Science Friday - 5G, Pig Brains, Privacy For Nature. April 19, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: April 19, 2019

Last week, President Trump announced a new initiative to push forward the implementation of 5G, the next generation of wireless connectivity for smartphones and other devices. How is this faster speed possible, and how quickly will it become accessible to consumers? Washington Post technology reporter Brian Fung explains the innovations that would enable greater rates of data transmission. Plus: Harold Feld, a lawyer and consumer advocate, says not everyone will benefit equally from 5G as plans currently stand—including rural communities. One of the top technology candidates for 5G relies on higher frequencies and bringing more smaller-signal base stations much closer to the people using them. But what does research say about how it will affect human health? Researchers review what the literature has suggested so far about non-ionizing radiation from 2G and 3G, including a 2018 study from the National Toxicology Program (NTP) that found an increase in tumors for male rats. The NTP’s John Bucher and Jonathan Samet of the Colorado School of Public Health join Ira to discuss the data, and the limitations of research to date. Plus, toxicologist and epidemiologist Devra Davis of the Environmental Health Trust provides a statement on the health concerns of 5G.   Plus: Spring is a great time to get out and enjoy the outdoors—and increasingly, people are using citizen science apps like eBird and iNaturalist to record sightings and share data. But the public nature of some citizen science platforms can make them liable for abuse, such as people using location data collected by the apps to disturb—or even poach—threatened species. April Glaser, a technology reporter for Slate, tells Ira more. And Sarah Kaplan, science reporter at the Washington Post, joins Ira to talk about post-death pig brains, Jovian moons, and more in this week's News Roundup. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Later in the hour, the fifth generation of wireless is on its way, but how soon will your phone actually be using 5G? Plus why some people, including several lawmakers, are opposing the rollout over potential health concerns. But first this week, a story that sounds like something out of science fiction. Scientists report in the journal Nature that they have been able to restore some of the cellular and circulatory function in pig brains.

hours after death. Here to talk about and other selected. Short subjects in science is Washington Post Science reporter. Sarah Kaplan, happily to see you in our studio. Great to be here. This week. All right, let's talk about this. It almost sounds like some of the headlines are making it sound like a Franken brain,

that's what they've created, but it's not what they have done, right? Yeah, we're not quite at the zombie apocalypse yet. Basically, researchers from the Yale School of Medicine were able to take some brains from pigs that had been previously killed at a slaughterhouse hours before, take them out of the heads and then infuse them with a sort of cocktail of synthetic fluids that prevent the cells from degenerating and actually help restore some of the functions like the metabolic activity consuming sugar and oxygen in order to function and even some of the electrical activity, if they stimulated the cells, they were able to,

fire some synapses. But it was really, really far from actually getting it. the brain. It wasn't really functioning. It was functioning on a very basic level, but it wasn't that brain waves or any of that stuff. Yeah, it's individual cells, but no signs of consciousness or kind of global mental activity. But it does kind of raise these questions about, like, what is death?

Like what is cell death? Because we think about death as sort of this on or off switch. But really, as this study demonstrates, it's sort of a step-by-step process. You know, first the function of the cell stops working and then the cell stops consuming sugar, and then eventually the physical structure of the cell degenerates. And you can actually reverse some of those processes the scientists have revealed. And so that potentially raises questions about, you know, if people have brain damage, what kind of treatments might be available to them.

So they could study these pig brains and learn what kinds of treatments might work that they hadn't thought about. Yeah, those are the potential medical applications, but those are still a long way off. This is pretty basic research, even though it's really interesting to start with. Yeah, but they're not trying to restore, you know, the thinking part of the brain. That's not what they're interested. No, and they actually had an anesthetic ready just in case they saw any signs of consciousness, which they didn't and didn't expect to. But the goal was never to actually get the brain functioning again.

It was just to see what can we do if we restore individual cells. So that won't continue. It's interesting. Let's move on to you just got back from Alaska, you were telling me, where there's very much spring in the air. Yeah, yeah. I was in Akiavik, which is the northernmost city in the U.S., sort of right up there at the top. Could you see Russia from there?

