According to what we know today in science, and based on the results of clinical studies in this regard, physically, there is no reason that can explain possible harm from exposure to a mobile phone, a mobile phone antenna, or even , to the 5G WiFi.
If this type of radiation were really harmful through a physical principle unknown to date, there would be an uptick in tumors and cancers because we have been continuously exposed to these radiations everywhere for more than a century. Environmental movements and other related activists, however, They always refer to the same collections of studies (very few and generally with methodological flaws or only carried out on animals).
The 5G conspiracy
Radiation is the phenomenon of transporting energy in a vacuum or a material medium using particles or electromagnetic waves. Depending on how the radiation interacts with the matter that comes into its path, we can distinguish two types: ionizing and non-ionizing.
The first can break the chemical bonds of the living tissue with which it interacts. The second, on the contrary, He doesn't have enough energy to do it..
Most of the radiation around us is non-ionizing, from radio and television signals to visible light. So is radiation from mobile phones, as well as telephone antennas.
Despite this, there are many associations, political groups and even scientists who point out the opposite, violating the most basic principles of physics. There are even organizations that They begin to sabotage 5G telephone antennas because they are convinced that 5G networks act as a kind of catalyst, which amplifies and makes the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen more lethal.
The Stop 5G movement is led by Arthur Firstenberg, one of the main proponents of electrosensitivity and other invented pseudo-diseases related to electromagnetism. One of his star tips is: "turn off the Wi-Fi and your cell phone while you sleep."
nocebo effect
So? Why do some people seem to get sick when they are near cell towers or seem to suffer from electrosensitivity? Simple: because a correlation is not a cause. Just because something happens right after or at the moment we do something does not mean that it is a consequence of it. To find out if there is a cause and not a correlation, studies are done, and the studies have not found anything beyond the correlation.
Probably, in many cases the so-called nocebo effect, just the opposite of the placebo effect. If the placebo effect occurs when a person's body offers a positive response to a drug without any active ingredient (a simple sugar pill), as if it were really a medicine with an active ingredient (for example to reduce vomiting or relieve migraine), the nocebo effect would do just the opposite: the tendency for people to feel bad when they think they have been exposed to something dangerous.
The electrosensitivityTherefore, it would be a chronic manifestation of nocebo coexisting with an anxiety disorder.
This fear seems to arise with greater or lesser virulence every time a new electronic device appears that the average citizen does not understand in depth. In the 1980s, for example, it happened with the use of the microwave oven. Now, it has simply been 5G's turn... until it goes out of style.
In conclusion, there are thousands of elements that interact with our body. We are matter and everything around us interacts with us in some way. For example, visible light, such as that emitted by a light bulb. Microwaves are still light, too, except that they are not visible to the human eye. So if we are afraid of WiFi or microwaves, by that same logic we should be afraid of oxygen or the light of a light bulb. But if we have to be afraid of something, let it be another much more dangerous source of visible light: Sun (either tanning booths), a great generator of mutations in our DNA as soon as we spend too much time exposed to it to tan.
A good example of how social paranoia and erroneous ideas or misinterpretations can lead us to absurd situations is the Seattle Dent Windshield Epidemic, which you can see in the following video, and which shows us that the value of an idea must be measured by a rule. That is to say, with objective experiments, with evidence:
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The news
What science says about 5G and its effects on our health
was originally published in
Xataka Science
by
Sergio Parra
.