5G concerns have grown increasingly widespread. However, their source is anything but ordinary. If you look at the arguments behind these worries, you’ll find some truly strange conspiracy theories. Some people reason that 5G uses the same wavelengths as weapons. Others argue that it’s being used by the military to break morale among the enemy population.
“The wavelengths that 5G will employ are all completely safe and have been studied and tested for decades”, Howard Jones, the head of technology communications at UK’s mobile network provider EE, told The Guardian.
The science behind 5G
There’s a lot of anxiety about the phone network. Many people might not know what 5G is, so here’s a quick rundown of the technology.
When you use your phone, it communicates with a nearby cell tower through radio waves. The phone tower then connects (also via radio waves) to the core network, which sends data back and forth. Currently, if your phone uses 4G, the frequency band of the radio waves it employs is anywhere from 2 – 8 GHz. This is a slightly higher frequency than 1.8 – 2.5 GHz for 3G (and can be slightly different, depending on your region).
Higher frequencies have both advantages and disadvantages. The shorter a radio wave becomes, the higher its frequency. Similar to sound waves, shorter waves lose energy faster as they travel, so they will cover less ground. A cell is an area of land covered by the phone tower – also known as a base station – which is generally around 1 to 20 kilometers in diameter but can be considerably smaller depending on how many phones are in the region.
Why People are Concerned
5G could potentially provide network connection speeds that are orders of magnitude higher than what we have now with 3G or 4G. One of the reasons people are so concerned about 5G is that it could transmit frequencies up to 300 GHz, but different countries will set limits on the frequencies differently.
Higher frequencies are known as ‘millimeter wavelengths’, because they range between 1 and 10 millimeters. Shorter waves with larger energy might appear to be hazardous at first glance, but there’s no evidence to support these concerns. “Higher frequency doesn’t imply more intensity: it’s similar to comparing blue light with red light”, Andrew Wood of Swinburne University in Australia explained to ScienceAlert.
For 5G’s 26 GHz, Wood is utilizing sophisticated computer modeling to predict the degree to which radiofrequency is absorbed in various regions of the skin. There are nerve endings in the skin that would alert you if you were subjected to too much radiation.
Because shorter wavelengths don’t penetrate as deeply as longer ones, 5G phone tower stations will need to be placed closer together, which does not comfort those concerned about the growing number of radio waves in their environment.
“Centralizing much of the processing that has previously been done at the base station is another major change for 5G. Dealing with a high volume of devices and complicated computations necessitates a large amount of computing power”, explains Wood.
“Rather than having each base station do it, the raw data will be sent to a central location and then processed there”, explains Wood. So, why are people so worried? Fears of electromagnetic radiation are not uncommon; the most basic answer is that the promise of a 5G rollout is simply repackaging people’s longstanding worries in a new package. “The general public’s exposure levels will be far below ICNIRP’s recommended limits, which are linked to the WHO”, claims Wood.
However, according to researchers, this increase in 5G phobia might be owing to one thing: Russia. We couldn’t make this stuff up if we tried.
