Ten reasons to be concerned about 5G – and it has nothing to do with C-19

"5G has nothing to do with the coronavirus Covid-19 but as you’ll see there is a strong case for supporting legal action against it"

Article by By Annelie Fitzgerald and Tom Imber published in TruePublica

5G and existing wireless technologies use artificial radio-frequency radiation (RFR) that has adverse effects on health.
5G has not been safety tested.
5G is being rolled out under obsolete RFR exposure guidelines.
5G will introduce more RFR into our environment, with the risk of adverse impacts on flora and fauna.
5G will increase energy consumption.
5G will usher in a regime of total surveillance.
5G will create an insatiable need for rare earth elements and more toxic e-waste.
5G from space is a tragedy of the cosmic commons.
5G is being imposed on us with no public debate or informed consent.
We don’t need 5G.

5G and existing wireless technologies use artificial radio-frequency radiation (RFR) that has adverse effects on health.

A copious body of scientific research has found that effects from RFR (100kHz-300GHz) at currently permitted exposure levels include: increased cancer risk, increase in harmful free radicals, genetic damage, structural and functional changes of the reproductive system, learning and memory deficits, neurological disorders, and negative impacts on general well-being.1 In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RFR as a ‘possible human carcinogen’ based on higher brain tumour rates (glioma and acoustic neuroma—a type of schwannoma) in longer-term users of mobile phones.2 In 2018, the US National Toxicology Program found ‘clear evidence’ of cancer (heart schwannoma) in animals exposed to near-field RFR, and an independent study published by the Ramazzini Institute the same year also found schwannomas from far-field exposure.3 Experts are now calling for RFR to be reclassified as a ‘known human carcinogen’ alongside tobacco and asbestos 4, for exposure levels to be reassessed5, and for a moratorium on 5G roll-out.6

One aspect of 5G is basically an upgrade of 4G networks to provide what has been dubbed ‘fake 5G’ (operating at frequencies below 6GHz)7; another, in the raft of RFR-dependent technological innovations grouped under the umbrella term ‘5G’, involves using millimetre waves (mmWaves). As noted on 5g.co.uk, ‘mmWave spectrum technically encompasses frequencies in the 30-300GHz range (extremely high frequency, EHF) but it more commonly refers to bands above 24GHz.’ 8 It is often claimed that mmWave frequencies will not be deployed in the UK: ‘Operators will not be launching 5G mobile networks with mmWave frequencies in 2019’. 9 But it is crucial here that the spokesman carefully refrains from explicitly stating that mmWave frequencies will never be used in the UK. In addition, there is plenty of puff about using mmWave frequencies on 5g.co.uk: the already-sold 26GHz band is described there as ‘the key enabler of future 5G services’ and as ‘critical to 5G networks’.10 Ofcom is earmarking the 37-43.5 and 66-71GHz bands for sale as 5G bands too, regarding them as a ‘wide tuning range for harmonised equipment’.11 It is also openly recognised that mmWave frequency bands will ‘require many more antennas and antenna sites’ and that ‘new technologies like Massive MIMO and beamforming will be key to unlocking the potential of mmWave frequencies.’ 12 Any assurances that such frequencies will not be used in the UK are therefore nothing other than duplicitous.

5G has not been safety tested.

No long-term safety testing of 5G frequencies under real-life conditions, i.e. interacting with other forms of anthropogenic RFR and other biological and chemical agents, has been carried out.13 The European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) recognises that the ‘lack of clear evidence to inform the development of exposure guidelines to 5G technology leaves open the possibility of unintended biological consequences.’14 Or, as US Senator Richard Blumenthal succinctly put it last year, ‘We’re kind of flying blind here, as far as health and safety is concerned’ (US Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, 2019).15

A 2019 European Parliament analysis noted that it is currently ‘not possible to accurately simulate or measure 5G emissions in the real world’16, also stating: ‘Increased exposure may result not only from the use of much higher frequencies in 5G but also from the potential for the aggregation of different signals, their dynamic nature, and the complex interference effects that may result, especially in dense urban areas. The 5G radio emission fields are quite different to those of previous generations because of their complex beamformed transmissions in both directions—from base station to handset and for the return’.17

Some of the sparse research that does exist on mmWave frequencies goes back a long way and includes a declassified CIA translation of Russian research into mmWave frequencies from 1977, summarised thus: ‘Morphological, functional and biochemical studies conducted in humans and animals manifested in structural alterations in the skin and internal organs, qualitative and quantitative changes of the blood and bone marrow composition and changes of the conditioned reflex activity, tissue respiration, activity of enzymes participating in the processes of tissue respiration and nucleic metabolism. The degree of unfavourable effect of millimeter waves depended on the duration of the radiation and individual characteristics of the organism’.18 Given that 5G will involve unavoidable and permanent exposure to such RFR for everyone—and that includes babies, children and vulnerable people—not only is the prospect hardly reassuring, it’s downright grim.

