Esteemed anti 5G colleagues would like to have it both ways, but it is wrong.
On one hand they claim, correctly, that the 5G was not tested for its health impact on humans. Meaning, there are no studies available to prove it safety. This is correct.
But then, they claim that 5G is dangerous and proven to damage human health (Pall, Firstenberg, Davis et al.).
Big question is: how do they know it?
If, as they correctly claim, research on 5G and health has not been done then there is no evidence to show/prove that 5G is dangerous or that 5G is not dangerous.
Also, what 5G frequencies they talk when referring to 5G? Those well below 6 GHz, that were used already and are known to possibly/probably affect health, though the proof of health damage is still elusive? Or are they talking about 26 GHz and 28 GHz and other frequencies over the 30 GHz (mmWaves) that were not studied?
It is CORRECT to call for moratorium on 5G deployment because research on health effect has not been done, and I am calling for 5G deployment moratorium based on the lack of adequate health effects research.
It is NOT CORRECT to call for moratorium on 5G deployment because health danger has been proven (Pall, Firstenberg, Davis et al.), because it is incorrect claim and I am against such argumentation for the 5G-moratorium.
BRHP - Between a Rock and a Hard Place 
Personally, I don’t see the debate being specifically about 5G. I see it being about the treatment of the technology in general regarding toxicology as the technology changes.
If you take pharmaceuticals, it could be argued that every novel drug has a clean bill of health until proven otherwise, and yet after major debacles regarding drugs causing detrimental effects on people, every novel drug goes through rigorous testing to establish in what ways it has the potential to do harm.
We’re not in the same place as we were in the 1990s. There has been the opportunity for epidemiological studies that finished up shifting scientific consensus from no known carcinogenic effect to a 2B possible carcinogen. There are lab studies where the scientists involved and the peers that reviewed it conclude that there’s clear evidence of carcinogenesis that most regulatory bodies have dismissed to the protests of the scientists involved.
We’re now in a position where the 5G appeal to the EU for a moratorium openly accuses ICNIRP of conflicts of interest as a result of dismissing evidence towards wider health effects.
If you have open distrust between scientists working on behalf of public health and the de facto regulators from which the wider public are supposed to draw reassurance then that’s a recipe to engender distrust in the wider public on less rational grounds.
I’ve been alarmed at how ad hominem arguments have come into the debate throughout, from both the regulation and scientific side. That is not a healthy environment for sound governance of a technology to which a huge chunk of the global population is exposed on a 24/7 basis and strikes me as a perfect breeding ground for wider paranoia, particularly when the dynamics of the commercial interests have all the ingredients for this to be a repeat of science regarding tobacco, oil & gas, pesticides, and others.
In this case danger is defined simply as the negative health effect caused by RF-EMF
Some claims about the danger of 5G are certainly without sufficient scientific basis.
But what’s dangerous? It’s not really a scientific term. The word doesn’t often appear in scientific conclusions nor in abstracts. It’s a value judgement.
To put it bluntly, a value judgement has no precise meaning. And that’s the reason why scientists can disagree so much on the same scientific literature. They don’t discuss conclusions. They discuss value judgements over conclusions:
“It’s dangerous!”
“No, it isn’t”.
“We don’t know enough”.
Is it dangerous to roll out 5G? Some may say that it’s only dangerous if it shows out to be harmful. Others may say it’s dangerous to work with risky things without knowing the consequences.
It’s the hegemonic discourse that RF-EMF isn’t risky as long as it’s sub-thermal (because sub-thermal RF-EMF is safe as long as the level isn’t thermal. A circular reasoning).
Playing with fire is considered dangerous in general. Playing with water is considered safe in general. Both elements can be used safe. Both elements can do harm to humans. Another hegemonic discourse.
Of course, telecom industry wants to maintain a hegemonic discourse saying RF-EMF is safe as playing with water and not risky as playing with fire. The main arguments: RF-EMF is too weak. Too weak to heat up. And too weak to cause effects. No effects has occurred.
Decision makers in politics only read the bottom line from experts saying that RF-EMF isn’t dangerous. Experts will answer your protest saying that no dangerous effects have been proven in humans despite biological findings and results in toxicology.
Others say these findings are game changers showing us that sub-thermal RF-EMF is fundamentally dangerous and will do something harm if used wrong. So how can we know, that 5G is safe?
For example, Bisphenol A was considered dangerous because of results in animal studies. Another hegemonic discourse in society nowadays.
Scientific conclusions belong to scientists. Value judgements belong to decision makers. But many scientists disguise their value judgments as scientific conclusions. And decision makers in politics pretend to know a clue about science.
