According to the telecom industry, 5G, the “5th Generation” wireless network, is required to give people the wireless freedom they crave and need. Described by HP as “blazingly fast,” 5G, which is 70 times faster than its predecessor, 4G, “will replace cable internet for good,” allowing you to download a two-hour high-definition movie in three seconds flat.¹

5G is also being touted as necessary to enable the development and proliferation of self-driving cars and other future technologies. However, as noted in a May 2019 Forbes article,² robocar designers are not, in fact, relying on 5G for their development, and the cars themselves do not actually need that kind of bandwidth to perform the required functions.

While “blazingly fast” 5G might sound attractive to many who have grown up in the internet era, there are significant health and environmental concerns relating to 5G radiation that are not being properly addressed, which may have profound implications both in the short and long term.

If increased internet speed and reliability are the end goal, then fiber optic connections would be a far better (and safer) way forward. Indeed, we need more wired connections and fewer wireless ones as it is. With 5G, microwave radiation exposures will so massively increase, there’s no doubt in my mind that mankind will eventually end up regretting its shortsightedness.

Remember that no one has problems with the faster speeds of 5G, no one. What any serious student of health has concerns with is that the data are being distributed wirelessly, when in most cases the data could be distributed easier and less expensively over fiber optic cables.

No Safety Studies Have Been Done

Unlike the 4G technology currently in use, which relies on 90-foot cell towers with about a dozen antenna ports on each, the 5G system uses “small cell” facilities or bases, each with about 100 antenna ports.³

These cell bases will be mounted to already existing infrastructure such as utility poles. Ultimately, many if not most homeowners can expect to end up with a 5G cell base mounted right outside or very near their home.

As noted by a Federal Communications Commission representative during a February 6, 2019, senate commerce hearing (above), no 5G safety studies have been conducted or funded by the agency or the telecom industry, and none is planned.^4,5

In short, there’s no telling exactly what might happen to our ecology and the people being exposed to this novel wireless technology 24/7, once it’s deployed. As noted by Dr. Cindy Russell,⁶ executive director of Physicians for Safe Technology, in her August 2018 paper in the journal Environmental Research:⁷

Like other common toxic exposures, the effects of radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RF EMR) will be problematic if not impossible to sort out epidemiologically as there no longer remains an unexposed control group.

This is especially important considering these effects are likely magnified by synergistic toxic exposures and other common health risk behaviors. Effects can also be non-linear.

Because this is the first generation to have cradle-to-grave life span exposure to this level of man-made microwave (RF EMR) radiofrequencies, it will be years or decades before the true health consequences are known. Precaution in the roll out of this new technology is strongly indicated.

There’s No Safe Way to Implement 5G

Similarly, in an article⁸ on the Environmental Health Trust’s website, Ronald Powell, Ph.D., a retired Harvard scientist of applied physics, notes “there is NO SAFE WAY to implement 5G in our communities; rather, there are only ‘bad ways’ and ‘worse ways,’” and rather than argue about who should have control over its deployment, we should focus on preventing its employment altogether.

Indeed, mounting research^9,10 suggest the proliferation of 5G for the sake of faster wireless internet could be a public health disaster, so if 5G does end up “replacing cable internet for good,” humanity may be in for a devastating shock in coming decades, if not sooner.

While it may take years to fully ascertain the full effects of 5G, there are early warning signs. People have reported mass die-offs of bees around 5G towers in California,¹¹ for example, and residents in Gateshead in the U.K. started reported insomnia, chronic nosebleeds and stillbirths after the installation of streetlamps that emit 5G radiation in 2016.¹²