5G is being rolled out under obsolete RFR exposure guidelines.

Public Health England (PHE) and the other UK health agencies it advises adhere to exposure guidelines set by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) in 1998, updated this year. In determining its guidelines, ICNIRP only takes account of short-term effects that include heating, shock and nerve stimulation; it disregards abundantly documented non-thermal biological effects, i.e. effects where no measurable heating of tissue takes place, and effects that result from chronic and cumulative exposures. ICNIRP’s guidelines are therefore simply not protective of public health. (By the way, Eric van Rongen, the former chair of ICNIRP, has stated that 5G ‘is not set up as a public health experiment but of course you can consider it as such.’19) Numerous concerns about conflicts of interest within ICNIRP, and the inaccurate assessments of the science they lead to, have been expressed over the years 20, the most recent coming from Microwave News in April 2020, ‘The Lies Must Stop. Disband ICNIRP’, 21 and from two MEPs in a report released just last week: The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection: conflicts of interest, corporate capture and the push for 5G. 22 In 2012 the UK’s Advisory Group on Non-Ionizing Radiation (AGNIR)—three of whose members were also members of ICNIRP—published a report on RFR safety that has been criticised for being ‘inaccurate’, ‘biased’ and ‘misleading’.23 Although AGNIR has been disbanded, its inaccurate assessment of the science is used to this day to inform current policy in the UK.

5G will introduce more RFR into our environment, with the risk of adverse impacts on flora and fauna.

5G was identified as an ‘emerging risk’ for biodiversity in 2018 by a team led by Professor William Sutherland of Cambridge University 24, but the UK Government admits that it has undertaken no assessment of the potential effects of 5G on pollinators and wildlife. 25 Research already indicates that plants and wildlife are probably being adversely affected by existing RF pollution 26, while ICNIRP states that its exposure guidelines ‘provide protection for humans’ (from heating)—as if we are the sole species living on this planet! 27 The small size of insects means that they are likely to be particularly badly affected—owing to the ‘resonance effect’—if mmWave frequencies are deployed.28 As the ‘insect apocalypse’ already underway correlates with the widespread adoption of wireless technologies, introducing more RFR into the environment is beyond reckless. The focus should be on establishing whether, as many scientists suspect and as research suggests, anthropogenic RFR is a significant causal factor in ecological declines like insect collapse. 29

5G will increase energy consumption.

Wireless connectivity is inherently less energy efficient than using wires. 30 With 5G, according to the Shift Project, mobile operators will use 2.5 to 3 times more energy than now. 31 Even cheerleading website 5g.co.uk acknowledges that 5G networks will require a ‘vast amount of energy’. 32 Tackling the climate crisis necessitates reassessing our needs and living more soberly, yet 5G and the ‘internet of things’ take us in the opposite direction. Despite promises of increased energy-efficiency from industry, we know from experience with other technologies that efficiency gains tend to be cancelled out by the higher consumption that results from such gains—a mechanism known as the Jevons Paradox .33 And, as the Shift Project points out, ‘direct and indirect impacts (rebound effects) related to the growing use of digital are constantly underestimated’.34

5G will usher in a regime of total surveillance.

5G and the internet of things are a Trojan horse that will allow Big Tech to harvest even more of our data and further monetize our private lives. It will help usher in and consolidate a ‘profoundly undemocratic’ era of ‘digital omniscience’, as brilliantly and alarmingly analysed by Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019). The term ‘smart’, Zuboff points out—a term attached to many RF-using technologies—is used to revile traditional alternatives for remaining ‘dumb’, and is ‘a euphemism for rendition: intelligence that is designed to render some tiny corner of lived experience as behavioural data’, violating the ‘still-wild spaces we call “my reality”, “my home”, and “my body”’35. For surveillance capitalists ‘it is no longer enough to automate information flows about us; the goal now is to automate us’36, stripping us of our autonomy and self-determination through applications and technologies designed to modify behaviour. We are sadly all-too-familiar with the destruction inflicted on nature by the extractive practices associated with industrial capitalism (mining for fossil fuels, etc), yet we still do not grasp that humanity itself is now the object of a new ‘extraction imperative’ that will wreak havoc on ‘what has been held most precious in human nature’37. All in the name of profit. (And of course there’s also the question of the vulnerability of ‘smart’ things and networks to cyber attacks. 38)

5G will create an insatiable need for rare earth elements and more toxic e-waste.

