increased significantly in the last couple of decades. That may not be long enough to know what the effect might be. Yes some people do not grasp they are bombarded with radiation in the same way some do not read the safety section of their wireless devices that advises how far they need to keep it from their body. Manufacturers won’t put that in their quick start guides, instead burying it elsewhere.
This video from a few years ago by Sabine Hossenfelder remains a useful resource ‘All you need to know to understand 5G’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBsP-bmDLOo
Certainly there is a level of agreement on some of the points made in the article above. However I think Sabine is rightly much more cautious than Mark in her conclusions
“It is reasonable to think it’s [5G] not a health risk, given that this radiation is of low energy and scatters in the upper layers of the skin, but there is very little data on what the effects of long term exposure may be”
It is this lack of data which is a serious cause of concern for me.
If the radiation is not getting past the upper layers of the skin, and since it is not a focussed beam on one area of the skin, long term exposure is irrelevant.
If it’s not getting through it can’t have any effect – no matter how much time elapses of it not getting through.
What bothers me is that 5G is one of those things that is too big to fail.
Even if it came to light that 5G was deadly, do you actually think that it would stop them? No it wouldn’t. The evidence would be suppressed and 5G would roll on.
Because the decision has already been made that we’re having it whether we want it or not.
Total surveillance and 15 minute cities and internet of things depends on it.
“Even if it came to light that 5G was deadly, do you actually think that it would stop them? No it wouldn’t. The evidence would be suppressed and 5G would roll on.”
MMMMM…what does that remind you of ?
Part of the problem is the assumption that people will believe that safety is almost binary, i.e. zero or one, and a marketing tactic based on that as well. As you mentioned the need for light for vitamin D manufacture, it’s worth pointing out that it falls within the UV spectrum on your graph – UV-B, actually. We can’t feel that frequency, though, it just comes with all the rest, but it doesn’t get through a glass window. We can feel the heat, but there won’t be any UV-B for us then.
As to what is a safe level of exposure to UV across the spectrum, I don’t have a number to hand, but what there is in the market is the concept that it’s bad for you, and you need loads of suncream etc. Begs the question of whether those who sell it are actually undermining our ability to make vitamin D naturally – oh, and then you need to buy Vitamin D supplements as well. Quids in both ways, a cynic might say.
The paragraph on vaccine risk (or “safe and effective”, which I seem to remember seeing on posters etc) is wise. However, one of the odd things is that the medical trade seems to be in a foreign country compared with other industries that really deal with safety to do with manufactured systems. There is a well established term called Safety Integrity Level (SIL) – look it up. It uses a range of values from 1 to 4 (or maybe even 0 to 4) based on an x-y graph of risk and severity. Part of the problem is that any system has it’s own fault modes, and which way it fails, either to cause another fault, or just silently so that it’s useless.
Incidentally, one of the modern hazards to do with mobile phones is the fact that quite a lot of people seem to be strolling along, perhaps oblivious to the real world around them while they’re “on the phone”.
5G will significantly increase our wireless RF radiation (radio frequency microwave) exposure 24/7/365. Senior telecom executives admit they have not done any safety testing on 5G, (nor do they plan to do any), but related research does show is cause for alarm. Thousands of independent studies indicate adverse health impacts from wireless radiation, ranging from cancer and sterility to DNA damage
5G is categorically different than its predecessors (4G/LTE, 3G, 2G, etc.). It is not a simple upgrade. It is a major increase – and change – in the type of wireless radiation to which we will all be exposed, without consent,
whether we use this service or not.
5G builds on existing infrastructure and, in addition, uses extremely high (millimeter-wave) frequencies of 24 gigahertz (GHz) or more. These 5G signals don’t travel far, so antennas will be installed approximately every 2-10 homes in residential areas. 5G
will significantly increase our wireless RF radiation (radio frequency microwave) exposure on a 24/7 and 365 days a year basis.
No Safety Studies
In a February 2019 U.S. Senate hearing, senior telecom executives admitted they have not done any safety testing on 5G, nor do they plan to do any. See link at the bottom.
What related research does show is cause for alarm. Thousands of independent studies indicate adverse health impacts from wireless
radiation. These range from cancer and sterility to DNA damage. The (US) government’s human exposure guidelines haven’t been updated in
more than 20 years, while radiation from cell phones, cordless phones, WiFi and wireless baby monitors has increased exponentially in that
time.
Planet Earth Blanketed in Radiation
The 5G agenda is vast. It includes 200 billion transmitting objects, according to estimates, that will be part of the Internet of Things (IoT), with one trillion transmitting objects a few years later. 5G is meant to usher in more robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, including 5G antennas installed inside cars – behind our heads and irradiating our brains – so we can talk to people in other vehicles and instruct our driverless cars on where to take us. 5G base stations and 5G devices will have multiple antennas in phased arrays that work together to emit focused, steerable, laser-like beams that track each other. Each 5G phone will function like a mini cell tower, containing dozens of tiny antennas working together to track and aim a narrowly focused beam to search and connect with the nearest cell antenna. The FCC has adopted rules that permit those beams to be as much as 20 watts, ten times more powerful than levels allowed on current phones.
