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  • 5G health issues explained: What’s wrong with the “studies”?

    5G health issues explained: What’s wrong with the “studies”?

    Date: 27.05.2019

    Author:


    5G Health Issues Explained

    Introduction

    In my previous post on possible health effects of radiation generated by mobile networks and mobile phones I have discussed a few fundamental facts about microwave radiation, and concluded:

    • Microwave radiation absorbed from mobile network towers is negligible, compared to the radiation from handheld mobile phones.
    • Microwave radiation levels of mobile phones have gone down since the start of digital mobile communication in the early 1990s by a factor of at least 10.
    • The higher the density of base station transmitters in an area, the lower the total amount of microwave radiation emitted by the phones. This is due to the tight power control on the mobile phones exercised by base stations. (An everyday experience of all of us: the better you hear your conversation partner, the lower your voice volume).

    I have concluded the blog post with the observation, that none of the negative health effects of mobile phone radiation predicted by fear-mongers and alarmists since more than 20 years have been observed. Despite the partly obsessive use of mobile phones, mainly by young people since the early 2000s. Still there are claims that certain “studies” have provided clear indications that mobile phones are causing cancer.

    In this article I would like to get a little bit deeper into the possible effects of microwave radiation on substances, and on living tissues in particular.

    No Free Radicals in living Cells from Mobile Phone Radiation

    One of the frequent alarming claims is that microwave radiation from mobile phones create so-called free radicals in body cells, which are seen as major contributors to the development of cancer. Free radicals are molecules with charged free ends, which are very aggressive when they tend to bind themselves to other molecules in their neighborhood. In order to create a free radical, you need to break a chemical bond or kick an electron out of its “home” atom hull. The same is true when you want to break or change DNA. Let us have a quick look at electromagnetic radiation to understand if that could happen as a consequence of microwave radiation.

    Since over 200 years electromagnetic radiation (represented by visible light as the most “visible” section of the spectrum) has been interpreted as a wave (Huygens) and as a stream of particles (Newton) at the same time. A century old controversy, which has only been resolved in the 1940s by Quantum Electrodynamics. For our considerations we continue to live with waves and photons; no need to dive into quantum worlds.

    Figure 1 below shows a wide range of the huge electromagnetic spectrum. It starts at zero Hz (oscillations per second), and goes up to and above 1020 Hz.  It includes AM and FM radio waves (~100 Mega-Hertz), microwaves (300 MHz to 300 GHz), visible light (1 PHz), X-Rays, Gamma-Rays and high energy cosmic rays. You can see the mobile telephony frequency range marked in green between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. Visible light (the red-blue colored bar) is shown for comparison.

    electromagneticspectrum

    Figure 1: Electromagnetic Spectrum.[1]

    For an assessment of the capability of electromagnetic radiation to break a chemical bond, or to remove an electron we need to understand how much energy a single photon of the radiation actually has and compare it with the energy of the targeted chemical bonds. It is always a single photon that breaks a bond or kicks an electron out of its “orbit”.

    The energy of the photons is calculated using Planck’s formula[2]. I have done this in the table below for a range of characteristic frequencies. For convenience I have expressed the energy in Joule (J) and in electron Volts (eV).

    Wave Frequency Photon Energy (in J) Photon Energy (in eV)
    300 MHz 1.8 * 10-25 1.2*10-6 Lowest GSM frequency
    3 GHz 1.8 * 10-24 1.2 * 10 -5 High LTE band
    30 GHz 1.8 * 10-23 1.2 * 10-4

    New Radio, 5G

    3 THz 1.8 * 10-21 1.2 * 10-2 Infrared
    600 THz 3.6 * 10-19 2.4 Visible Light
    3 PHz 1.8 * 10-18 12 UV radiation

    The energy of chemical bonds in organic molecules is between 3 and 5 eV[3]. Hydrogen bridges, which are important for three-dimensional structure of proteins, have a slightly lower energy of about 1 eV. The table very clearly tells you: Microwave radiation cannot have any impact on the chemistry of living tissues. There is no risk of degenerate cell chemistry from the use of mobile phones. To be clear: UV light and radiation of frequencies beyond do actually have the potential to impact our cell chemistry. That’s why we use sun screens and protect ourselves during X-ray.

