A short and a long answer to health effects of 5G

This week blog is triggered by Mehdi, not the Mahdi that the Fremen are waiting for, but the one that I got to know last week.

Short answer is with almost certainty nothing (except heating you up a bit)! Long answer is shared below for a good Sunday reading.

I have many relatives asking about 5G as I work on the field. I cannot clearly spell out the reasoning of why 5G does not cause cancer. I think Mehdi does a good job of explaining it and we can also go over it to propagate this fact as much as we can. Please find the video below and also have a look yourself. He does a very engageable way of sharing information. He lists the sources in this blog I will share the short insights he shares and I will go over the sources he shares.

One of the source he cites is - Is 5G dangerous from The Signal Path. In the video Shahriar mentions an existing weapon that operates at 95 GHz which can give the sensation of burning within a range of half a mile (800 meters). He uses this example to indicate that the main effect of wireless is possibly to heat up atoms and molecules. This is also used in our daily lives with microwave ovens. Different wavelengths are better fit to hit the core of different molecules as such 2.4 GHz used by microwave ovens is a good match for water molecules. (Side knowledge, 2.4 GHz is selected to have a penetration of 1.3 cm into water, as the resonating frequency would have a penetration of 1 mm. Actual resonating frequency is around 8 GHz.)

So you may be saying already that what other proof you need. But the point is ionization. I will explain in a second the “importance” of ionization to have an impact on our health.

The Britannica definition of Ionization is below.

Ionization is one of the principal ways that radiation, such as charged particles and X rays, transfers its energy to matter.

So why is it a band thing? Well we have to tie that to how the ionization of DNA affects the DNA.

I read through the sources and there is no direct source that says ionization is the only source of cancer in DNA. I guess this is assumed in the video. On a different direction there was a note at the end investigating the effect of heat on the skin for skin cancer. The existing source is the below study on de-activating the DNA of a bacteriophage using U.V. light.

Amount of energy needed to break the structure of DNA is as follows:

Strand break formation and biological inactivation of infectious DNA of bacteriophage exposed to vacuum-ultra-violet radiation of 4·9 to 21·2 eV quantum energy is investigated.

At 21·2 eV as many as 84 per cent of the DNA molecules are inactivated by breaks whereas breaks do not contribute to inactivation at 4·9 eV.

For a hydrogen atom, composed of an orbiting electron bound to a nucleus of one proton, an ionization energy of 13.6 electron volts is required to force the electron from its lowest energy level entirely out of the atom.

As a side note, there is an interesting video from Vox that talks about how U.V. light has been the way to deal with viruses in the past and can also be our strength in the future.

So there is even an electromagnetic wave we use like weapon against viruses, so how do you feel safe against so many different wireless frequencies that I cannot even keep track of.

First answer is, the greatest source of such U.V. light is sun, so be aware of the sun! (By the way this is a good reminder to dry clothes under the sun from time to time.)

Secondly, let us have a look at the electromagnetic spectrum:

Table from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared

If you look at the carrier frequency of U.V. light it starts from 750 THz and goes up to 30 PHz. For those who are not familiar with the range difference let us put the perspective of saying that THz is 10^12 and PHz is 10^15.

The allowed frequency range of 5G is up to 70 GHz that is 10^9.

What if we put up a transmitter with a lot of transmit power?

Unless you transmit in U.V. frequency or at a different frequency, the transmit power will simply increase the number of photons you are shooting on that specific frequency. And the photon energy is fixed by the carrier frequency. In short, fixing the transmission frequency will determine the ionization property of a transmitter.

Conclusion

I am not 100% convinced. I think it is healthy to save a 1% for the benefit of the doubt. After reading and watching, I am educated a ton about ionization and how we should not fear ionization of DNA. But who said that cancer can only happen after ionization of DNA.

There has to be studies on how different frequencies interact with DNA as well in other forms. You might ask in which forms, that I do not know. But there is a study in this direction that swept 1 GHz to 17 GHz to see how different frequencies interact with DNA.

In this study they do a controlled experiment by putting a solution with and without DNA between a transmitter and a receiver. They measure the S21 parameter, which is like a resistance in wireless domain, changes when there is a DNA existing between a transmitter and a receiver.

Even though this analysis is interesting it simply means that wireless signals interact in one form or other with the DNA. So it is not like wireless signal is completely ignoring the existence of DNA. I think also Mehdi is not saying that. It would be expected that the DNA would be even possibly heat up by wireless signals (an infinitesimal amount), but so it does when you go under the sun with the U.V. that goes through your body and with a lot more danger than the RF or mmWave signals.

Studies like the quoted one should continue so we explore any possible interaction of DNA with wireless signals and come to a 100% certainty that there is no adverse health affects.