Online Daily Mail Readers concerned about surveillance, health risks, data mining and increased electrical consumption of 5G.
The world’s most read online newspaper, the Daily Mail, ran an article on 9th February 2022 about the plan to install new 5G devices on road signs, bus shelters and traffic lights. The UK government has announced it wants to bypass Councils to make it easier for telecoms companies to put antenna on public infrastructure.
“Phone users need to be closer to so-called 5G ‘cell sites’ in order to receive good signal – as the mobile network, though quicker, has a smaller range. Firms are able to create mini phone masts around towns and cities by installing the kit into street furniture, such as road signs and CCTV poles.
But the process of identifying places to put them has so far proved ‘difficult and time consuming’ – and has held up the roll-out.”
Objections to 5G being given priority over lacking 4G coverage
Objections about the energy consumption
Lack of risk assessment or safety reports
25% of the comments concerned known health implications: cancer, headaches and others
Objections to data mining and implied surveillance
Here are three of the comments posted:
“Total surveillance of everything, everyone and everywhere. This investment is not so that you can download a film or game a bit quicker. We don’t need it – but THEY DO.” 193 likes, 20 dislikes.
“Lots of children at an American school were getting ill.. all of a sudden headache..nausea.. generally not feeling well as soon as the 5G antenna was installed on the roof of the school.. it was removed the problems went away.” 249 likes, 42 dislikes.
“5G needs 3x more electricity that 4G. So much for the government’s climate change goals” 217 likes, 26 dislikes.
The responses indicate a substantial disapproval of 5G, that people are not fooled by industry’s claims of ‘public benefit’ and object to giving more powers to the tech industry and disempowering their own representatives, and are incensed that £4 million of their taxpayers money is being directed towards boosting tech industry profits.
The most popular comment with 349 likes, seven times more than the 49 dislikes, was “This 5G isn’t for OUR benefit”
note: this is not about so called 5G mmWave sites. Smart city nodes and zones are based in the WiFi spectrum currently, but the issue of densification clearly increases chronic levels of pulse modulated electro smog, and increased data gathering feeds potential surveillance regimes.
The New Hampshire HB522 Commission on 5G was convened through bipartisan legislation that was passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor. This is the first legislation passed in the United States calling for the formation of a commission to explore the health effects of 5G.
The 13 Commission members had backgrounds that included physics, toxicology, electromagnetics, epidemiology, biostatistics, occupational health, medicine, public health policy, business, and law.
The overarching conclusion is, again, that wireless radiation is harmful, and supports 500m as being a realistic protective distance for radiation.
This is not a scientific issue, it is a political issue. The peer-reviewed science is quite clear about the risks about radiation exposure. Technology can be used to significantly lower radiation exposure, but that would come at a cost to the industry
The Commission met over a period of a year and all but one of the 9 experts that came to speak to the Commission were unpaid.
The evidence is clear about the health risks of exposure to radiation – cell phone radiation is indeed harmful, especially its placement. There is a continually growing body of evidence demonstrating that exposure to cell phone type radiation is harmful.
There are things that can be done to be protected against this radiation but we have to acknowledge that it’s a problem first. For example – within a week of installation many firefighters developed unusual symptoms of headaches fatigue insomnia memory loss confusion nausea and weakness and after a time firefighters in stations with adjacent cell towers were found to have forgotten CPR or became lost responding to a fire in the city where they grew up.
A study was done in Belo Horizonte, Brazil over a 10-year period, 1996-2006, looking at deaths from cancer and the closer individuals were to a cell tower the higher the mortality rate. It was a large sample of 856 towers, so the evidence cannot be dismissed.
Many many other studies support 500 meters as being realistic for protection against radiation.
10 years later, in the 2020 summary list of science showing effects was updated and based on around a thousand studies, 73% of all of those studied showed a neurological effect because of RFR radio frequency exposure, 65% had genetic problems. 91% of the research (whether funded by industry or not funded by industry) show that there are significant problems with this technology.