    Heating effects and SAR values explained

    What else can happen? After all part of the radiation is absorbed by materials, including the phone owner’s tissues. Absorbing energy usually results in a heating effect. Heating through microwave is well known from microwave ovens. Water is particularly receptive to microwave radiation: H2O water molecules show an internal polarity which makes them each receive little quantities of the wave energy. As a consequence, the molecule starts moving faster, which is exactly what we sense and feel as heat. There is an abundant amount of water in your body tissue. Thus, if you cook a piece of meat in a microwave with 500W to 1000W, the protein will degenerate from the heat. On a side note, there is also a lot of water bound in concrete. That’s why concrete walls are shielding off microwave.

    Heating can have disastrous effects. But we do already know that mobile phones generate very little amounts of radiation energy compared to the 500W of a microwave oven.  For LTE smart phones the maximum allowed by the standards and by national regulations is 200mW, and this threshold will be valid for 5G, too. The typical transmission energy of a phone is much lower though, in particular when the phone is close to a base station. Technically it is still possible, that due to bad construction the phone antenna focusses part of its radiation energy on a tiny part of the user’s head. That is the reason for having the SAR thresholds. SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate, and it measured in Watts per Kilogram. The allowed SAR is 2 (1.6 in the US). Measured SAR values for modern smart phones are as low as 0.6. With 200mW emitted by the phone, for example an SAR of 2 could mean that 10% of the energy goes into a 10 g part of the user’s head, mainly skin and tissue close to the skin. SAR is measured by a complex procedure in specialized labs. They are using models of human skulls, containing little cells filled with liquids, and are looking for the most heated parts[4].

    Making a long story short: You can calculate what the effect of a half hour phone conversation with an SAR of 2 means for the impacted human tissue: Even if the tissue is not cooled by heat diffusion and heat transport through blood and body liquids, the maximum effect would be about 0.8 degree. And realistically we will end up in the range of 0.1 – 0.3 degrees.  If we consider that as something dangerous, we should hide from sunshine, avoid hot bathtubs, and refrain from any sports. Some readers may remember that their ear or head skin was feeling hot after a long phone conversation. This effect is not due to radiation exposure, but entirely and solely due to the heat from screen and battery discharge, plus the shielding from air circulation by the phone body held closely to the head.

    What is wrong with all these studies?

    The topic of health and Electromagnetic Radiation and (Mobile) microwave in particular certainly belongs to the most studied items in medical research. I said “most studied“, and deliberately not meant “best studied“. Out of the well over 20,000 known studies of the topic very few deserve the recognition as serious scientific work. Many have been conducted ad hoc, using awkward study design and misusing statistical formulas. And most of the “lead studies“, which are cited by mobile phone opponents are at least 20 years old; but still being merged into the current discussion.

    There are many different claims of health-adverse effects. To keep this post at a manageable length, I want to focus on the two most dramatic claims:

    1. „Short distance to cell phone towers increases cancer risk “
    2. „Using a mobile phone increases the risk of contracting cancer, in particular brain cancer “

    There is simply no substance behind those claims. All the studies I have seen or read about so far share a number of critical flaws, which can be summarized under “bad study design “. That view is also shared by the vast majority of serious professional and scientific associations:

    • No random selection of participants has taken place. In some cases, the study groups even consisted of volunteers — the big “No-No “of all statistics textbooks.
    • Samples are mostly really small, often because many of these studies are carried out ad hoc and locally.
    • Other major factors were usually completely ignored. In case of cancer, the number one driver is known to be participant age. Cancer researchers and epidemiologists insist on age-standardized data as an entry point to every study. Most studies report average age at best.
    • Also smoking or drinking habits, or exposition to hazardous materials at work are generally being dealt with by stating that it can be assumed to be homogenous across the studied groups.
    • The true exposition of participants to electromagnetic radiation during the study period has never been accurately measured. Since many of the studies are being conducted retroactively, it is quite impossible to estimate the correct exposure. The investigation would have to include other electromagnetic fields, such as from radio and TV towers (similar strength than mobile phone towers), digital cordless phones, and own use of mobile phones. It would have to consider building materials (concrete, brick, wood), which shield off electromagnetic waves differently. Most people stay inside most of the time.

