Why 5G is safe

There is no connection between COVID-19 infections and 5G. Anyone who tells you different either doesn’t know what they’re talking about or is trying to sell you on something.

But you obviously don’t have to take our word for it. We talked with Dr. Theodore Rappaport, founding director of NYU Wireless and 5G expert, about this claim. Not only does he state that that there is “absolutely no factual basis” to a 5G-COVID connection, he’s written an entire paper on the safety of this new mobile technology.

If you’re worried about dangerous radiation, tanning without sunscreen is a far bigger risk. More than 90% of skin cancers are caused by exposure to the sun’s UV light.

Despite this, at least 77 mobile towers were damaged just in the UK by people concerned with catching coronavirus via 5G. So, like any good scientist, Rappaport took time out of his busy schedule to set the record straight. And just to make sure we didn’t waste his day, we also talked about the real concerns that will come with a 5G deployment.

A ridiculous rumor

As someone who’s spent a large portion of his life working with mobile technologies, Rappaport is pretty annoyed with the disinformation he’s seeing online right now.

“It boggles my mind why there's a fringe group that views this as an issue,” says Rappaport. “The frequencies of cell phones and other radio devices are orders of magnitude below the energy level of ionizing radiation, which can lead to cancer.”

Ionizing radiation, Rappaport explains, is strong enough to knock electrons out of a valence shell and force atoms to go unstable. These atoms are then called free radicals, which are linked to a host of health problems. While cell phone signals aren’t powerful enough to cause this reaction, there are everyday activities that can put you at risk.

“Wireless is operating at several orders of magnitude lower in frequency than light,” says Rappaport. “I tell people they should be more worried about putting on sunscreen or how often they fly above 10,000 feet and are exposed to galactic ionizing radiation.”

The FDA states that overexposure to UV radiation suppresses your body’s natural response to fighting infection. Specifically, they say that overindulging in some sun can make conditions like the Herpes simplex virus harder to control. So, if you’re worried about 5G lowering your immune system, you might be better off avoiding the beach this summer.

In addition to this fear of lowered immune response, some say the 5G towers are spreading the virus itself. If those people would like to explain how a physical object like a virus can be transported via light, they may want to contact NASA because we’re clearly doing space travel wrong.

New technologies are complicated, and because they’re hard to understand some people instantly jump to fearing them. While blind fear can allow you to miss out on some wonderful innovations, it also forces you to ignore real concerns. 5G will have some problems that we’ll need to address, but we can’t do that if we’re tilting at windmills.

5G won’t be perfect

Something we do need to address when it comes to 5G is security. As Rappaport points out, 5G will come with a host of problems that we will need to think about as the technology is deployed.

“The security concerns are valid because there will be much more content out towards the edge of the network and closer where people are,” says Rappaport. “There'll be a lot of content which is replicated and stored in many places, many base stations all at the same time. So, access to data will become much easier if there's a security breach.”

Rappaport explains that one of 5G’s greatest strengths is also one of its biggest weaknesses. There will be more content at the base stations and information will be much more decentralized throughout the whole network. This will allow for greater bandwidth and data rates, but it also makes protecting this information harder.

What’s next? Adoption of 4G enabled widespread use of ride sharing, video streaming, and food delivery apps that we already take for granted in our everyday lives. What will 5G bring?

Additionally, it’s important to consider the hardware necessary for 5G to work. For instance, Huawei’s decision to produce 5G infrastructure equipment is an issue that concerns certain parts of the US government. Whether that fear is based in reality or not remains to be seen, but it’s something experts are interested in.

Regardless of what experts say, people will always act irrationally out of fear of new technologies. However, we cannot allow a small group of bad actors to define our steps into the future. Specifically, Rappaport reflects on how missing the 5G train could alter a country’s economic prosperity.

“It's almost like the haves versus have-nots,” says Rappaport. “The countries with 5G will have the faster, better data rates, access to new apps, access to new products and services that exploit fiber optic-like speed going to every mobile device. Think about Uber and YouTube. 4G enabled Uber and YouTube and Netflix to become available to consumers on their phones. Countries that didn't have 4G didn't, and weren't able to avail their citizens with those kinds of capabilities and the economic gain that came with it.”

Originally posted on Science Node: https://sciencenode.org/feature/Why%205G%20is%20safe.php