Not quite. I saw a lot of ice, but actually I saw a lot less ice than people are expecting. Alaska's had this extraordinarily warm spring where I was, temperatures in March, were 18.5 degrees above normal. Wow. And, you know, it was pretty cold, but by their standards, it was a huge. heat wave. At the grocery store, people were talking, and they were saying how nice the weather was, and the checkout person was like, yeah, nice for May, not nice for March. And the repercussions

are being felt all over the state. Snow is melting a lot sooner than it usually does, and ice roads that people use on frozen rivers to get around are also melting, and several people have fallen through the ice and died as a consequence. And of course, there's ice. You can't use ice, cut it up and store it, right? The ice is not there. Yeah, the sea ice and the Bearing in and Chuchkees is a lot lower this winter than it has been, and that's actually partly responsible for why the weather has been so warm in the state. And Alaska's the fastest warming state in the U.S. So they're really feeling the consequences of climate change firsthand. So you have the frozen tundra that's not frozen? Yeah. You have methane escaping when you didn't think it's going to be escaping,

all kinds of stuff like that. You have a new story just out today about the USDA and science journals. Yeah, so scientists at the USDA, which has a bunch of research services that look like agriculture and soil and all kinds of things, we're instructed last year that when their papers get published in a journal, that's not the end of the process. They need to append a note to the publication saying that the research is preliminary and have not been formally disseminated by the USDA.

And that is pretty surprising for scientists because traditionally getting your paper published in a peer-reviewed journal that's been vetted by your colleagues and experts in the field, that's considered, that's not preliminary, that's science. The gold standard. Yeah, it's the gold standard for how research is traditionally done. And so lots of folks, including people who ran research services at the USDA under previous president, have said that this raises questions about the scientific integrity policies that the USDA has. You know, scientists traditionally don't have to get something reviewed by a politician in order to, you know, have their results be presented as valid. So the idea here is you can publish it, but we'll call it preliminary because our political officer hasn't reviewed it yet. Yeah, the idea is this is a way of making the results get out before research has undergone internal review.

But for scientists, calling it preliminary when the research is objectively thorough, raises some questions. Let's hope that doesn't spread to other divisions of the government. Finally, a naming contest for some new moons of Jupiter. Yeah, so last year, a bunch of new moons of Jupiter were discovered by researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science. And this past few months, they've been holding a contest to come up with names for these new moons. But there are a lot of rules because the International Astronomical Union, which oversees the naming of things in the solar system and beyond it, has these really strict guidelines in

place. So if you want to name a moon of Jupiter, it has to be a character for Greek. Roman mythology. It has to be a descendant or lover of the god known as Zeus or Jupiter. It has to be 16 characters or fewer. It can't be offensive or commercial or political. And it even has rules about like what letters there can be. So if the moon circles, it's Jupiter in the same direction that Jupiter rotates, the name has to end in an A. And if it's the opposite, then the name has to end in an E. But the reason they have all these rules is because prior to the IAU forming, which is actually it's celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

the solar system was just like a huge mess. People would name things, whatever they wanted. Bob. International fights, actually, between, you know, different countries. So this is a way of sort of keeping everything in order. Well, Vulcan doesn't make it again. Thank you very much for taking time to be with this today. Sarah Kaplan Science Reporter with the Washington Post,

and happy holiday to you. You too. And now it's time to play, good thing, bad thing. because every story has a flip side. You know, it's spring. You want to get outdoors and get into nature already. And if you're like a lot of folks, maybe you're using an app to discover and appreciate the plants and animals around you. Science citizen apps, citizen science apps to let you log an observation or ask for help in identifying anything.

But there is a downside. You can love nature almost to death. Joining me now to talk about that is April Glazer. She's a technology writer at Slate based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks. Great to be here. All right.

So all these citizen science nature apps, what's the good thing about them? Well, obviously, we want to encourage people to care about and be fascinated by the natural world. And one way to do that is to log what you find and then to see what other people have found and then go and try and find that yourself. And so citizen science nature apps kind of create a community of learning around nature. And that's a very, very good thing because the more people learn, the more people care. And then hopefully the more we'd be, you know, wanting to protect it. Yeah. So they kind of like making, spotting things into a game, right?

Yeah, often. I mean, you know, we try to get, you know, more identifications or they often have kind of competitions to find more amphibians or more flowers and wildflower spotting competitions. But really, it's not about competing as much as it is about, you know, just encouraging people to get out there, find more things, and also it benefits science, because then we have more data about what's out there. So what could be bad about this? Well, when we share things online, especially open and to the public, that means that nefarious actors can see it too. And, you know, one of the great things about these citizen science data apps is that it allows people to share hard to find things, which are really exciting. But that means that poachers can also find them.