    For example, the well-known and frequently cited “Naila Study “, conducted in a small German town in 2004, covered the period 1994 -2004. The data were retroactively collected from the files of 5 local physicians. From a total of 34 incidents of cancer during the 10-year study period (that is a real small sample, if there ever was one) the authors concluded a risk increase by a factor of 2.3 between people who lived inside a radius of 400 m from the mobile phone tower and those outside. On average the incidence rate was on German average; in particular it was much lower than German average on the outside of the 400 m zone — a fact that was ignored. The most obvious explanation would be that not all cases were recorded. The German Society for Medical Science, Biometrics and Epidemiology dismissed this and any similar results completely, as early as 2005[5]. See also Rothman[6] for a much broader discussion.

    A similar outcome was reported in a study conducted in Belo Horizonte, Brazil[7], often cited in publications by local initiatives across the world, too. Again, the only factor considered was proximity to the towers based on geo-data. No age structure was provided, no analysis of living or work conditions or social class of residents given.  It has been shown that the authors included less than 1/3 of all cancer deaths in the municipality in their study. The highest number of cancer deaths and highest population density was recorded within a circle of just 100m of “towers”. In fact those towers were high-rising buildings with antenna masts on top – a scenario where it is known that those residents directly under the antenna basically have no exposition at all. This study was dismissed as a “weak study” in a review by the well-known epidemiologists Foster and Trottier in the same journal[8].

    In contrast the most careful and well-crafted study so far, Interphone, was conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a WHO organization. This study analyzed well over 5,000 cancer cases worldwide, and concludes: “To date, research does not suggest any consistent evidence of adverse health effects from exposure to radio-frequency fields at levels below those that cause tissue heating[9].” This view is also shared by the American Cancer Society[10] and the Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR)[11]. One of the largest studies was conducted in Denmark with over 400,000 participants over a long period from 1982 to 2007 (basically all Danish mobile phone network subscribers, except company contracts, where the individual user could not be clearly identified). No increased risk of brain tumors from mobile phone use could be seen.

    There are issues with even the most meticulous studies, but in contrast to the self-assured local activists the serious researchers identify and discuss them. In Interphone, the top 10% extremely high users showed a slight increase of cancer rates. The researchers do not consider this as a real risk though; they rather see a distorted reporting of mobile phone use by the affected study participants and suggest further research in this area. The classification of mobile phone radiation in class 2b by  the IARC is due to this one issue. In the Danish study the exclusion of all company phones is listed as a weakness, although not a strong one.

    Conclusion

    We are discussing the possible effects of electromagnetic radiation on living tissues and in particular humans. In a previous post we had demonstrated the well-known fact that the exposure of individual phone users to electromagnetic radiation comes from their own mobile phone, and not from network base stations (“towers”). The photon energy of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave spectrum, such as used for the communication to and from phones, is by at least 5 orders of magnitude (1/100,000) too low to cause any harm in living cells. The only possible impact is a heating effect. Microwave ovens illustrate this effect, but the energy applied by a mobile phone is at least 10,000 times lower and can heat human tissues by less than half a degree at most. Specific absorption rate (SAR) thresholds for mobile phones limit the heating of cellular tissues. In the third part of this post we discuss very briefly the situation around studies of health risks connected to mobile phone usage. Alarmistic studies are very often conducted by local initiatives, and we give examples and arguments why they should not be taken into account. Serious broad studies show very clearly, that mobile network towers and mobile phone usage have no adverse effects on health.

    References

    [1] Created by the author using input data and a formatting idea from Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Electromagnetic-Spectrum.png

    [2] Planck’s formula was the starting point of quantum physics, and there has never been a reason to change it. It states that the energy of a single photon of frequency f is hf, with Planck’s constant h=6.626 × 10-34 Js. Energy is measured in Joule (J) or – in nuclear physics – often in electron Volts (eV).

    [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_energy

    [4] According to the standardized procedure the phone is transmitting at with maximum power during those measurements. The German magazine Connect regularly measures a modified SAR under more realistic field conditions. The top group of their results is well below 0.5W/kg, with an average of less than 1W/kg, compared to the 2W/kg from standardized procedure.

