Hacker News Reader

Comment by danielheath | Hacker News Reader

> Assuming the technology is safe

Whoever invented the 5G conspiracy theories is either having a laugh or is fundamentally disconnected from how radiation works. This pseudo-scientific nonsense has no place on HN.

One of the key design features of 5G is to drop transmit power (instead having more sites, with lower range per site).

Because signal strength drops off with the square of distance to the tower (technically the cube, but because they transmit a flat beam the relevant part of the graph is square), this results in dramatically less transmit radiation vs 4G.

However, all of this is moot, because the radio frequency used isn't a frequency that could ionize anything even if the transmit power weren't negligible.

View on HN

Every time this is brought up, the only argument that comes up is that "radio frequency used isn't a frequency that could ionize anything even if the transmit power weren't negligible".

This is absolutely true but fails to recognize that radio frequencies have harmful, non-ionizing effects on biological organisms.

> This is absolutely true but fails to recognize that radio frequencies have harmful, non-ionizing effects on biological organisms.

What harmful effects are you referring to? Outside of intense heat or light, there shouldn't be any potential hazards to biological systems, since non-ionizing radiation by definition cannot remove electrons from atoms.

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/nonionizing_radiation.htm...

What mechanism do you propose to create these effects? (To be clear, we are not talking about high-energy cosmic ray interactions, because those don’t happen at these frequencies).

Do you have a citation for "harmful" non-ionizing effects? As far as I can tell, the body of literature has no conclusive evidence to suggest that radio waves do anything but heat the tissue that absorbs it.

Rant: Like many things that receive attention on popular and social media, agonizing over 5G distracts from issues that cause real provable widespread harm, such as UV radiation and air pollution. We rarely see articles rise to the top when they cover non-controversial points that would do well to be read by everybody, because how much buzz and discussion can you generate from "wear sunscreen", "don't drive while tired", and "get a prostate exam before you turn 50"?

I suspect the person refers to how microwave ovens heat through water molecule resonance, around the 2.4 ghz spectrum

Even then; the human body is pretty good at dealing with excess heat, and conservation of energy says you can’t get more energy deposited than the transmitter puts out - even if you absorb 100% of the signal that’s still only 100mw or so for a phone (vs ~2000w for a microwave oven).

(not the parent poster)

I don't know for sure, but I'm setting up an experiment this year where I irradiate cells with UV and try to use 5G radiation to jam the BER mechanism, which is one of the DNA error correcting systems. BER uses the charge state of DNA (https://www.pnas.org/content/100/22/12543) to help find thymine dimers, and 5G radiation is in just about the right frequency range to excite nuclear DNA and induce a current in DNA. I would be looking for a higher rate of mutation in the UV + 5G case over UV control, and no effect in 5G / control without UV.

What is interesting about this experiment is that 1) it's easy. 2) you would never detect this using normal procedures to assess mutagenicity, because normal techniques assume that the harm comes from direct mutation effect of the radiation; in this case the harm (if it is there) would come as a secondary effect, by inhibitng proper repair in the presence of a previous insult. Moreover, typical lab experiments (rightly) attempt to reduce outside effects (especially mutagens), so it's less likely it would have been discovered by accident.

Incidentally I'm sick and tired of people saying "it's non-ionizing and therefore not dangerous". This is a very reductive statement that belies a complete lack of understanding of biophysical chemistry.

How can I follow your work?

twitter under same handle as hn. I am slowly ramping engagement on this, you'll have to sift through posts about elixir

Which GHz frequency?

When he said that, I assumed he was talking about China using the technology overhaul to sneak in spying capabilities through Huawei. I forgot people don't know how radio waves are the opposite side of the light spectrum from x-rays.

I think a common misconception is that the concern is about the ionization potential of the radiation. The way I've heard it explained is that microwave frequencies (including, but not limited to, 5G signals) affect the ion channels of cells, preventing normal cellular function and increasing the risk of a variety of disorders, particularly neurological.

The first part of the comment seems to cover this claim already, at least in relation to 5G rollout being bad, without getting into whether it's even a valid claim or not.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com