5G technology: Why Not to Worry and What to Do if You are Still Afraid of It
The false stories about the harmful effects of 5G have been working their way through the digital channels and social media and got even mystically connected to the COVID-19. Unfortunately, now their effect transited from the digital to the physical world, when a 5G base station was set on fire in the UK. This is a wakeup call for the people working with wireless communications, a community which I belong to, to step in and provide clarifications.
I am well aware that these clarifications should be able to fight a single emotional “5G is harmful” tweet, a meme, or a scary video. That is really difficult and I will try to make it as short as possible with the following ten points:
1- "Is it plain stupid to be worried about 5G?".
No, you have the right to be worried about any new technology you are not familiar with. For example, people were afraid when electricity was first introduced. At the Mercedes museum one can hear the story that, in the beginning, people were running like mad away from cars, but were not afraid of an older transport technology (horses). The difference here is that we have been using wireless technologies for decades and 5G is another wireless technology (read further before you dismiss my claim that 5G is "just another wireless technology" in the sense it is of interest here). Besides the right to be worried, you also have the right to get informed and even a duty to get informed before you act in any way against the introduction of new technology.
2- "5G is everywhere, we can feel the effects of radiation."
5G is still not being used widely. How many people that you know personally surf over a 5G phone or through a 5G-connected tablet? Even if that number is not zero (which I suppose will be), it is still minuscule compared to the number to the people around you that use 4G, WiFi, 3G, 2G or even Bluetooth earbuds. So, the wireless radiation you are exposed to has (almost) no 5G radio waves, while it does have a lot of radio waves from the other wireless technologies, which have already been used for decades.
3- "But, I have seen a ..". In case in 2. you counted people whose WiFi router has "5G", note that this is not referring to the 5G wireless technology (the "scary" one), but to the fact that the router uses the frequency of 5 GHz. And yes, this is not new, has been around for almost two decades and you have transmitter with that frequency in your laptop and phone.
4- "Does 5G technology help to spread COVID-19?" This theory is at a level of a Flat Earth Hypothesis. Still, to respond politely to it, one can say that, not being deployed and used widely yet, 5G has no chances to be technology that contributes to the spreading of COVID-19. If you want to accuse any technology for spreading the virus, then candidates would be cars and airplanes, but I am not sure it is rational to accuse them. I would say that, had 5G been deployed widely at these difficult COVID-19 times, our work-from-home experience and remote interaction would have been much better.
5- "That 5G Base Station is going to fry us". If you are worried about any radiation from wireless communication systems, then the highest radiation likely comes from your mobile device, unless you stand right next to a Base Station or you have a Wi-Fi router next to your pillow. However, it is hard to come dangerously close to a Base Station; even for people working on Base Stations there are exclusion zones. The reason is that the radiated power decreases quickly with the distance and the signal sent from the device you are holding is literally millions of time stronger than the signal that this device (and consequently you) receive from the Base Station. Think of the following: having an 80s cassette deck on your shoulder would sound much louder in your ears compared to a big loudspeaker that is tens of meters away. Now replace the cassette deck with a mobile device in your hand and the big loudspeaker with a Base Station.
6- "Yes, but 5G uses new frequencies." I guess here you mean the frequencies from so-called mmWave range, such as 30 GHz and 60 GHz. While it is true that these systems are new in the context of mobile wireless communication systems (i.e. they have not been used in 4G or before), they are not new in general. Note that there is already a Wi-Fi standard, called 802.11ad, that uses 60 GHz; that is, the same frequency may be soon arriving through the router in your room. Also, some of the police radars for detecting vehicle speed use 30 GHz. Radiation studies of these frequencies have been going on for several years and there is no documented harmful effect. But it is important to underline that the current deployment of 5G are mainly using frequencies that are lower than 6 GHz, similar to the frequencies currently used by 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; mmWave is not yet widely used.
7- "A 5G device is much more harmful than the 4G and older". If I have to use a single sentence to describe the main design objective of a wireless communication system is that it should be able to offer higher speeds by using less energy. The bottomline is that the new wireless systems become better in sending and receiving information, such that, in a large majority of cases, more Watts of power are used by an older-G device compared to a 5G device. In short, most of the complaints about 5G on the social media are sent from devices that radiate with a higher power than what a 5G device would do.
8- "Is anybody checking whether 5G radiation is safe?" The people that work on design and analysis of wireless communication systems, are usually not experts in assessing the impact of the radiation on the health and neither am I. However, there are experts that are continuously working on examining the health effects and setting the allowable radiation levels; those levels serve as input to the wireless researchers and engineers to make systems that conform to those radiation levels. Think of the fact that there is one group of experts making the roads and setting the speed limits, another group of people working on vehicles that can safely meet those limits. The new guidelines for radiation have been published in March 2020 and there is no indication that 5G is violating those guidelines.
9-“But how do you explain that some governments are forbidding 5G, for example in Belgium?” If you have a firm proof that there is a government decision that forbids 5G and there is a document that explains the reason, then I would be very interested to read it. Regarding Belgium, check this article that I wrote about the panel on 5G last year; it turns out that the Belgian minister has not been quoted in a fair and unbiased manner.
10-"You have worked on 5G and now you are defending it". No, I am not, but I am standing up for the communication technology which, as you can see, is vital to keep the society functioning when there is a massive lockdown due to the COVID-19. If there ever comes a firm proof that the wireless technologies we are using can create radiation levels that are harmful, then we will go back to the drawing board and repair/redesign the systems to meet the safety standards. One can make a parallel to the car industry or food industry, where safety is continuously improved as new knowledge comes about the safety threats; discovering a safety threat does not bring us back on horses.
One thing that is indisputable is that we cannot know the precise long-term effects of any technology, ranging from food additives, medicine or a wireless technology. But, to the best knowledge we have today, 5G, WiFi and other common wireless technologies, are not harmful in terms of radiation, as the World Health Organization also concludes. I am, though, aware about one way in which 5G and the other wireless technologies can be very harmful: texting and browsing while driving; that is one thing you can consider not doing if you are afraid of 5G.
Finally, even after the points clarified above, you may still be afraid and uncertain about the radiation from 5G. In that case you should not only be afraid of 5G, but you should also quit the other wireless technologies: get rid of your mobile phone, remove the WiFi routers in your home, do not use Bluetooth, use only a fixed phone and connect to the Internet through a cable. I do not agree that it is justified, but will at least be consistent with the fear from 5G.
