Scare of 5G et al.

Do 5th Generation (5G) transmitters, etc. have negative health effects?

A college anecdote. In a lab experiment students are asked to find the cockroach's hearing organ. One student proceeds. "Step 1: put a roach on a table, scream at it - it runs away. Step 2: tear off its legs, put it back on a table, scream - the roach stays. Conclusion: cockroaches hear by their legs."

Just to get ionizing out of the way

Alpha, beta, gamma, X-ray and UV radiation types are dangerous due to their ionizing effect - the ability of a high energy particle (photon as in UV/gamma case) to knock off an electron from its atomic orbit, which alters chemical properties of the matter and impacts cell’s functions.

For example, a decaying product of an atomic bomb explosion (fission), Cs-137, emits high frequency gamma radiation having photons with 662,000 eV energy fully capable of knocking off electrons and disrupting molecular bonds of the living tissue they pass through. In comparison, the energy of an X-ray photon ranges from 100 eV to 100,000 eV. and is still sufficient to disrupt molecular bonds and ionize atoms, which is why X-rays are classified as ionizing radiation too. The lowest photon energy still capable of ionizing is estimated at 5 eV, which falls into Ultraviolet EM spectrum.

The so called 5G (5th generation) cellular network works on up to 28 GHz EM frequencies. 28 GHz directly translates into 1.16E-4 eV photon energy (E = h * f). This is already 40,000 times lower than the lowest ionizing ultraviolet light coming from the Sun - not to mention X-rays or gamma.

The photon energy emitted by 5G cellular network towers is vastly inadequate to remove electrons from their atomic orbital bonds. On top of that, the quantum nature of ionizing prohibits cumulative effect from photons that do not have sufficient energy state. So, regardless of the “5G” exposure time, there will be absolutely no ionization and hence damage happening similar to Ultraviolet, X-ray or gamma radiation exposure.

Non-ionizing

If the low frequency EM radiation, including that coming from the cell towers has noteworthy negative health effects, a different from ionization mechanism should be at play.

In suburban areas, 5G towers are commonly spaced 2–3 km apart and in dense urban areas, they may be 400–800m apart. Let’s conservatively assume 200m distance between 5G tower and an average urban civilian.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sets maximum power limits for various frequency bands used in 5G networks. For the 28 GHz band (a common mm wave band for 5G), the maximum Effective Radiated Power (ERP) limit for fixed point-to-point operations was set at 1640 watts but the maximum output power of a 5G transmitter would be in 100+W zone.

To put things in perspective, the most common EM output of a household microwave oven (operating at similar to 5G frequency around 2.45 GHz) is 1,000 W, which would be about 10 times greater than that of a typical 5G base station.

Let’s assume 200 W output EM power of a 5G transmitter in our worst case scenario.

Now, with 200 m distance and 200 W of power, and disregarding shielding from structures, the exposure to the 5G network EM radiation from 1 base station in our worst case scenario can be calculated as:

P/(4πr²), where:

• P is the power of the EM source, which is 200W

• r is the distance from the source, which is 200m in this case

Resulting in: 0.0004 W/m².

Let’s generously add contribution of other nearby transmitters and round this up at 0.001 W/m² as the absolute worst exposure for someone who does not climb operational 5G towers on a regular basis.

Is that a lot? And what cumulative effect it might have if such exposure is constant (and it isn’t)?

Let’s see how this compares to what we get from the Sun.

The globally averaged annual solar irradiance at the Earth's surface is around 200 W/m², ranging from 300 W/m² at the equator and drooping to under 100 W/m² closer to the polar caps.

It is also worth noting that the Solar EM spectrum is overwhelmingly in the much higher than 5G’s mm radiation frequencies, which makes Solar radiation more dangerous health-wise for the same exposure. We don’t need to qualify how much more dangerous, let’s just imagine and assume that 5G can compete with the dangers of Sun’s mostly optical EM to further exacerbate our worst case scenario.

In a very simplistic linear approximation, moving south within mid (30 to 60 degrees) latitudes effectively increases exposure to solar EM by about 2 W/m² with every 1 degree. So, considering that 1 degree is roughly 100 km…

For someone to offset the effects of the worst possible 5G EM radiation, he would have to move 50 meters north, but likely even not that far.

And vice versa, moving south by 50 meters means becoming exposed to more additional and not less harmful solar EM radiation than that of a dense 5G infrastructure.

There are many studies on the health effects of the cellular network radiation, but not that many lately, which might raise suspicion. But this might also be an indicator that the possibility of such effects, based on very straightforward analyses like the one above, is so low that it warrants little to no concern about the matter, hence no interest in doing the studies.

Nevertheless, here’s one research article (a relatively old about 3G) that examines “Biological effects from exposure to electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell tower base stations and other antenna arrays“ by going over select 56 studies and stories on the subject. The selection criteria are not stated, but they are not impartial, to say the least, which quickly comes out of the article’s content.

The very first observation the article makes is that the exposure from an end user device like a cellphone or a wireless handset of a land phone is higher than from towers. “…exposure will be lower from towers under most circumstances than from cell phones. This is because of the distance from the source. The transmitter is placed directly against the head during cell phone use whereas proximity to a cell tower will be an ambient exposure at a distance.”