    ( see https://www.connect.de/vergleich/strahlungsarme-handys-bestenliste-1500639.html)

    [5] M. Meyer, A. Gärtig-Daugs, M. Radspiel-Träger, Krebsinzidenz im Umkreis von Mobilfunkbasisstationen. Electronic Version: www.egms.de/en/meetings/gmds2005/05gmds119.shtml.

    [6] Rothman, K.J., Epidemiological evidence on health risks of cellular telephones. Lancet 2000; 356; 1837 – 1840.

    [7] A. Dode et al. Mortality by neoplasia and cellular telephone base stations in the Belo Horizonte municipality, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Science of the total environment 409(19), 3649 – 3665, 2011.

    [8] Foster, KR, Trottier, L. Comments on „;Mortality by neoplasia and cellular telephone base stations in the Belo Horizonte municipality, Minas Gerais state, Brazil…” Sci Total Environment (2012), doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2012.06.007.

    [9] Reference: https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electromagnetic-fields-and-public-health-mobile-phones. Also available as pdf download from the same web page.

    [10] American Cancer Society: Cellular Phones. http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/OtherCarcinogens/AtHome/cellular-phones . Many other results are listed on this page.

    [11] European Commission. Health Effects of Exposure to EMF. An impressive 80 pages document to be found under the European Commission web site: http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_022.pdf

    Author

    Kurt Behnke

    Kurt Behnke received his PhD in Mathematics from University of Hamburg (Germany) in 1981, and his second degree (Habilitation) in 1986. He published more than 20 original research papers, joined the Max Planck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn as a guest researcher, was a Visiting Fellow at Warwick University, and was awarded a Heisenberg Research Grant from German Research Council in 1987. In 1991 he made a career shift to telecommunications, where he worked for Philips Communications on OSI system management applications for fiber transmission systems (SDH). In 1993 he joined the California based startup Raynet, and helped creating the first optical fiber access system. From 1997 on he worked for Ericsson in various national and international assignments. These included a position as Director of Customer Operations for T-Mobile International, and one as Head of Managed Services North Africa and Middle East. He went on old age retirement in 2017, where he keeps himself busy by starting to lecture part time on data communications and mobile networks at a local university, and he has occasional assignments for consultancy in the areas of LTE, 5G and machine-type-communications.

    14 Comments
    Thomas J Driscoll
    17 October 2019 at 07:38

    Does your info look at time as a factor we absorb at best 1 hour out of 23 in visible light ,very little in xray and 24/365 in 5G .Have you taken that exposure as a factor.If i sat in sun for 24/7/365 my life would be surely on its way or at the cancer stage,Thank you for your time.

     
    Dr Kurt Behnke
    9 January 2020 at 10:47

    When you sit in sunlight your skin will be bombarded by high energy photons (ultra-violet, as part of direct sunlight) that appear like wrecking balls compared to the low energy microwave photons, which are little marbles in comparison. There is a 10,000 : 1 energy relation between the two kinds. As I explained in my post, microwave photons have energy less than 1/10,000 of what is needed to alter or change chemical bonds. And having many of them doesn’t create a cumulative effect: it always needs a single photon with enough energy to impact an atom or molecule. With UV the situation is different: each of the photons has got enough energy to change your body and skin chemistry, and create a free radical. So when you stay exposed over extended periods it becomes just more likely that this actually happens. Few changed proteins can be removed by the „body police“ aka immune system, but a bulk of changes causes inflammation (sun burn) and cancer over a long period. For microwave there is nothing to repair.

    By the way: despite all the „new frequency“ hype around 5G. More than 90% of all 5G coverage will be achieved through conventional frequencies, such as we know from mobile networks for more than 3 decades. It would simply be too costly to cover the country with a dense network of small cells. In an attempt to create coverage, US operators start 5G using 600 MHz cells, which is even lower than the frequencies used for 2G and CDMA networks. Small cells with high frequencies will have a radius of few hundred meters at best. And they never penetrate walls (physics again). So if you live in a dense urban area, where small cells are applied, and you stay indoors for most of the days (which most people today do) you will not be exposed to the radiation. To get 5G indoors through a small cell you need to have a 5G indoor base station installed. Which many people actually will be doing, but it is your decision.