And so a few years ago, eBird, which is the largest citizen science database, in the world, realized that it had to fundamentally change its code to obfuscate and hide threatened birds to protect them from poachers who, you know, would go to this kind of birder app and then be able to find when, you know, an enthusiastic nature lover spotted a rare bird and inadvertently take it. Or not inadvertently, but just take it. Yeah. They did.

Rather. Okay. So is there a middle ground where we can find some peace here? Yeah, so, you know, different apps like eBird and I Naturalist have worked really hard in recent years to obfuscate and hide threatened taxa. And so when you enter in a bird that is on a sensitive species list for eBird, then it's not going to show up publicly. You'll be able to see it on your list so you can know what you saw, but it won't be shared to a public list. And when you share your list with other people, they won't be able to see it. And so they've had to kind of rebuild their system entirely because it was built fundamentally.

to be as open as possible. And so they had to kind of restructure their database. Same with I Naturalist. Now they just show you kind of the general area where the specimen was found. So it'll say that it was found in Oakland, California, for example, which it doesn't really tell you much. But it won't tell you the exact mountain

or latitude and longitude, as it will with other plants. I was going to say, is this really a new idea? Because if you talk to an expert, let's say you're a mushroom expert and you discover a really rare mushroom, you're not going to tell everybody where it is, are you? Yeah, so for a long time, it's been kind of standard practice and etiquette in the, you know, kind of people, the native plant community and the birdwatching community to not share information about threatened species. Like even scientists that published papers won't put exact coordinates about what they found, even if they have that data and they kind of shared among scientists, they won't publish that.

But, you know, as this stuff gets more popular and as it gets online where everybody can see it, they, we've had to really build that into. to the systems. But it's true, you know, what in a previous generation might have taken poachers years to map can now be downloaded in minutes. And there you have it. Thank you very much, April, for taking time to be with us today. Thanks. It was a lot of fun.

April Glazer, technology reporter for Slate based in the San Francisco Bay Area. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, the next generation of wireless is on its way. It could enable a new generation of Internet connected tech. Will 5G live up to the hype? What about people who are against it? The politicians, NASA, NOAA, people are really worried about things, unexpected consequences. We'll talk about it after the break.

Everything you wanted to know about 5G. Stay with us. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato. Hey, smartphone users, do you find yourself waiting impatiently to load that HD video of that TV show? Or maybe you're looking forward to the next generation. 5G, supposedly 100 times faster than what your 4G can accomplish. Companies like Verizon are already installing high-speed 5G infrastructure in some cities like Chicago and Minneapolis.

But what does that mean for how soon you might get to use it? Well, last week, President Trump announced they made your new push to get 5G moving faster throughout the country, including a new FCC auction of high-frequency spectrum, large investments in rural broadband, and a commitment to, quote, winning the race to 5G. But what exactly is 5G made of? And what will it take to move from the dream to a reality? And the tech isn't without critics. A senator and a congresswoman have called on the government

to investigate the possible health hazards of 5G radio waves. The House Science Committee, along with NASA and NOAA, have voiced worries that the 5G frequencies being auctioned could spill over and interfere with weather satellites collecting data about water vapor needed to predict storms and hurricanes. And some have called 5G a security risks, and some of the equipment uses electronics made in China. We're going to dig into those concerns for the rest of the hour.

If you'd like to talk about it, our number is 844-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFRI. Here with me first to tackle the who, what, when, where, why is Brian Fung, tech reporter for the Washington Post in Washington. Welcome, Brian. Thanks for having me. Okay, when we talk about 5G, what is different that makes 5G faster than 4G that we're already using? Well, one of the big differences between 4G and 5G is the idea that 5G largely relies on high-frequency airwaves that can carry a lot more data much more quickly.

