Scientific American — We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe — Implications for Tinnitus (?)

My wife and I are both quite concerned about the advent of 5G, with my concern being mostly on how it might affect my tinnitus. She started a group here in So. Oregon to see what could be done to stop it. Oregon seems to be a focal point of resistance to this technology, and I think the City of Portland has already decided they won't allow it. -- I thought the following recent article was a good read. Would likely be of special interest to anybody with tinnitus and fragile ears.

We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe
The technology is coming, but contrary to what some people say, there could be health risks
By Joel M. Moskowitz on October 17, 2019

Here's the introduction:

The telecommunications industry and their experts have accused many scientists who have researched the effects of cell phone radiation of "fear mongering" over the advent of wireless technology's 5G. Since much of our research is publicly-funded, we believe it is our ethical responsibility to inform the public about what the peer-reviewed scientific literature tells us about the health risks from wireless radiation.

The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently announced through a press release that the commission will soon reaffirm the radio frequency radiation (RFR) exposure limits that the FCC adopted in the late 1990s. These limits are based upon a behavioral change in rats exposed to microwave radiation and were designed to protect us from short-term heating risks due to RFR exposure.

Yet, since the FCC adopted these limits based largely on research from the 1980s, the preponderance of peer-reviewed research, more than 500 studies, have found harmful biologic or health effects from exposure to RFR at intensities too low to cause significant heating.

Citing this large body of research, more than 240 scientists who have published peer-reviewed research on the biologic and health effects of nonionizing electromagnetic fields (EMF) signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for stronger exposure limits. The appeal makes the following assertions:

 

"As soon as the antennas were installed, several residents and entire families in the heart of Geneva reported similar unusual symptoms of loud ringing in the ear, intense headaches, unbearable earaches, insomnia, chest pain, fatigue and not feeling well in the house.

29-year-old Geneva resident, Johan Perruchoud, called up Swisscom and was told that indeed the 5G cell towers were activated on the same day he began to feel the symptoms. When others called Swisscom they were told everything is legal and within guidelines."


https://healthimpactnews.com/2019/s...entation-as-new-illnesses-start-at-same-time/

 

Wow.

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.tomsguide.com/amp/special-report/5g-health-risks

https://www.google.com/amp/s/thecon...-health-so-lets-stop-worrying-about-it-120501

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/is-5g-dangerous/?amp

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ho...ould-you-be-about-the-health-risks-of-5g/amp/

For me, it is mainly the fear of what you don't see that produces these effects.

 

That's why I'm not afraid of 4G right, because I can see 4G radio waves?

Think about what you just wrote.

 

@JohnAdams I misspoke, indeed. I meant by that that since you don't see or feel the waves, it can give way to many assumptions. Have you ever heard of the nocebo effect? I think that's more what these people are suffering from.

We have been studying the dangers of the electromagnetic waves for 30 years, and nothing has been proven, and studies that showed evidence have all been contradicted. I'm not making it up. As they say in the article, in the eyes of the WHO, electromagnetic waves are as carcinogenic as aloe vera.

 

I think 5G is too powerful, like having high power microwave ovens on every other telephone pole in your neighborhood.
Current 4G frequencies are up to 2.5 GHz. 5G will go up to 95 GHz. That's a big jump in energy levels.

 

@Simon Czt -- People who are electrosensitive can feel those waves, and it often makes them very ill.

 

I clearly don't want to start a debate on this, but electrosensitivity has never been proven. On the contrary, studies have shown that it is the reaction of people to electromagnetic waves that causes the symptoms and not the electromagnetic waves themselves. Many studies have shown that "electrosensitive" people have not been able to know when they were in the presence of electromagnetic waves or not.

 

Can I get the source of what you said? Of the articles I read, it didn't go higher than 30 ghz.

 

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-eyes-spectrum-above-95-ghz-for-5g-backhaul
https://www.rcrwireless.com/2017031...ons-spectrum-above-95-ghz-for-5g-support-tag2

 

Bunch of stuff here...

I think there are clearly nonthermal metabolic effects of various EM exposure which are not, at present, understood. There is certainly enough data to support that statement. However, what the effects are, how dangerous they are, how they relate to various different frequency bands -- it's pretty hard to untangle. I am of the opinion that it's unlikely that present technology has massive detrimental effects, because enough studies have been conducted where that would show up. What we have is a handful of things showing alterations in various transmitter levels. Some rat studies that make it look like LTE exposure might be similar to visible light exposure in terms of effects on melatonin... and then other studies which found that to not be the case, or found that the effect disappeared after 2 weeks.

Do you have a source for this? I am aware of multiple attempts to study this under lab conditions which have very conflicted results; there have only been a handful of studies and so I do not really think we have definitive data one way or another.

Ex:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26372109
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31241260
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28810440

Even if we can prove metabolic effect proving harm is even more difficult unless we observe very consistent problems. I vaguely remember one study where patients exposed to more EMF recovered more quickly, as well as a study from a Swedish hospital where one wing was EM-shielded, which seemed to show the opposite.

The best data around tinnitus comes from cellphones (ex: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26602000 ) -- of course, cellphones also involve holding a speaker right up to your ear and/or wearing headphones... which is a clearly demonstrated tinnitus vector.