A smartphone contains at least 40 metals, some of them derived from conflict minerals such as coltan, cobalt and lithium.39 Mining for such resources takes place in what are sometimes atrocious working and environmental conditions in places such as China, Argentina and Central Africa, where human rights abuses are widespread and include the use of children as miners.40 At the end of its life, much of our electronic equipment is then shipped (back) to parts of the world with less stringent environmental regulations, where it is processed in unsafe conditions, with only 16%, according to some studies, being properly recycled.41 The built-in obsolescence of electronics will doubtless continue with 5G, while quantities of e-waste will surely escalate given the colossal number of connected gadgets that 5G promises to involve—41.6 billion by 2025 according to one estimate.42 Last year, half of the 50 million tonnes of e-waste generated globally consisted of TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets.43

5G from space is a tragedy of the cosmic commons.

Another aspect of the umbrella 5G project is internet access from space. With no global governing body providing oversight of space, Elon Musk’s Starlink project is currently launching 5G satellites—12,000 are planned—into orbit around Earth. Their light pollution has been ruining views of space, and many astronomers, including Dr Michele Bannister from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, have protested: ‘As a global community we need to have a conversation about how the night sky should look—this is an urgent public issue. The sky is just starting to become filled with these very optically bright satellites. When you look into the night sky, do you want to see nature or do you want to see artificial constructions? Because this is what it comes down to.’ 44 Musk, and the American federal agencies that gave him the green light, ignored warnings from astronomers prior to the launches, while other companies such as OneWeb have similar plans—for 48,000 satellites…45

Meteorologists, too, have complained that the RFR from Starlink’s satellites will interfere with their ability to forecast the weather, something more important than ever in an era of climate chaos. 46 Yet, it seems money can buy you anything, even the desecration of the heavens, our universal, cosmic commons. And is anyone thinking about what the long-term impact of bathing the planet in man-made RFR from space could be? As the authors of a recent Lancet piece point out, there is little research into the effects of anthropogenic RFR on Earth’s natural Schumann resonance, on the ionosphere, and on natural and man-made components of the atmosphere. 47 Surely it would be wise to look into this in depth before going any further.

5G is being imposed on us with no public debate or informed consent.

Governments and decision makers, like Big Tech and Big Wireless, all appear to believe that there is no need for any informed public debate about 5G roll-out, which is always presented using what Shoshana Zuboff has called ‘inevitability rhetoric’, as if technology exists in a separate realm beyond our control or understanding. 48 They also appear to be ‘technological fundamentalists’, believing that ‘the increasing use of evermore sophisticated high-energy, advanced technology is always a good thing and that any problems caused by the unintended consequences of such technology eventually can be remedied by more technology’49.

The UK government is rushing ahead with 5G partly because it has already sold certain frequencies to mobile operators for close to £1.4 billion 50, and the operators want a return on their investment. Local government has been deprived of the power to make its own decisions on 5G roll-out: ‘Local planning authorities must determine applications on planning grounds only. They should not seek to prevent competition between different operators, question the need for an electronic communications system, or set health safeguards different from the International Commission guidelines for public exposure’.51 So much for giving people more control over what happens in their lives.

In an investigation for the US weekly The Nation in 2018, Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie summed up how we have arrived at the hazardous situation we now find ourselves in: ‘the wireless industry has obstructed a full and fair understanding of the current science, aided by government agencies that have prioritized commercial interests over human health and news organisations that have failed to inform the public about what the scientific community really thinks. In other words, this public-health experiment has been conducted without the informed consent of its subjects’.52 5G is the next phase of this non-consensual mass experiment, taking it ever further.53

We don’t need 5G.

With the world besieged by an ever-growing number of crises, directing resources at the unnecessary promised ‘benefits’ of 5G seems a crass indulgence. 54 What we really need is to learn some ethics and exhibit some humility.

Annelie Fitzgerald PhD is a member of the Safe Schools Information Technology Alliance and of Wiser Wireless Wales. Formerly a language teacher, Tom Imber PhD is a writer and translator.

