[sagitariusrex]

As a side note: My biggest disappointment regarding the 5G discussion with respect to potential health implications is the widespread lack of acknowledgement about the fact that we have not yet conducted any meaningful scientific experiments (let alone ones whose methodology is robust) to even hold a meaningful debate.

It's derailed into a political debate between those who "know for a fact" there are zero health implications and those who "know for a fact" that you'll certainly die within a week from a 5g antenna being placed next to your apartment.

[vardump]

If the energy isn't enough to ionize, then what is there to study?

(Extreme) heating effects can cause cancer, but the source of heat is irrelevant. The power levels 5G uses make even this point completely moot.

If you really have to search for something that could cause you cancer, perhaps those rather carcinogenic compounds your phone is made out of could be studied instead? Although I prefer just not to pulverize my phone and breath in the resulting dust. :-)

[willis936]

There has been a fabled danger of low levels of non-ionizing radiation without an explained mechanism for decades. There is no data to support it, but there will never be enough “studies” to disprove it.

[cogman10]

What gets me is that these people still walk out in the sun.

We are talking about orders of magnitude weaker radiation than what you get dosed with every time you go outside. But further, sunlight does contain ionizing radiation (hello UV).

[willis936]

I can’t believe people are still flying on commercial airliners; over the poles no less!

[fsh]

Flight attendants indeed have a significantly increased cancer risk which is most likely due to radiation exposure: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...

[willis936]

Yes, commercial airliners do pose a real health risk. There’s an understood mechanism and impact. I know I was joking about it, but only to highlight how crazy it is to push personal electronics use down for radiation health concerns, while airplanes continue to operate with no changes.

[tzs]

> If the energy isn't enough to ionize, then what is there to study?

DNA is conductive, and there are researchers who believe that this might be an important component in how the cell detects and repairs damage to its DNA [1].

There have been a couple of papers that claim that DNA can act as a fractal antenna allowing it to react to wavelengths that you would at first expect to be way too large to affect it. Here's one [2], which claims it interacts over a wide range of frequencies with a resonance at 34 GHz.

If DNA charge transport does turn out to play an important role in how the cell identifies damaged DNA, and if it turns out that those fractal antenna claims are true, then we'd have a potential mechanism for non-ionizing, non-heating radiation to increase cancer rates.

Note that it would not cause cancer, but it might prevent a cell from finding and repairing damage that if left unrepaired will lead to cancer.

The first part of the above, that DNA is conductive, is firmly established. How the cell detects damaged DNA is not known. That charge transport plays a role in that is currently just one theory that researchers are studying, but it is a theory that if it turns out to be true will not surprise anyone.

I haven't been able to find much on fractal antennas, especially very small ones, so can't tell if the claims about DNA acting as an antenna have merit.

[1] http://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/Research.htm

[2] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5699-4_...

[vardump]

Interesting. Fractal antennas are pure black magic, so I don't dare to speculate either way.

[Jonnax]

What experiments when the majority of 5G deployments will be using the same bands as 4G?

What are the specific health concerns from what 5G is doing differently to 4G?

Because I remember a couple of petitions from scientists none of whom in the radio field with no specific scientific information or concerns.

[fsh]

Possible health effects of non-ionizing radiation have been studied in all kinds of frequency bands for many decades. So far, no significant effects that go beyond heating have been found, and there is no known mechanism that could cause such effects.

[hnhg]

To argue devil's advocate, the scientific literature commenting on this says that existing studies are in too short a timeframe to draw long-term conclusions. I haven't dived into this other than a search on PubMed so it's a question of faith either way.

[hnhg]

I've tended to side with the "5G must be safe" crew but to see the other side I checked pubmed and found a fair few reputable-looking studies such as this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31991167

So, yeah, how much do we know for a fact? I say that as a true sceptic (i.e. sceptical with my own views as well as anyone else's). Decades ago we knew for a fact that dumping a ton of plastic into the environment was totally fine. Also we "didn't know for a fact" that greenhouse gas emissions could play a part in affecting our climate for the worse.

[cogman10]

> So, yeah, how much do we know for a fact?

Because it is transmitted at the same frequency as previous cell phone technologies. There are literally decades worth of studies around the effects of nonionizing radiation.

The only thing 5G changes is the transmission protocol.

It's fine to be a skeptic, but this is fear mongering. We don't need a 20 year long study to prove something we've known to be safe for 20 years because some crackpots claim it makes them nauseous or causes cancer. If you are going to be skeptical, why aren't you skeptical of the unverified negative claims?

Where's my proof? Google "non-ionizing radiation health". Would find a bunch of articles from reputable sources that all land on the same conclusion. It's safe.

Here's the CDC article on it. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/nonionizing_radiation.htm...

[hnhg]

I haven't dived deep into this topic, and this isn't a challenge to what you're saying, but what are your thoughts on the points here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03784...