Now, it comes with some trade-offs. The high-frequency airwaves don't travel as far as many of the airwaves we've used. in the past to carry things like 4GLTE. So that's required a lot of wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon to invest in small cells, cells that are much smaller in range than those that they've used in the past. So that means you'll have a lot more cells on your block, on the light post and things like that. That's right. And that's led to a number of policy debates and tensions even between the federal

government and cities and states over just how these antennas ought to be located and how much cities and states should be allowed to charge the carriers for access to telephone poles and the like. And the FCC has done a number of things to try and lower those, what they call regulatory barriers, you know, despite critics who say, you know, these fees that cities charge wireless carriers represent a significant. significant source of budgetary revenue for them. Let's talk about who will benefit most from this faster network.

I mean, my smartphone does everything. I need to do it right now. What is, I don't think that 5G is aimed right at me directly, is it? Well, that's a great question because, you know, think about your experience with, you know, previous versions of wireless data. When you had, you know, 3G on your phone, most people were using, 3G to access, you know, web pages or email, but you couldn't really use 3G to do some of the data-intensive activities that we normally do today now, such as streaming music or video,

or in fact creating videos to upload to social media. Now with 4G, all those things are possible. And with 5G, you know, you have a lot of proponents of the technology who say it's going to enable and unlock even other technologies that we don't. typically find, you know, in use all that often today, things like virtual reality, augmented reality, self-driving cars, and the growing Internet of Things, which involves, you know, smart appliances that are all talking to each other over the Internet. And so how soon do we expect this to really become available to everybody? Well, as you pointed out, you know, carriers like Verizon have started rolling out 5G on a very

limited basis this year, and we can expect that to continue in the next year or two. Analysts at this point project that we'll probably have nationwide coverage in 5G by 2020, at least in certain bands of airwaves. It won't be complete probably for many years after that. But in most cities, you should be able to see companies like T-Mobile and Sprint, which are using lower-frequency airwaves, delivering 5G, probably in that time frame. Our phone number 844-724-8255. Let's go to Orlando and Morgan.

Welcome to Science Friday. Hi. So my question is, I have AT&T, and I'm already seeing the 5G on my phone. Is it specific to the Orlando area, or are they just kind of? of picking and choosing random phones to you put it on. How do you know you have 5G on your phone? So normally it would say 4G like next to the bars on the top left, and now it's saying 5G. Wow.

What did you think, Brian? Thanks for the call. So this is actually a really great point to pick up on in a really, you know, important part to, important place to start because as the caller mentioned, AT&T has begun to roll out this new branding on a lot of smartphones. And the key to understanding what's going on here is that this isn't true 5G. What they call it is 5G evolution. And what you're probably seeing on your phone there is not a symbol that says 5G, but a symbol that actually says 5GE. And, you know, what AT&T is doing there is kind of a little bit of sleight of hand. They've added some

upgrades to the traditional 4GLTE service. then they're branding it as essentially they're saying that they're on the road to 5G, but they're not there yet, which is why they tack on that E at the end. And in fact, this type of marketing has attracted a lot of critics, including Sprint, who has sued AT&T for deceptive marketing on this front, saying that it's not real 5G if you're saying it's, you know, 5G, quote unquote, evolution, and technologically speaking, it's not very different from what others currently brand on the market as simply LTE. President Trump said he wants the U.S. to win the race to 5G.

Who's in that race? What does it mean to win it? Well, pretty much everyone in the world is in this race. And, you know, when we talk about this so-called race to 5G, what we're really talking about is a race for widespread consumer adoption of 5G. And the theory, I'll explain the theory behind that. The idea here is that if the United States can gain an early lead in getting vast numbers of Americans connected to 5G, you're going to see a broad base of support for the types of applications and services that require 5G in order to operate successfully and at scale. So things like self-driving cars are a great example of this, you know, where these cars will have to be communicating with one another.

at very low latency and very reliably and very quickly. Without broad, widespread adoption of this technology, you know, soft-driving cars may take a little bit longer to get on the road, so to speak. And now, which is why, you know, you have government officials saying it's imperative that 5GB rolled out quickly so that, you know, U.S. companies can be the ones to dominate these few, technologies and to be the ones shaping the future internet and the future economy. But isn't there some worry that the equipment they're going to be using in 5G is not made in the U.S., but made in Chinese factories and worried about the security of the system?

So there is some concern about that, and basically what those concerns revolve around are the equipment that goes inside cell towers that allow the cell towers to talk to mobile devices. And around the world, there are only a handful of companies that actually produce that sophisticated hardware. Companies like Huawei, companies like Nokia and Erickson, you know, the concerns about the security of the hardware really have to do mainly with the Chinese manufacturers. And you have officials from the Trump administration who've come out warning allies not to have Huawei or ZTE gear in their networks for fear that it could allow the Chinese government to eavesdrop on sensitive U.S. communications.