For what it's worth, I am interested enough in this that I once spent a while camping in the National Radio Free Zone in Greenbank, WV -- it was real pretty and it was neat to tour their space telescope museum, but there was zero impact on my tinnitus. If 5g requires repeaters every 100 feet, I'll be dead before they put my house in a coverage zone in any case.

I'm not dismissive of, or totally unconcerned about 5g, but it's just one of many many new kids of pollution we're inventing every year, and it worries me less than the current generation of flame retardant chemicals, for instance.

The IEMF is suspect; they are accused on multiple fronts of quackery for reasons which appear to me to hold water. That does not mean they are wrong, the industry itself should certainly not be trusted to produce reliable data.

 

I'd think that if some humans can feel EMF and others can't then they must have some kind of sensory organ that the rest of us don't and would constitute a different species. I remain highly skeptical of EMF sensitivity.

 

well, animals which are electrosensitive, detect EM waves with specialized brain function. So, if humans are capable, that's where I'd look; hippies love to suggest the pineal, but they say that about everything.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213879X17300330

Worth a read

 

I know here in Victoria after we had a roll out of smart meters people reported symptoms which they identified as being caused by wireless radiation. People did say they knew when they were close by an electrical field, as "they could feel it" meaning an increase in their Symptomology.

The symptoms included insomnia, headaches, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), fatigue, cognitive disturbances, dysesthesias (abnormal sensations), and dizziness.

https://www.defendershield.com/electrosensitivity-some-people-more-sensitive-emfs-than-others

There also was a study that showed Brain Abnormalities in Electrosensitivity Sufferers, although many of the people suffering from electrosensitivity in the study were found to have previous head injuries or neurotoxic chemical exposure and then developed EHS.
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/reveh.2017.32.issue-3/reveh-2017-0014/reveh-2017-0014.xm

 

I thought you may be amused by these studies so I have posted them for your perusal. In 2016 Aloe vera whole leaf extract showed clear evidence of carcinogenic activity in rats, and was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a possible human carcinogen, so anything may be possible.
https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/the-nocebo-effect-can-our-thoughts-kill-us-20150303-13tdjl.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26986231

 

Look, I really don’t want to start a debate on this. I have my opinion, you have yours, too bad. I just don’t think it exists. No need to try to convince me. I personally think it’s the nocebo effect that causes this, hence the link you posted.

Have a good day.

Thank you for stopping mentioning me on this topic.

(When I was talking about aloe vera, I was talking about its application to the skin, the ingestion of aloe vera has long been known to be carcinogenic)

 

Sorry I wasn't trying to convince you, I have always found this topic interesting, I wasn't trying to be argumentative, just sharing information that I have been told on these subjects. I am sorry to have upset you.

 

You didn’t upset me don’t worry! I wanted to send you a private message apologizing for being cold, it’s just that it’s a topic I don’t like to talk about, and seeing it on the tinnitus forum made me pretty anxious. Sorry!

If you really want my opinion on the subject, I think that electromagnetic waves can indeed interact with the body to a certain degree, denying it will be like denying science !

But with all the research I have done on the subject, for me, as regards to the electro-sensitive persons, it will be more of the order of the nocebo effect, rather than of a real sensitivity to electromagnetic waves (moreover the article that you posted on the subject is very clear). I will no longer participate on this topic!

 

so, this is a website that sells a bunch of really dubious looking (unproven / probable snake oil) products and provides no original research, but does link to this same study

This study found that people who subjectively complain of EHS symptoms have abnormal MRIs, and, in many cases, a history of traumatic brain injuries and / or drug exposure. This does not demonstrate that these patients actually have symptoms in response to electromagnetic fields, which is a very important distinction (and something which no study I'm aware of has ever demonstrated conclusively in a verifiable and repeatable way, which is why EHS tends to be a psychiatric diagnosis to the extent it's recognized at all).

I think that humans may indeed react to some EM bands in ways we don't understand, but I am profoundly distrustful of 99.9% of the information online about this because outside of peer reviewed journals you have random scammers selling "dirty electricity cleaners" and garbage like that, and inside of peer reviewed journals you have a hodgepodge of somewhat conflicting things, along with a bunch of industry-funded-and-bought "nothing to see here, this is all perfectly fine and safe" studies. There is a large gray area between these extremes.

All that said, I would agree that we have, at present, no real reason to believe 5g is safe. We are, as always, in the middle of a whole bunch of simultaneous experiments about how far we can modify our environment before we push various systems into feedback loops or otherwise past the point of no return.

 

I was aware that the website I had posted had its own interests at heart, I am used to seeing snake oil, I think all tinnitus sufferers have witnessed these things especially if you have googled "tinnitus". Research is sparse in the area of EHS, but I have always been interested in this topic, and how it may impact on peoples health/perception of health.

I did look after a man once who was adamant his health had been affected by a large telecommunications tower that had been erected not far from his home. The man was admitted for extreme health related anxiety, hence a psychiatric diagnosis, but he never had any psychiatric history previously. A few of the Doctors I spoke with said they could not dismiss entirely what the man was saying, but as they could find no other medical reason they just had to treat the anxiety component. I am not sure what happened to this man, but I am presuming he moved home.

I think you are spot on with your comment that we are always in the middle of experiments about how far we can modify our environment, so let's just hope things don't get pushed too far

We also have a lobby group here in Australia, they just recently posted an article on 5G.
@Lane you might be interested in this:
https://stopsmartmeters.com.au/health-researchsafety/