     
    Marci
    17 December 2019 at 19:11

    Thank you for your article. It is helpful, yet there is alternative research as well: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-5g-war-technology-versus-humanity/5681181. How would you respond to the claims provided on this website? I just don’t know who to trust. You’ve worked in communication systems but not as an epidemiologist or geneticist. With all of the doubts, what are your thoughts on what might be the sincere urgency to push 5G without sound research? Is it purely financial? If additional research and testing may take 5+ years would the benefits of understanding outweigh the risks of a lack thereof?

    Thanks-Mims

     
    Dr Kurt Behnke
    9 January 2020 at 14:34

    Thank your for your comment and question. I have gone through the linked website, and I must say: it doesn’t impress me a bit. There is nothing new. All the conspiracy theories, false claims, scenarios blown out of proportion, again. The list of signatories includes all the people who since more than 20 years are trying to convince us that we will be going to die from mobile phone usage. I have followed some of their publications during the past years. They mostly are activists, among them you find family doctors etc. Certainly no serious geneticist or epidemiologist. The authors of the studies, that I criticized in the blog are among them. And all this group has ever written or published has been rebutted and rejected by internationally accepted experts. After they failed with their warnings about 2G and 3G (where is the predicted rise in cancer? Normalized per age group cancer risk has gone down for at least 40 years now) they turn to 5G and highlight the alleged risk of „mm wave“ radiation. I don’t want to discuss that at length here, and just make two remarks:
    The well-established satellite TV sends us microwave radiation of very similar frequencies (Ku band of 12 to 18 GHz) and strength (47 – 77 dBµV) for more than 20 years now. Compare the figures in the blog for mobile radiation. Why nobody has protested against satellite TV?
    Only about 10% of 5G coverage will be coming through small cells in the mm domain. Most of 5G will be delivered through conventional mobil radio frequencies. US carriers have started 5G with sub 1 GHz frequencies, in order to achieve substantial coverage quickly. That is below the CDMA network frequencies, used in the US countrywide since 1995.
    You are asking for the motivation for 5G. The International Telecommunication Union is a body established by international law, and with a mandate of the United Nations to supervise the use of radio frequencies. They hold international conferences to agree on future use of electromagnetic spectrum. They have issued the 5G service specification after investigating mobile data needs of private customers and industry applications. When you look at mobile data growth curves, 4G networks will run out of capacity during the next decade. It was about time to renovate the standards, since product design, production and deployment always takes a few years. There is an expressed and pressing need from the industry side for support of more flexible processes in logistics and manufacturing. There is an urgent need from utility companies for better control of power usage and production. And there is an expressed need from security services to give them a network with better resilience and shorter latency. 5G will open up a full basket of commercial and professional opportunities and solutions.
    And why call for more research? What should be the target of this? All questions have been asked and answered. Official studies covering 100s of thousands of people have been conducted and showed no risk. Except that a small group of conspiracy theorists and fear mongers are not able or willing to listen and read. There are so many important research topics in medical and clinical research where the capacity should go to. This is not one of them.

     
    Chris Connelly
    6 April 2020 at 15:55

    I too have read the alternative article and like Dr Behnke found the information somewhat lacking in robustness. Coming from both an engineering and a psychology background I know only too well how statistics can be made to reflect the opinions of the author so to confirm their already held beliefs and opinions. As a general rule I always return back to the physics of EM waves, so unless these studies that claim 5G is dangerous can explain the mechanism of how non-ionising EM is able to ’cause’ cancers (not associated with ), and why the physics is wrong, I think we’ll all going to be ok.
    Out of interest, the website with the article is hosted by a prof of economics, and well known conspiracy theorist.

    I’ve spent the last decade working in the space industry designing telecommunication and earth observation satellites.