The U.S. government doesn't share those same concerns when it comes to European manufacturers like Nokia and Erickson, but it does cite those concerns with Chinese makers. Before I let you go, I want to talk about one other issue, several members of Congress as well as the head of NASA and the head of NOAA have been asking the FCC to hold off on their spectrum auction, which is coming later this year. They are worried that the high frequency millimeter waves might veer too close to the frequencies that weather satellites use to monitor the weather, the water vapor, that they're right next to each other. And that is an important component in forecasting. Is this likely? This auction is well planned. It's not going to be put off,

do you think? I think the way to view this is in the context of essentially a bureaucratic debate about who gets control over the airwaves. And, you know, this is one example, but there are a lot of examples of agencies that feel very protective of the spectrum that they control or use to further their agency's mission. And when it comes to finding out what parts of government-controlled spectrum or airwaves can be auctioned off to the private sector or to the public, you always tend to get these sort of backlashes or debates about, well, you know, giving this spectrum up to the private sector could allow it for interference or could hinder our mission. And so I think the way to look at this challenge by NOAA and NASA is sort of in this context, one of sort of like a bureaucratic tussle. We'll see how it plays out and whether it does affect the weather forecasting.

Brian Fung, thank you for taking time to be with us today. My pleasure. Brian Fung is a tech reporter for the Washington Post. As we heard just a minute ago, there are some gaps between 5G as it has been envisioned and now it's currently being deployed in the U.S. and one unanswered question, who will benefit the most? Here to talk about policy and equity is Harold Feld, a lawyer and senior vice president of the Consumer Group Public Knowledge. He joins us from Washington. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you very much for having me. Why are you concerned that 5G could perpetuate a digital divide? Well, as Brian was just saying, one of the tradeoffs about these frequencies is that they don't go as far. They have a lot more throughput, but they don't go as far. So right now, if you live in a poor neighborhood in a city or if you live out in a rural area, you don't have really good wireline broadband service because nobody wants to spend the money to bring fiber to those neighborhoods or those communities. In urban areas, at least, you can get good wireless because right now you put up a cell tower

and it covers, you know, a huge chunk of the city. These things are going to require what they are calling densification, because, of course, everything needs to have a funny name. But that means you're not going to be able to put up one tower and it's going to cover, you know, lots of neighborhoods. You're going to have to basically line streets to cover the area to get that gigabit throughput that they're trying to do. So all this deregulation that the FCC is doing

and that states are doing that the wireless companies are pushing for, is taking away any requirement to serve communities that these companies don't want to serve. So what we're in danger of seeing, if we don't have the right policies, is first of all, nobody will build out to the rural areas because it's already expensive to build wireless out to rural areas. It's going to be 10 times more expensive to build this stuff out in rural areas. And in urban areas, the places that right now at least can get, good, you know, 4G wireless are unlikely to see 5G wireless built out with these kind of new

antennas. I'm Ira Plato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking 5G with Harold Feld. So you think that we're going to have basically the status quo on a digital divide? Yeah, I mean, look, this is what we've seen time and again, is that companies, Companies are not in the business of social policy. They're not here to do good things. They're not here to make sure all Americans have access. That's what the Federal Communications Commission is for. That's Section 1 of the Communications Act is to provide for all Americans. And unfortunately, that's not something that this administration has, you know, shown a lot of interest in. There was a big announcement last week where they said, oh, we're going to put $20 billion into new fiber going out to earlier. If you take a look at it, as the Democratic FCC commissioners pointed out, all they're really doing is taking a program that exists right now that puts $2 billion a year into rural broadband infrastructure and scraping off the Obama program that's on it right now and writing in Trump program. And it's the same program.