Between them, we have government officials.
/David Wedege
http://tabttraad.info
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I agree that there is zero evidence that 5G emission is safety.
However,
WHO panel in 2011 declare microwaves from mobile communication devices as possible cancerogene.
There plenty of publications for the adverse biological effects caused by millimeter waves.
Devra is right, the carcinogenicity issue cannot be resolved in the blogosphere. There are papers claiming that the carcinogenity is already proved (I participated in one of those) and other papers that do not claim so.
No Michael. We suspect that frequencies used in 3G and 4G have health effects but the proof is still missing. Hence precautionary measures, as moratorium, are correct way forward.
We need to distinguish between biological effects and health effects. We know that 5G millimeter waves have some biological effects. However, we do not know if these effects will translate into health effects. These might or might not.. Hence, it is prudent to call for moratorium and for research.
Dear Dariusz,
I think that both the points are correct:
1. 5G is going to use millimeter waves and you stated correctly that we do not know enough what the health effects will be and more research is needed. There are some reports identifying health problems and indeed much more research is needed here.
2. 5G is using also the frequencies used now for 3G and 4G, those are known to cause cancer, there are enough published result on brain cancer from mobile phone use and on leukemia and lymphoma from a strong whole body exposure in the military setting.
So we have it both ways, those are two good reasons to halt the increase of exposure of humans to radio frequency radiation.
Best regards,
Michael
with considerable respect, I cannot agree that we lack any information on 5G biological impacts. There is considerable literature documenting adverse impacts on the eye, as well as the use of some forms of millimeter waves for surgery or treatment. Whether for the eye or the newly emerging understanding of the immunological role of the skin, we face grounds for concerns. The key matter is one of exposure and duration, as you well understand. Nobody yet knows what beam-forming may entail, nor what impacts could take place within a large population with varying genetic and epigenetic vulnerabilities.
The work of Paul Ben Ishai and Yuri Feldman established that millimeter wave frequencies like those that would be employed in new 5G networks can resonate with sweat ducts in the human skin. Skin is now recognized to be an immunological organ. In addition, studies from the IT’IS researches have shown that insect bodies can absorb much of the millimeter wave frequencies and have therefore cautioned that these 5G systems can be expected to affect insects adversely. We also know that the frequencies that have been used for decades of 2G, 3G and 4G have clearly been shown to cause cancer and sperm damage in experimental and epidemiological studies that have been well-characterized in this space and our website. For any 5G network to work in the foreseeable future, it will have to toggle between all of these frequencies otherwise all the devices we already own would not work. Thus a 5G system must include 2G, 3G, 4G along with millimeter frequencies. Within the 5G modulation, they must employ the lower frequencies. Effectively sub-6GHz is the operating frequency at this time, although 27GHz is planned for the future.
I fully concur that there is a need for serious scientific exchanges on many points. Importantly, I do not think that matters of serious scientific dispute can successfully be resolved through the blogosphere, nor that name-calling increases the chances of sober discussion. As Carpenter noted some time ago, Firstenberg errs when he asserts that the Spanish flu was not due to influenza. To support that assertion Firstenberg relies on studies from 1919 that failed to show deliberate person-to-person nasal transmission as evidence that virus was not involved. Having looked at those studies, it is clear that those studies did not employ a virus, but a bacteria–Pfeiffer’s bacillus. It appears that much of the population had developed immunity to that bacterial cause of respiratory infections. At that time, neither DNA nor RNA had been clearly identified and scientists were understandably scrambling to identify the appropriate infectious agent. Further co-infection of bacterial and viral agents remains highly problematic with COVID-19 at this time and was certainly relevant to the improperly named Spanish flu that resulted in the deaths of many millions around the world at a time prior to airplanes.
Nonetheless to say that there are errors in some of what Firstenberg has written does not mean that all of what he says should be dismissed. None of us is immune from making mistakes. Indeed it is inherent in the scientific process that errors and refutations occur over time. Ideally, the process works through conjectures, disputes, validations and refutations, published in the literature over time.
Thus, Pall’s assertions that voltage-gated calcium channels are an important contributor to the impacts of EMF may be correct, but a statement that these are the sole pathways of relevance is not. In fact, you and Pall attended the same scientific meeting in Frankfurt last September and did not engage in any direct discussion about their considerable disagreements. This was a missed opportunity
Moving ahead, once we have returned to the new normal, post-COVID-19 crisis, Environmental Health Trust would like to host direct discussions in a webinar/podcast for experts between you and Pall and Firstenberg, possibly with Carpenter or others, as a way to encourage serious exchanges that are needed to advance these issues.