     
    Dr Kurt Behnke
    4 May 2020 at 09:27

    Thank you for your comment. I would like to add some more aspects to the discussion (not particularly your comment) as there were also some questions or comments regarding the “coronavirus thing”

    I really cannot comment on the medical part of such statements from an expert point of view. You would have to turn to an epidemiologist or biologist for details. My personal view is this:
    ⁃ We have had Corona viruses since many years. They are nothing new. The SARS and MERS disease outbreaks about 10 years ago were due to Corona viruses. But also a number of Corona viruses are around in Europe, and cause a non-negligible part of the winter/spring cold season.
    ⁃ It is known that they are subject to frequent mutations (which is similar to Flu and the common Adeno and Rhino-Viruses, although they have no relation to Flu, as you rightly state).
    ⁃ They are present in humans and in animals. Most viruses are adapted to their „host“, so that the host does not get sick, and the virus multiplies and spreads.
    ⁃ Sometimes viruses change their animal hosts, even from animal to human. This is when it gets dangerous. There is no balance between human immune system and the virus. Sometimes the virus is very lethal (-> Ebola) and kills the infected human. Which does not make this virus a successful
    ⁃ In medieval times the plague was a deadly disease that came from flees, living in rat’s fur. They were able to spread in a human environment due to change of living conditions: people had moved into cities, lived closely together. Bad hygiene attracted lots of rats … there you go.
    ⁃ Now with Covid-19 the virus was apparently hosted by bats, and happened to jump over to humans on Chinese life stock markets („wet markets“). That’s the most credible explanation that I have seen.
    ⁃ Again, like with the plague, our changing living conditions (global and urban lifestyle) have led to the rapid spread. And wherever the virus was carried, it met a human population that wasn’t prepared.

    Technically,
    Microwave radiation cannot have any impact on all this. Again and again: how close you come to an antenna determines the total power level. But the energy of the individual photons of the radiation stream does not change. And it is no way sufficient to even kick an electron out of its orbit, let alone change a molecular structure. That’s off by a factor of 10,000 to 100,000.

    Let me correct another misconceptions which show up: Some are talking about 5 GHz radiation. 5G has nothing to do with 5 GHz. The ISM band at 5 GHz is used as a license free band by many of the recent WiFi access points. Mobile networks do not use 5 GHz frequencies and will not do so in the foreseeable future. And to be very clear about 5G in China: All 5G in China today is based on 3.5 GHz, which is basically the same (very close to) as the 2.6 GHz of LTE. You can check all current 5G phone releases, from Samsung to Huawei: they all offer 3.5 GHz as their only 5G option. And 5G traffic is responsible for just 0.2% of global mobile traffic (based on end of year 2019 communication of the mobile industry association GSMA). Forget 5G as a possible cause of ANYTHING. We are having that kind of electromagnetic radiation around the world for 20 years.

     
    Chris
    22 April 2020 at 13:23

    As far as I can understand, the power transmitted by base stations is ”guilty” when you are nearby, but, our devices are also ”guilty” since, there is no enough power – far away from the BS-, therefore our phone has to emit more power.

    I checked my power level (android-settings) on my phone while at home and it displays -110 dBm , I took my car and drove closed to the actual antenna on the nearby building and now it displays -55 dBm – just standby, no talking on the phone.

    So, is there any golden ratio regarding power levels? – If I am not mistaken the maximum power levels for BS mobile transmission is around 30 dBm and the same goes to the power transmitted from a mobile phone, right?

    I believe what most people are concerned about is that higher frequency – moving from 4G to 5G- means that higher power levels are needed and the more cells on the street is not something that makes people happy.

    Thank you for your time, great article, lots of information with good reference. Greetings from Athens, Greece.

     
    Dr Kurt Behnke
    26 May 2020 at 08:11

    Thanks for your comment. In fact you have caught the full range of received power. Since on a 10 MHz spectrum block the thermal noise is -104 dBm you were close to drop-off. The eNodeB can still decode signals below thermal noise level, but of course error rates grow massively. And of course very rarely you catch anything stronger than -55 dBm in a reasonable distance from the base station. eNodeB’s apply so-called fractional power control.
    40 dBm path loss basically never happens. You would need to be right in front of the antenna, in less than 10 m distance. And the assumed transmission power of 20 W per antenna plus gain is restricted to towers of more than 20 m of height. The closer you are to the tower, the lower the total amount of radiation received.

     
    Eduard
    4 December 2020 at 12:16

    Thanks for great article Kurt. I really appreciate your explanation of this problematic and its easily understandable!

    Recently I read some study from USA, which looks pretty thorough and well done. I got some mixed feelings from it, so I would be happy to know your opinion about it.

    https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/topics/cellphones/index.html

    Thank you in advance.

     
    Jeff
    5 February 2022 at 16:36

    If transmission power is negligible and much less than prior technology then what is the 5G issue on the planes given they ask the people on the plane to turn off transmission?

