Does Health Concerns On 5G Have Any Merit?

Since the dawn of technology, we have always thought about the harm that advancement could do both the philosophical and the physical effects. The thought of a “fair” exchange for the convenience that technology brings is always in our minds, and 5G is no exception to this rule. Not just in the United States but all over the world, the concern of many groups on the possibility of negative health effects that comes with high-frequency bandwidths is an on-going debate.
Surprisingly even health experts from prestigious organizations have concerns over this matter, from those that want more studies to those who outright oppose it.

Valid Concerns Over Tech

In the last hundred years alone humanity had advanced from horse and buggy to private companies racing to Mars. But our advancements did not come without a price; the industrial age started a bad habit of harming the environment with our pollutants. The atomic age brought us a possible source of almost unlimited power, but along with it, weapons of great destructive power. Heck, even something as simple as the cotton-gin, had social repercussions. Most of the consequences of adopting new technology are hardly ever done intentionally, 5G might bring with It troubles we are yet to comprehend.

Why All the Worry About 5G?

5G is fairly new, so new that we need to create the infrastructure all over the world in order to be widely available. This means that we have yet to comprehend all the positives and negatives of the technology. There have been studies from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that radiofrequency waves are ‘possibly carcinogenic’, while World Health Organization (WHO) currently does not include it in their list of Carcinogenic, Which is criticized by reputable doctors like Dr. Lennart Hardell from the department of oncology at Örebro University in Sweden.

Wait… ‘Possibly’ Carcinogenic?

While I can’t say to people to disregard the possibility of its cancerous effects, I can tell you that the list of “Possible Carcinogenic” includes everyday things that we eat… like Red Meat. Hot Dogs are considered a carcinogen, which is more dangerous, so even if the WHO includes Radio Frequency waves is safer than hotdogs. Don’t get me wrong, I try to keep away from hotdogs and lessen my meat intake, I take these warnings seriously and do believe that there might be some merit in the concerns. But the benefit outweighs the risk, and most people exposed to the things in the possible carcinogens list, which is all of us, tend to turn out fine even in the long term.

Conclusion

I believe that there is always a price to progress; some of them are so far off in the future that we can’t even fathom what they are. But progress allows us to solve the problems of today and gives us the opportunity to create new things that maybe the road to solving more problems in the future. If the consequences are great then we will face it together.