5G and beyond

The 5G Morass – tales and tattles or reasons for concern?

By Paul Ben Ishai, The Times of Israel,
Excerpt: Last week someone sent me a WhatsApp link to an article by Avior Abu in the Calcalist. Quietly, under the cover of our political chaos, an interdepartmental committee is trying to overthrow the right of a municipality to decide where a cell phone antenna will be erected in its jurisdiction. Their reasons being that while we want our cellphone, we don’t want to see their base stations or antennas in our backyard, even as we complain about poor coverage and slow data speeds. In this age of Corona, improved coverage sounds a good thing …. or is it?  Will such a power be abused at industry’s whim? During the early 2000 the cellphone companies in Israel routinely exploited a loophole in the law to place cellphone antennas inside apartments. It took a Knesset law to stop that and so one cannot rely on industry playing fair. It is a pertinent question because in the next few years industry is promising us a 5G revolution. And this revolution will demand a massive deployment of antenna infrastructure.  And that sort of power is easily abused. All in the name of “progress” so that nothing will stop the deployment of 5G networks here is Israel….SNIP

UK epidemiologist Prof John Frank questions the safety of the 5G rollout.

Published in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

Electromagnetic fields, 5G and health: what about the precautionary principle

Professor John Frank
Abstract

New fifth generation (5G) telecommunications systems, now being rolled out globally, have become the subject of a fierce controversy. Some health protection agencies and their scientific advisory committees have concluded that there is no conclusive scientific evidence of harm. Several recent reviews by independent scientists, however, suggest that there is significant uncertainty on this question, with rapidly emerging evidence of potentially harmful biological effects from radio frequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF) exposures, at the levels 5G roll-out will entail. This essay identifies four relevant sources of scientific uncertainty and concern:…SNIP

Call for Temporary Moratorium on 5G Deployment

From the blog of Dariusz Leszczynski

Excerpt:

The currently ongoing deployment of the fifth generation of the wireless communication technology (5G) is being met with a great enthusiasm by the telecommunication industry, national governments and portion of the general public. However, there is also some resistance from the part of the population, caused by the uncertainty whether radiation emitted by the 5G networks and devices will have any effects on human health and environmental impact on fauna and flora….SNIP

Why The Race To 5G Is A Mirage by Devra Davis

Excerpt:
* Former national finance minister, Lou Jiwei warned last month that existing 5G technology in China is immature and quite expensive.
* The next stimulus package should contain billions of dollars to produce, distribute, install, build out, maintain and monitor municipal fiber-optic broadband cable around the nation.
* Until and unless a much safer, more cost-effective and less-energy intensive system can be produced, we should revise plans for continued expansion of the 5G albatross.

You may have heard that we are locked in a technology battle with China over commercializing 5G. That conflict turns out to be more hype than happening, designed to whet American appetites for competition and pave the way for more subsidies to the global multi-trillion dollar telecom industry.

Former national finance minister, Lou Jiwei warned last month that existing 5G technology in China is immature and quite expensive. Increased electricity costs to fuel 5G in 2019, he recently warned look to be 10 times the profit of China Telecom — one of three state telecom companies of China…SNIP

From Dariusz Leszczynski: Guest blog from Steve Weller

Excerpt: False claims of safety and reckless abandonment of the precautionary principle

by Steve Weller, ORSAA, Australia

Reading the latest blogs on BRHP, and witnessing first hand the rhetoric coming from many government and industry representatives about the safety of 5G, I feel compelled as a custodian of the ORSAA RF research database to provide comment.

Misinformation, disinformation and fake news appear to be the sign of the times and claims of safety in relation to 5G (and I would also include 2G, 3G, 4G, 4G LTE etc.) are not supported by any robust scientific evidence..SNIP..I feel it is most important that people realise that it is not necessarily the RF carrier wave that causes all the biological effects noted in RF-EMR research but it is often the complex modulation/pulsing of the carrier wave and the varying intensities these signals operate at that appears to make it more bioactive..SNIP

Secretiveness of dealings on RF and health (Dariusz Leszczynski)

EXCERPT: In a very interesting news post, Louis Slesin of the Microwave News, reminded that the secretive dealings are part of the RF-arena [emphasis added DL]: “…Government and industry representatives from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the U.S. participated, as did an assortment of academics. The public was not invited…” …and, of course, ICES, ICNIRP and EMF Project were there as well. It seems typical for the industry, regulators, governments, ICES, ICNIRP and EMF Project to mingle, in the absence of general public and later, to provide very scarce information, if any at all. Those responsible for developing safety guidelines and for government/academia funded research, seem to prefer to do things in secrecy, behind the scenes, not to be “bothered” by a plethora of activists. They prefer to present their work when it is fully ready and “deal is done“….SNIP

Dutch Avisory Panel Calls for Caution on 5G

Published in Microwave News:
November 11, 2020
An advisory panel to the Health Council of the Netherlands is recommending a “cautious approach” to 5G radiation exposures.The committee is also advising that the 26 GHz frequency band (millimeter waves) not be used “for as long as the potential health risks have not been investigated.” The new advisory report, 5G and Health, was originally released in September with an executive summary in English. Now a full 131-page translation is available (it features 807 references). There is also a 33-page overview. The nine-member panel, all from Holland, was chaired by Professor Hans Kromhout, an epidemiologist at the University of Utrecht’s Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences. One of the two scientific secretaries is the Health Council’s Eric van Rongen, the current vice chair of ICNIRP and its chairman from 2016 until earlier this year. While the committee endorses the recently revised ICNIRP guidelines, it notes that, “[I]t cannot be excluded that exposure under the latest ICNIRP standards also has the potential to affect health.” Here is the full text of the committee’s four recommendations to the Dutch Parliament:…SNIP