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0 pointsm0zg6y ago0 comments

> There were a lot of radiologists who were concerned.

Would those be the same group of people who are "concerned" about 5G towers today? You can always find a small group of people who are "concerned" about anything you like. The press uses this for nearly every such story they publish. Without statistics quantifying that "a lot" the statement is meaningless. And even if you have the statistics, there being "a lot" of them is not a guarantee that they were right. One would need to present evidence for their concern as well to be treated seriously. Such evidence does not exist, since airplane flights themselves are a source of radiation exposure.

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/DZqWhneDEMxElDzz7ZiUk0Jv93w=...

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8 comments · 4 top-level

TeMPOraL6y ago· 2 in thread

A very reasonable heuristic for life is: you should not be concerned about non-ionizing radiation (like 5G), unless in doses that could burn your face off. You should, by default, be concerned about ionizing radiation (like x-rays) in any dose above the natural background.

acidburnNSA6y ago

That's been the heuristic since the 1950s. Now we have much more data on low-dose ionizing radiation. Regulations still assume linear no-threshold, yet no one has definitively shown that anything below 100 mSv causes harm or good using vast amounts of data (c.f. US natural background of 3 mSv/yr). Thus, my rule of thumb is to start worrying only if I get more than 100 mSv either acutely or integrated over a year.

I worry a lot more about eating hamburgers than anything less than 100 mSv.

TeMPOraL6y ago

I agree, and didn't mean to imply otherwise. I was focusing more on the point about ionizing vs. non-ionizing radiation, which I swear to god had to drill into random people's heads in every imaginable way and combination.

I assume this chart is still good to show to people: https://xkcd.com/radiation/?

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rrss6y ago· 1 in thread

No. People who are concerned about 5G deployment for non-conspiracy theory or ignorance reasons are concerned about unknown effects of increased exposure to nonionizing radiation.

X-rays are very much different from the sub-100 GHz bands used for 5G, and the concerns raised at the time about backscatter xray scanners were that the safety of the systems had not been demonstrated sufficiently to start irradiating everyone who got on a plane, because the negative health effects of ionizing radiation are well understood.

SAI_Peregrinus6y ago

I'm concerned about mm wave 5G because of sideband interference with water absorbtion lines making weather satellites less accurate.

triyambakam6y ago· 1 in thread

There is the other side, though. You can always find a rather like group of people who will rail against all of the concern and no matter the data will continue to be unconcerned. They often say they advocate for science, but it is completely unscientific to not reexamine one's ideas given new data

m0zgOP6y ago

I (unlike the OP) did present evidence, though.

X6S1x6Okd1st6y ago

X-rays are reasonable to worry about, the radio waves used in 5g, not so much

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