More than 10,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted by independent researchers from around the world demonstrate the harmful biological effects of wireless radiation. Because of their developmental stages, children are much more susceptible to Electromagnetic Fields. Some of the more well-established adverse effects of wireless radiation include:
Detrimental effects on fetal and newborn development
Detrimental effects on young children
Brain tumors and other cancers
DNA damage and altered gene expression
Neurological effects and cognitive impairment
Impaired sperm function and quality
Learning and memory deficits
Cardiovascular disease
The mechanisms of biological harm from wireless radiation were not well understood until Martin Pall, PhD, demonstrated how voltage-gated calcium channels are disrupted, resulting in excessive intracellular calcium ions affecting our cells. Numerous independent studies on millimeter-wave radiation already show a range of biological effects, indicating that an increase in frequencies may worsen harmful effects.
The multi-trillion dollar telecom industry wields massive lobbying power and formidable public influence through pervasive, propagandistic advertising and media presence promoting 5G.
In the Information Age, data drives the economy. 5G is being touted as the next industrial revolution, when, in fact, it amounts to surveillance capitalism, in which intimate details of our lives are tracked, recorded and sold to the highest bidder, irradiating us all the while.
Let’s Irradiate the Sky, Too
In addition to millions of new base stations on Earth, 5G includes an eventual 20,000+ satellites in low orbit, affecting the ionosphere.
Players include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, OneWeb and Amazon.
The direct radiation from these satellites, combined with their contamination of our ionosphere, along with pollution of the global electrical circuit would likely be catastrophic to all life on Earth.
5G threatens to provoke serious, irreversible effects on humans and permanent damage to all of Earth’s ecosystems.
https://ehtrust.org/health-effects-of-5g-wireless-technology-confirmed-at-us-senate-hearing-after-senator-blumenthal-questions-industry/
More than 10,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies demonstrate harm to human health from RF radiation. See links below.
https://www.5gspaceappeal.org/the-appeal
No, the ICNIRP guidelines have been updated, in 2020 in fact. 5G (as in generation) uses faster modulation schemes, the energy involved is similar to 4G just with wider RF channels and slightly reduced cell sizes.
The terminal devices (phones mainly) are lower powered to give extended battery life, they are in constant communication but actually that came with the 3G phones that have been around for 20 years now.
If you are worried about radiation, then sunlight is far riskier and of proven danger in some cases. Radio systems are way down the risk scale.
Sunlight is part of our natural environment and supports life. The introduction and escalation over the last few decades of a radiation source modulated in ways we may not naturally experience over extended periods, or at all, has no precedent. Where would a study now find a control group?
Mark Steele would beg to differ with you. He describes 5G as a Direct Energy Weapon System. He used to work as a weapons expert & has been subject to numerous attempts to stop him from informing the public.
The 5G heats the air temperature & can be slowly ramped up to cause heating in the human body as the hardware is installed in each LED street light. It’s the sheer number of the units & the proximity to humans which is the issue. The only safety data cited & acknowledged as the result of testing is that there is no increase in body heat after exposure for 1 hour. The benign (ha!) caring government body responsible for the roll out of 5G has therefore deemed this to be sufficient evidence that 5G is safe to humans & all wildlife.
If a subject or individual is being censored then they must be over the target & a threat to a narrative.
He has a website if anyone wishes to investigate this further.
https://www.saveusnow.org.uk/
Mark Steele is a left-wing moron.
We have been using 5g in Theatre & TV for decades for comms and radio mics until the frequencies were stolen from us (at great replacement cost) to use for 5g.
Don’t try science on a nation of morons with only humanities qualifications to thir collective credit.
Feelings now trump facts
Having read some of the comments below I am reminded of: Whilst I can explain for you, I can’t understand for you.
Maybe “science” has been bought and paid for?
I refer you to “Not even trying, the corruption of real science” by Bruce Charlton.
Actual Science instead of hysterical hyperbole and anecdote – refreshing.
Decades ago the National Radiological Protection Board replaced ‘Safe Dose’ with ‘Permitted Dose’ for designated radiation workers, there being no way to know what the safe dose was, and the permitted dose is just best guess.
People worried about 5G should stop travelling in aeroplanes – thinner atmosphere at altitude, less protection from incoming radiation from the Sun and Space including neutron bombardement – or undergoing medical imaging with all those deadly X-rays.
The amount of radiation absorbed depends on its wavelength, energy, distance from source, and the type and density of the material it encounters. Radiographs rely on differential absorption: bone being denser and calcium-containing compared to soft tissue, absorb more radiation.
Paradoxically, soft tissue absorbs less high energy X-radiation and is less altered, than it would low energy.
Earphones – all emit some RF if they contain magnets.
In the days of cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs and computer monitors, the worry of the day, was X-rays coming off the screen into people’s eyes. (Gasp!) Enterprising souls made much money amongst the easily duped selling lead impregnated glass covers to fit over the monitor screen, and lead glass eye shields.
The theory. X-rays are produced when fast moving electrons are abruptly brought to rest thus giving up their energy as a photon of radiation – bremsstrahlung or braking radiation. It’s how they were discovered during experimentation with electrons.
It was true, the electrons did emit tiny pulses of X-radiation when they hit the screen, but the glass is very thick, much of the electron energy was given up producing light, so insignificant amounts at low energy escaped towards the viewer.
Perhaps you should add how the amount of energy absorbed is determined for RF exposure to e.g. the human head.
The first point should be 5G is completely unnecessary.
Why were so many hideous 5G towers put up during lockdown?
Saying nothing is safe is not an argument
https://actionagainst5g.org/
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
I’m less convinced about this that you Mark, I think things can work synergistically with other things and cause problems, maybe 5G is in that category?