References

1 International Appeal. Scientists call for Protection from Non-ionizing Electromagnetic Field Exposure: https://www.emfscientist.org/index.php/emf-scientist-appeal

Kostoff, R.N., Heroux, P., Aschner, M., Tsatsakis, A., 2020. ‘Adverse health effects of 5G mobile networking technology under real-life conditions’, Toxicology Letters 323, 35-40.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2020.01.020

Russell, C., 2018. ‘5G wireless telecommunications expansion: public health and environmental implications.’ Environ Res. 165:484-495. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2018.01.016

Di Ciaula, A., 2018. ‘Towards 5G communication systems: are there health implications?’ International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health 221(3): 367-375. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheh.2018.01.011

2 World Health Organization: International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Press Release No. 208, May 31st 2011. IARC Classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields as Possibly Carcinogenic to Humans:

https://www.iarc.fr/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/pr208_E.pdf

3 Wyde, M.E., et al., 2018. National Toxicology Program Technical Report on The Toxicology and Carcinogenesis Studies in Hsd:Sprague Dawley SD Rats Exposed to Whole-Body Radio Frequency Radiation at a Frequency (900 Mhz) and Modulations (GSM And CDMA) Used by Cell Phones, National Institutes of Health Public Health Service U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/lt_rpts/tr595_508.pdf

Falcioni, L., et al., 2018. ‘Report of final results regarding brain and heart tumors in Sprague-Dawley rats exposed from prenatal life until natural death to mobile phone radiofrequency field representative of a 1.8 GHz GSM base station environmental emission.’ Environ Res. 165:496-503: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935118300367

DOI: https://10.1016/j.envres.2018.01.037

4 Hardell, L., Carlberg, M., 2019. ‘Comments on the US National Toxicology Program technical reports on toxicology and carcinogenesis study in rats exposed to whole-body radiofrequency radiation at 900 MHz and in mice exposed to whole-body radiofrequency radiation at 1,900 MHz.’ International Journal of Oncology 54;1: 111-127. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3892/ijo.2018.4606

5 The EMF Call, 2018. ‘Call for Truly Protective Limits for Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields (100kHz to 300GHz)’: https://www.emfcall.org/ ; https://bioinitiative.org/

6 The 5G Appeal, 2017. Signed by 387 scientists and medical doctors as of June 2020: http://www.5gappeal.eu/

7 Simon Hodges, “4G, Fake 5G and Real 5G – Know the Differences”, 20th July 2019: https://communityoperatingsystem.wordpress.com/2019/07/20/4g-fake-5g-and-real-5g-know-the-differences/

8 James Rogerson and Sacha Kavanagh, ‘5G frequencies in the UK’, 6th June, 2019: https://5g.co.uk/guides/5g-frequencies-in-the-uk-what-you-need-to-know/

9 https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/ee-tell-really-frightened-bath-2831128

10 https://5g.co.uk/guides/5g-frequencies-in-the-uk-what-you-need-to-know/

11 https://5g.co.uk/news/ofcom-consults-5g-priorities-radio-spectrum/4400/

12 https://5g.co.uk/guides/5g-frequencies-in-the-uk-what-you-need-to-know/

13 Kostoff, R.N., Heroux, P., Aschner, M., Tsatsakis, A., 2020. ‘Adverse health effects of 5G mobile networking technology under real-life conditions’, Toxicology Letters 323, 35-40. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2020.01.020

14 ‘Statement on emerging health and environmental issues’, Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER), European Commission, 20th December 2018, p. 14.

15 https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/at-senate-commerce-hearing-blumenthal-raises-concerns-on-5g-wireless-technologys-potential-health-risks

16 5G Deployment. State of Play in Europe, USA and Asia, Policy Department for Economic, Scientific and Quality of Life Policies, European Parliament, April 2019, p. 12.

17 5G Deployment. State of Play in Europe, USA and Asia, op. cit., p. 11.

18 Zalyubovskaya, N. P. (1977). ‘Biological Effects of Millimeter Wavelengths’. Declassified and approved for release 2012/05/10 (penultimate paper in PDF document): https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88B01125R000300120005-6.pdf

19 Margi Murphy, ‘Do smartphones cause cancer? World Health Organization to assess brain tumour link’, Sunday Telegraph, 3rd March 2019: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/03/03/world-health-organisation-reviews-whether-smartphones-might/

20 https://www.investigate-europe.eu/en/2019/how-much-is-safe/