With innovation comes detractors | Brantford Expositor
Few technological innovations have come without doomsayers telling us that we are all going to die.
When trains started going faster, passengers were warned their blood would boil if speed exceeded first 30 mph and then 60 mph. Allowing electricity into homes would cause death and destruction.
It seems to be human nature, particularly in a crisis, to find something to blame for our ills. Vaccinations, electromagnetic fields and other innovations all have their detractors.
The latest target for unfounded concern is 5G, the fifth generation of wireless technology that promises to give 10 times the performance of current technology.
It is capable of speeds in the 10 to 20 gigabits per second, up from the current 10 megabytes per second speeds. Network latency will improve from 30 milliseconds to about one millisecond. This will allow great performance of streaming movies and other rich content right to your phones.
All in all, a vastly superior technology for communications. What could be wrong with that?
Well, there are those who blame the COVID-19 pandemic on 5G, falsely claiming the technology spreads the novel coranavirus.
Claims continue that electromagnetic waves cause a host of physical and psychological problems despite decades of studies allaying those concerns.
People who complain about 5G say that the radiation emitted is harmful to humans. While it is true that some electromagnetic radiation can be harmful, 5G does not meet the test of harmful radiation. Radio waves, microwaves, light waves, X-rays, and gamma rays are all forms of light whose defining characteristic is their frequency.
Such radiation can be lumped into two kinds: ionizing and non-ionizing. Radio waves and visible light waves are non-ionizing and harmless to humans. The same goes for microwave energy in the frequency and power levels used in communications. The microwaves do not have enough energy to break chemical bonds. Special frequencies, such as those used in microwave ovens, are specially tuned to affect water and fat molecules, but 5G frequencies have no such effect.
Unless you are exposed to massive amounts of radio-frequency radiation, human exposure to radio waves does not have any appreciable effect on human or animal tissue. All radio waves fall into this non-ionizing category. Wi-Fi, radio, power lines, visible light, infrared light are all harmless to human tissue. It is only when you get to the ultra-violet C light and above that direct harm to living tissue can accrue.
The bottom line is that there is no known mechanism, which would allow radio waves to damage living tissue, unless that tissue is exposed to high levels of electromagnetic radiation, far greater than you would ever be exposed to.
The confusion is added to by the inclusion of radio frequency radiation as a Group 2B agent, which means that it is possible it could cause cancer in humans. What is not mentioned by the doomsayers is that 2B is the same classification as caffeine. In other words, the risk, if it exists at all, is so small as to be almost impossible to find a definitive study to prove a link.
New technology has its risks, which must be evaluated against its benefits. Automobiles are a serious risk to human health, which has been outweighed by their utility, To make rational choices, we must listen to the scientific evidence and not our fears.
Tim Philp has enjoyed science since he was old enough to read. Having worked in technical fields all his life, he shares his love of science with readers weekly. He can be reached by e-mail at: [email protected] or via snail mail c/o The Expositor.