Is 5G really harmful to our health as some people claim?

in #health4 years ago

Over the coming few years, a new set of infrastructure will be rolled out across the world: 5G wireless technology. Just as 4G networks are able to provide mobile internet speeds hundreds of times faster than 3G — enabling users worldwide to stream HD TV, browse webpages quickly, and even make high-quality video calls —the advent of 5G will enable speeds of up to 100 Gigabits per second: up to 100 times faster than 4G.

With each new generation of WiFi that comes out, a new wave of fear-mongering health claims emerges. They always come along with the same arguments:

humans have never been exposed to this much of this type of radiation before,

scientists have not demonstrated that the proposed new infrastructure won’t be harmful to humans,

the World Health Organization has already declared radio-frequency (WiFi) radiation to be “possibly cancerous,”

and therefore, we should declare a moratorium on this technology until its safety has been established.

Fortunately, science already tells us that 5G almost certainly poses no danger to humans. Unless you value unfounded conspiracies over bona fide science, here’s what you should know.

Above, you can see the electromagnetic spectrum. While you’re typically only aware of your interactions with optical (visible) and infrared (heat) radiation, there’s much more that’s constantly interacting with your body. There are lower-energy signals such as microwaves, with wavelength between a millimeter and a meter, bombard us constantly here on Earth. Microwave radiation includes a mix of natural signals like atmospheric molecules, astronomical signals, and even the leftover glow from the Big Bang, coupled with human-made radio, radar, satellite, bluetooth, GPS and broadband signals. It also includes all WiFi signals, including 3G, 4G and 5G.

Also invisible to human eyes are higher benefit signals: ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light. In large doses, any form of radiation can be dangerous to living things, but in modest doses, only the high-energy signals matter.

The reason for this, believe it or not, has everything to do with the quantum nature of matter and energy. When light interacts with matter, there are three possibilities for what can occur:

The light is of the wrong wavelength to be absorbed by the matter, and therefore gets reflected.

The light is of the right wavelength to be absorbed by matter but too low in energy to kick any electrons off of their parent atoms/molecules.

Light gets absorbed and each photon is energetic enough to ionize one (or more) electrons.

Plants are green, for example, because they don’t absorb green light; instead they reflect it. Food gets cooked in a microwave because liquid water molecules (along with some others) are excellent absorbers of microwave radiation, enabling it to heat up. (Fun fact: ice, which is a lattice of water molecules, isn’t a good absorber of microwave radiation, which is why your frozen foods can be simultanously boiling on the outside, where the ice has melted, but remain frozen at the center.)

But the third option, where ionization occurs and electrons get kicked off of atoms, is the type of radiation that truly is damaging at the cellular level to biological organisms. This is why you wear sunscreen when you know your skin is going to be exposed to direct sunlight: because the ultraviolet light will ionize the material in your skin and cause burns that can get quite severe.

That’s why you wear a lead shield when you get an X-ray taken, because that even higher-energy radiation can cause extensive damage to your body. And that’s why you demand excessive shielding for any nuclear reactors and require humans to stay far away from any nuclear detonations: because gamma-rays, the highest-energy radiation of all, can cause cellular damage so severe it can be fatal to humans in even small, targeted doses.

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