Setting that aside, the 56 studies analysed do not seem to offer anything that could be called concerning, only vaguely suggesting that “Different biological effects may result depending on the type and duration of the exposure.” Note, that “biological effects” does not necessarily entail bad.

The very first study referenced and favoured by the author explores the effects of RFR exposure on damaging DNA and reports that in three out of four scenarios of RFR exposure, DNA damage was significantly decreased. This means that RFR might have had a DNA healing effect! And the conclusion of that study was far from suggesting that RFR was dangerous, but that more research is needed to find out if it’s damaging or therapeutic. “The data indicate a need to study the effects of exposure to RF signals on direct DNA damage and on the rate at which DNA damage is repaired.”

The article heavily relies on the term used to describe the absorption of RFR in the body - specific absorption rate (SAR), which is the rate of energy that is actually absorbed by a unit of tissue, thus being a more accurate measure for assessing the RFR exposure effects.

In our worst case scenario, the exposure from mm RFR was very generously estimated at 0.001 W/m². If we assume 1 m² as human’s body surface area exposed to RFR, 50kg as its mass, and 100% absorption of the EM (more assumptions extremely stretched toward allowing the worst possible health effects of the EM), then the resulting “not to exceed” SAR would be 0.00002 W/kg.

“Out of the 56 papers in the list, 37 provided the SAR of exposure. The average SAR of these studies at which biological effects occurred is 0.022 W/kg...” concludes the article in question.

The biologically active (but not necessarily harmful) SAR from RFR is thus 4 degrees higher than the unrealistically generous SAR assumed to be in effect from a maximally dense and busy cell of 5G towers, even under the assumption of full energy absorption.

The authors acknowledge that the biological effects detected by those studies (mostly in vitro) do not have to occur in humans and do not have to be harmful (similar to UV which we need but not too much). ”…we do not know if all of these reported effects occur in humans exposed to low-intensity RFR, or whether the reported effects are health hazards. Biological effects do not automatically mean adverse health effects, plus many biological effects are reversible.”

It is worth noting that while solar radiation within 10kHz to 30GHz spectrum is extremely weak compared to the more dominant components in the visible, ultraviolet, and infrared ranges, it is still can be estimated at about 0.01% of the total [this assumption needs additional validation], which translates to 0.02 W/m² or SAR of not exceeding 0.0004 W/kg.

Thus, an absorption rate across the whole RFR spectrum produced by the Sun is still a degree higher than that coming from narrower bands of 5G towers. Consequently, people exposed to 5G at different levels should have significantly less (good or bad) differences in health in comparison to those living at different latitudes, as it was already shown earlier but for the optical spectrum.

The authors then proceed speculating about the dangers of the long-term exposure referring again to the aforementioned DNA study (forgetting to note that the study discovered more positive RFR effects on DNA than negative) and several studies where rats and monkeys were literally cooked in microwave ovens (judging by ridiculously high 3 W/kg to 8 W/kg SAR), discovering “behaviour disruptions when body temperature was increased by 1°C”. This is outright ridiculous and discredits the whole write-up, putting its main author, journalist B. Blake Levitt, in a position of cherry-picking the studies and specific places within those.

Besides thermal effect (upon which microwave oven are based) no clinical or in vitro or animal research papers out of those 56 suggested any meaningful mechanism for triggering the biological effects, fewer claimed harm, and none could confidently connect their findings with human health.

The last portion of Levitt’s writeup is focused on exposure to cell tower transmissions, in other words, various reports from people linking health situation with proximity to the cell towers.

The evidence is anecdotal in many sources cited, like this politicized urban legend about Soviets RF-ing US embassy in Moscow, and that does not add much credibility to Levitt's article - quite the opposite - makes it looks like she is grabbing the straws attempting to make her point by all means possible. It would be much better to have one solid study with a hypothesized mechanism of RF action on the body, predictions and then empirical evidence supporting those predictions, as opposed to 56 dubious papers and anecdotes.

One of those studies referenced by Levitt summarises that well: “While therapeutic effects on patients have been reported, there are up to 7000 papers and abstracts now on the subject of biological effects of electromagnetic waves. Massive information contains both positive and negative effects and many of them are very controversial.“

Putting Levitt's agenda and her article aside, it seems reasonable to acknowledge that due to penetrating nature of RF radiation (in comparison to optical/UV spectrum) there is a chance that our internal tissues did not evolve sufficient protection from increasing levels of such EM exposure and might be vulnerable to it.

Mobile phones and other RF EM emitting devices in close proximity present more potential health hazard than 5G or other towers (even Levitt agrees with that).

But the dangers vs. potential positive effects of the RF radiation from 5G towers have not been established either from the mechanism of action (causality) or correlation perspectives. And if those dangers are indeed present, they are likely negligibly small in comparison to other factors like the crap we eat and how little we move around and how our memory and other cognitive functions were being off-loaded to smart phones, "googles" and AI, which does come across as neurological damage, and perhaps it is.

VGCC

Research on voltage gated calcium channel

TBD