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Comment by _red | Hacker News Reader

Typically the debate centers around "non-ionizing radiation is safe" and strictly speaking that's probably 100% true.

>We've reversed course on plenty of things that were once believed to be fine

That is my concern. Specifically that the "non-ionizing radiation" is a red-herring. Its possible that EMF exposure effects cells in another way that we've yet to realize. As a poor analogy: Arguing that being exposed to constant visible light on the basis that "Light is non-ionizing" misses the fact that constant visible light disrupts the circadian rhythm which has a host of other ill-effects.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we ban something on a fear, but given the enormous potential cost if we get it wrong, it should be thoroughly studied.

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True, I think it's important for people to distinguish that. "The waves can't ionize, so you shouldn't be worried" is a counter-argument I often see, and it really isn't a good one. The entire point is to try to identify what other potential harm electromagnetic radiation could cause beyond ionization.

It definitely needs to be thoroughly studied. But to my understanding, the past decades of study into it haven't revealed any harmful effects so far, at the energy levels that humans are generally exposed to. I do think it should continue to be studied in different ways, but given the current knowledge, I don't think people should feel very concerned about it.

The big difference between visible light and 5G in this case is humans are known to be capable of sensing visible light, while no person has ever demonstrated the ability to sense radio waves like 5G signals. Of course we can't sense gamma radiation either, but in the case of ionizing radiation we at least have solid evidence humans can be harmed by it. But for radio waves? There's nothing, no hint of how any harm might occur, short of being put in a microwave oven and receiving thermal burns.

> But for radio waves? There's nothing, no hint of how any harm might occur, short of being put in a microwave oven and receiving thermal burns.

To preface: I don't think there's any evidence at this time that standard levels of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation are harmful to humans.

But it's not inconceivable that there could be some harm caused which we're not aware of yet and which is eventually discovered in the future. The body and brain are extremely complex and not fully understood, etc. Molecular biology is sensitive. It's not implausible that there could hypothetically be certain chemical reactions or cell processes which are subtly disrupted by certain frequency bands at certain amplitudes.

I personally don't think there will be such a finding, but people still need to keep an open mind, I think.

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