     
    Kurt Behnke
    6 February 2022 at 15:40

    Honestly: I have been waiting for this question to arrive. Since a new conspiracy seems to be under way in the US on this.But I do have an answer for you.

    5G technology is not dangerous for air planes. The problem is that airplane radar altimeters (used in low visibility landing approaches) seem to pick up each and every EM noise there is. Although they have clearly been assigned a spectrum band 4.2 GHz – 4.4 GHz for their operation. Now that 5G has been assigned 3.7 GHz to 4.0 GHz airlines feel that there isn’t enough “guard space” between 4.0 GHz and 4.2 GHz. It started with Boeing, who approached the FCC and requested a guard band of 100 MHz below 4.2. FCC was generous and gave them 200 MHz. Now even that is not enough. Basically what they want is that nobody transmits basically above 3.8 GHz in the neighborhood of airports. (That is the upper limit frequency in band n78, that is used in Europe with no problems for airplanes.)

    While this discussion was going on (and see the remark from my colleague Stephen Mann down at the end about CYA in the US), the FAA has already cleared 90% of all aircraft from any problems with the 5G band. Among them there are all planes of the large civilian airlines. And the process is going on.

    A bit more of background:

    Radio communication frequencies are allocated to applications and operators (including TV and radio stations) in bands.A band is a frequency slot from f_min to f_max. And they are allocated side by side, with no space in between. It is the responsibility of the respective operator to keep the “out of band emissions” at bay. That is: there is a max power level that is allowed outside of the allocated band. That level is set by regulators that the users of adjacent band can handle the disturbing noise with no extra protective measures. The standard technology used for this is called filtering. There are low pass filter, high pass filter and band-pass filter. They can be accurately designed and built. And every radio engineer learns about this extensively during studies. Just the FAA-Guys seemed to be completely unaware (at least that is what they pretended).

    Here is Stephen Mann’s comment (https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-reason-behind-airlines-being-afraid-of-5G-technology-How-is-it-dangerous-for-planes/answer/Stephen-Mann-25)

    The airlines are’t afraid of 5G. They are afraid of lawyers.

    Cover your ass (CYA). First radio altimeters were designed in the 1960s, when there were no terrestrial users of the C-band, so the receiver did not receive ajacent channel rejection. This would have added to the cost of the instrument. […] Many airlines are still using the old radar altimeters. […] If the FAA says there might be a problem then it is all it takes for the lawyers to go into the CYA mode until the FAA specifically OKs the operator’s equipment.
    If an accident occurs while performing an instrument approach everyone involved gets sued. If the airline was told by the FAA that CAT-II approaches might be compromised by cellular communications towers on adjacent C-band channels then that becomes a win for the plaintiff attorneys. Even if the airline was not performing a CAT-II approach.
    Only in America.

    Added by me: on top the US operators spent a whopping 82 Billion US-$ on the frequency license. Looks like a fat target for a greedy US-attorney.

     
    Kurt Behnke
    6 February 2022 at 17:36

    They asked the same for 2G, 3G and 4G. And they stay with their rules, just because they don’t see any need to change them.
    The performance improvement of 5G over 4G (and of 4G over 3G, etc) is solely based on higher sensitivity of the electronic components for transmission and reception.The progress made here is at least as big as the one that leads to the computation power of todays Laptops and smartphones. 5G circuits can detect and interpret minimum and ever smaller changes in the signal. Where 4G circuits could distinguish up to 64 different states of a waveform, in 5G they can refine things to tell up to 2048 states apart (in the same waveform). And they can control more frequency bands at the same time, each of which is “weaker” than any 4G band.
    Talking about planes: pretty much the same holds for electronic components in planes. They became smaller and smaller and more and more sensitive. Thus we see things moving on both sides, but moving in parallel and in the same direction. So pretty much nothing has changed between plane circuitry and phone circuitry.

    I personally welcome that fact that there is no cellular or WiFi communication on board. Think about 50 people talking to their phone at the same time …

     
    Jeff
    5 February 2022 at 16:52

    If transmission power fr the tower is negligible and much less than prior technology then what is the 5G issue on the planes given they ask the people on the plane to turn off transmission?

     

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