a while ago we did a video on whether smartphones could actually cause cancer
from the radiation that they give off in the form of cellular and wi-fi signals
you can check it out up here but the main takeaway is no you don't
have anything to worry about but here we are in 2019 and some of the same
concerns are getting raised yet again this time about 5g
although 5g promises to deliver faster speeds to our phones and there are even
home-based internet solutions that use 5g
the fact that 5g travels over higher frequency radio waves has led to
speculation that it might be riskier to use than older generation wireless
standards so how much truth is there to this and why are people concerned in the
first place well to start with 5g uses what's often
called millimeter wave frequencies which are shorter than the typical frequencies
used by 4g and wi-fi signals and
therefore higher in energy in fact while lte can use frequencies of
around 2.5 gigahertz and wi-fi often
works on the 5 gigahertz band millimeter wave frequencies used by 5g can be up to
300 gigahertz so we're not talking about
like a small incremental leap here so then could all this extra energy end
up being harmful in ways we haven't seen before well some of the folks and
advocacy groups that believe it is point to actions taken by the
international agency for research on cancer or iarc specifically the fact
that they've classified rf electromagnetic fields in short radio
waves as possibly carcinogenic to humans
as evidence that it is well that sounds pretty alarming doesn't it
well it might until you consider that
many things that most of us find innocuous like a cup of coffee actually
fall under exactly the same category you see if you dig into what the iarc's
definition of possibly carcinogenic is
they mean that there's only a limited amount of evidence that an agent might
cause cancer so there might be some kind of weak
correlation that's been observed in studies but that is a very far cry from
there being any kind of real causal link that's been found
so irc's approach is to err on the safe
side with anything that it classifies a bit like how
everything that you buy has a label on it saying the state of california thinks
this thing might cause cancer but this hasn't stopped people from
hearing the words possibly carcinogenic and running with it in fact a couple
places in europe were hesitant to test new 5g infrastructure
citing health concerns and there were even rumors that there were widespread
bird deaths in the netherlands due to 5g trials
well turned out those birds were just eating poisonous plants i guess there's
a reason that bird brain is an expression
anyway the reason that we have nothing to fear from 5g is that radiation has to
be much higher frequency to be what's called ionizing
ionizing radiation can mess with the molecular structure of your dna and
cause cancer the thing is the threshold for this is around a million gigahertz
much higher than the 300 or so that can be used by 5g
and at that point you're not even dealing with radio waves anymore you're
dealing with ultraviolet light which is why sunscreen bottles talk about uv
protection on the label now with all of that said we're not
claiming that 5g or any other piece of technology that we
use can't cause cancer or other health
problems by some mechanism that we haven't yet discovered or don't fully
understand yet the thing is though my advice would be
to go forward live your life without too much fear
and pick up that hot new 5g phone if you're into it now if you'll excuse me i
have to go pick up a large sack of cash that the mobile phone industry left for
me out back bye oh wait no actually the cache comes from
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