TBH, unless you work directly in an area like this and stay up to date, it's a question of faith in experts either way. It basically becomes an appeal to authority, and as you can see, if you have multiple putative authorities, it becomes difficult to select.

[cogman10]

That the guy is, frankly, fringe.

This isn't the first anti-RF study he's published and I doubt it will be the last.

Looking further into his claims, he's said everything from "Alzheimer's is caused by WiFi" to "previous non ionizing studies were all flawed because that used the wrong test animal".

I expect when 6G rolls out he'll publish exactly the same study with an equally scary title.

I know, I'm committing an ad hominem fallacy. But at the end of the day I'm not buying his article see the rest of the claims. It is good enough for me that consensuses of much larger studies over longer periods are pretty much all against his study.

[hnhg]

Pubmed is littered with similar authors in peer-reviewed journals. He's not the only one.

This shows the problem right now. If you're not an expert, you don't know what you don't know, and have to yield to some kind of authority. Noise is greater than it has ever been, and trust is low. This will get worse before it gets better....

[newcrobuzon]

> Because it is transmitted at the same frequency as previous cell phone technologies.

AFAIK it is not, 5G also deploys >24GHz (up to 300GHz).

Happy to be proven wrong, but so far - from my POV - this has been the biggest hole in the theory that we do not need to test 5G because we already know it is safe...

[sschueller]

My disappointment is the lack of discussion regarding privacy. It was posted on HN just a few weeks ago how a human can be identified by its gate with high density deployment of antennas.

[willis936]

It’s also simply wasteful.

5G’s benefits over 4G are:

-

4G’s benefits over 5G are:

- Fewer towers necessary because larger coverage areas

- Better penetration of materials

- Doesn’t interfere with weather data collection

Why is there even a push for 5G? What is the benefit to the consumer? A higher bill because a 10x increase in infrastructure is necessary? Asinine. Just use wifi. I don’t understand what 5G was even made to technically accomplish.

[jiggawatts]

Your ignorance of its benefits doesn't mean it has none.

You can literally google "5g benefits" and read through any number of whitepapers.

For one, it has much lower latency, making it competitive with fibre in many areas.

It's more efficient, allowing more devices in the same area. The 60GHz band in particular will allow extreme densities as seen in sports stadiums or major train stations in rush hour.

It has higher peak bandwidth.

It includes special modes optimised for very lower power devices with modest bandwidth requirements.

Etc...

[lm28469]

> For one, it has much lower latency, making it competitive with fibre in many areas.

What do people do on their phones ? I'm forcing mine in 3g all the time and it's faster than I need already. Why would you need 1ms ping and 1gbs d/u speeds ?

This sounds like phones having 4k+ screens to me, updating specs for the sake of updating specs, there is no real world need behind it. I guess many people are making big bucks in the scheme though, that's probably the major 5g benefit.

[vardump]

> Why would you need 1ms ping...

Remote desktop, ssh, VoIP, gaming... anything that's interactive. All of those work better and are more fun to use with low latency.

Even plain web browsing can be much more enjoyable with a low latency connection assuming there's no other bottleneck.

[thelazydogsback]

Recently during work on my cable line, I ran my whole house off of a T-Mobile hotspot on my S10. I was pleasantly surprised as browsing latency actually seemed to be less than cable, and I the FireTV was even able to stream video reasonably well.

[rwc]

640K is more memory than anyone will ever need on a computer.

[lm28469]

Well if my browser, music player and chat app weren't taking literal gigabytes of ram each it might be enough ...

Our computers are millions of times more powerful than back in the days but somehow my 2018 macbook pro crawls to a halt if slack displays more than 2 gifs at the same time.

Anyway, I think we're artificially creating needs that aren't needs in the first place. "b-bu-but how am I supposed to telework from the subway if I don't have my 5g =(", "I can't even stream youtube 8k videos from the bus =("

[willis936]

Yeah, it works as a competitor to Wi-Fi in the ultra dense scenarios. How on Earth is it justified to deploy it to an entire city, let alone a Metropolitan area, county, state, or country? It has specific, limited use cases, and even then Wi-Fi’s solutions are arguably much better. Where is the benefit to the consumer?

[cesarb]

Every item in your list of "4G benefits over 5G" is not actually a benefit of 4G over 5G. They are all benefits of lower frequencies (which both 4G LTE and 5G NR can use) over higher frequencies (which only 5G NR can use). When running over these lower frequencies, 5G needs the same number of towers, has the same penetration of materials, and has the same interference with weather radar.

[catalogia]

> 5G’s benefits over 4G are:

It enables huge numbers of connections, making it more feasible for IoT appliances to use cell radios instead of wifi radios, taking yet more control away from consumers.

Oh wait, 'benefits'... well I suppose that's a matter of perspective..

[jacquesm]

Flagging this comment for being of the 'both sides' variety without having a basic understanding of the underlying material.