If the radiation is harmless how come no insurance company, not even Lloyd’s of London, will insure you for that ? Implementing setbacks costs money, it being cheaper to piggyback urban infrastructure rather than service a fresh more rural site, and so denial of the biological effects still suits the industry purse.
“I am Kent Chamberlain professor and chair emeritus in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Hampshire. I served on the commission along with other experts in the scientific community and I’ve been active in public outreach since the commission submitted its final report in November 2020.”
The commission recommends that a reasonable setback distance for wireless telecommunications facilities be no less than 1,640 feet or 500 meters
“Before I joined this the commission I was a professor and chair of the department of electrical and computer engineering at the University of New Hampshire and as such my bias, if anything, is FOR technology. I’ve seen the great things that technology can do. I thought that we would find that there were no concerns, we would be done and then we would be able to go home and declare victory. However, that wasn’t the case, we looked through the peer-reviewed journals, we talked to experts, and we came to the conclusion that THIS IS a concern and people need to know about it and we need to address it.”
Kent Chamberlin
The 13 commission members’ backgrounds including physics toxicology electro-magnetics and epidemiology. They listened to 9 experts. The only expert that was paid was somebody paid for by the telecommunications industry and they the only person to say that cell phone radiation was not a problem.
The overarching conclusion is that wireless radiation is harmful. This table is from the 10 year study in Belo Horizonte, Brazil:
What is safe for one person might not be safe for another – those who are electro-sensitive can experience symptoms of radiation exposure at distances greater than 1640 feet (500m) from a cell tower, which means that the proposed setback may not ensure a reasonable exposure level for electrosensitive people. Electrosensitivity is real and it is recognized by the Americans with disabilities act and medicare there are also indications that the number of people with electrosensitivity is increasing along with increasing levels of background radiation.
Approach 1: was to look at the adverse health effects as a function of the distance people live from a cell tower. By tracing adverse health effects in this way we can get a pretty good sense of where exposure risk becomes reasonable. There have been at least 10 studies.
Epidemiological evidence for a health risk from mobile phone base stations
Approach 2: to determine the set back, the first step is to identify the lowest power density in the laboratory that is shown to produce adverse health effects and there are many studies that have done this and so there’s a reasonable consensus about what the radiation levels are where adverse effects begin to occur.
Low exposure levels are associated with bioeffects and adverse health effects at cell tower rfr exposure levels
The second step is to identify the distance from a typical cell tower where that lowest level of radiation occurs. At that distance most people should not experience adverse health effects. Determining a setback distance using these two approaches provides us with a reasonability check.
We are concerned about the placement of cell towers, there is a clear and growing body of evidence demonstrating that exposure to cell phone type radiation is harmful.
What’s meant by cell phone radiation is basically digital radiation in general, so all of the devices that you have, and these devices only have been around for perhaps 20 years, send digital information ‘zeros and ones’ and this digital radiation is of greater concern because of its pulsed nature.
You get little spikes of energy when exposed to signals, and the way a biochemist recently described those bursts of energy as ‘like a jackhammer on your cells’.
Your cells are basically electromagnetic in nature, your brain is very electromagnetic in nature so when you have this digital type radiation it’s more harmful to you physically than the more familiar radiation from 30 years ago like FM radio and AM radio stations. They were of concern but not as much concern as with cell phone type radiation.
The other difference between different digital devices is the amount of power that is given.
To give you a sense of the relative risk of the various devices:
Bluetooth is 100 milliwatts, that’s a concern
Smart meters are of great concern because they’re transmitting almost continuously and they have a pretty high power output close to 1watt.
Cell phones themselves are very strong radiators from 0.6 watts or 600 milliwatts up to 3 watts it’s a fair amount of power.
Cell towers can go from 10 to 50 watts so those are very strong radiators, they’re radiating digital information and they’re radiating pretty much continuously as opposed to your cell phone that radiates only occasionally, so that’s why we’re particularly concerned about cell towers and their placement.