It's the same amount of money. So it's not really going to change anything, and it's not really going to move the status quo. and pretty much all the regulation that's being pushed right now is to help the companies and not ask for anything back. And, you know, that's just crazy. If we're going to give these companies, you know, rights of way and access to telephone polls and all of these things, then we ought to make the deal that we always make with public utilities and say, hey, you've got to serve everybody. You can't just cherry pick the rich people and, you know, ignore all the people who, who you don't want to serve. Do the cities have any power in this? Well, the cities have some

power. Unless, and this is why, one of the reasons why the wireless industry is beating the drums so much on this 5G race and, oh, we've got to do everything right away and everybody ought to panic because China's going to eat our lunch and it's going to be horrible. This happens every time that we move to a new technology so that you can get state legislatures to pass laws, and many of them now have. California is, in fact, considering a law to totally deregulate its

its internet services, and on the grounds that that's going to get deployment. And what happens when you do that is it removes all the anti-redlining rules. Right now, localities control their rights of way. They can say, hey, you want a franchise

to serve the rich neighborhoods. Well, you know, then you have to also serve the poor neighborhoods. Hey, you to serve the cities where you can make a lot of money, you also got to serve the rural areas where maybe you're not going to make as much money. The FCC and the state legislators at the urging of the wireless companies are saying preempt all that authority. Make that go away, and we promise that we will just roll it out that much faster to everybody if you get rid of all these regulations. But we've seen time and again when you do that, yeah, somehow they never get around to deploying to the areas where the poor people live.

All right, Harold, thank you for taking. We've run out of time, but some great thoughts to think about. Harold Feld, lawyer and senior vice president of the Consumer Group Public Knowledge in Washington. After the break, more on the future of 5G. We'll take stock of what we know and don't know about cell phone radiation, its effects on the human body, what that means as tech changes. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this break.

This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flito. talking this hour about 5G, the promised ultra-fast next generation of wireless communication. What is it and why it may or may not live up to the promises? But there is another big can of worms that has been asked many times of us. Will it affect our health? To cell phones, 5G, cause cancer or brain damage? We have touched on this before, and we have still got asked about it all the time,

so we're going to take up that topic again. The research into non-ionizing radiation is perplexing and it is unclear. Enough so that Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Representative Anna issue of California have asked the FCC to provide proof that 5G technology is safe and does not cause cancer. And toxicologist and consumer advocate DeVry Davis has been urging more protections for consumers in the meantime. I think that we ought to take precautions here. And what I would like to see is a moratorium on the rollout and a concerted effort to identify and evaluate safety so that this industry will work to improve hardware and software and reduce exposures. Where we are now with these devices is where we were with cars in the 1960s.

We need the equivalent of airbags and seatbelts. Devere Davis, a consumer protection advocate. Last year, a 10-year study by the National Toxicology Program found an increase in certain tumors for male rats exposed to 2G and 3-G radiation. But can that really translate into human health? And what can we make of the rest of the research out there in deciding safety? John Booker was one of the authors on that 10-year rat study. He's a senior scientist at the National Toxicology Program in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. and former associate director there.

Welcome, Dr. Booker. Thank you. Jonathan Samet is dean of the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado, Denver. Welcome, Dr. Samet. Thank you so much, Harvard. Dr. Booker, you are a group published the final results of your 10-year study on rats and cell phone radiation.

The final draft. Well, the draft came out last year. The final came out this year. Describe what you were looking at and what you found. So we were looking at the possibility that the non-ionizing radiation, as you mentioned, from cellular telephones that are used to communicate with the base towers or the cell towers, that use a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that is termed non-ionizing that has always been relatively considered benign with respect to biological effects other than heating, perhaps. and this is opposed to ionizing radiation, which is like gamma or x-rays that are known to cause cancer. So it was somewhat of surprise back in the late 90s

when studies came out of Sweden that reported some suggestive evidence of the association of cellular telephones with the occurrence of brain cancers. And many of the cancers that were reported were of glial cell origin, which is a type of tissue that surrounds and supports nerves. And not long after those reports came out, the NTP, the National Toxicology Program, received a request to look into this possibility of performing rodent cancer, in essence, safety assessment studies with non-ionizing radiation. We were at that time aware of some similar studies going on in Europe, and we worked with those European groups during the design and performance of those studies and followed the outcome. And those studies were, in fact, negative for increases in tumors,

but they had some limitations that we felt would require that further, larger, and more powerful studies be performed. So we worked with experts in the design and construction of radiofrequency radiation exposure systems to create an exposure facility that could house and consistently expose several thousand animals to graded levels of radio frequency radiation, starting during pregnancy, throughout birth and for most of their natural lifetimes. And this was a large study because we wanted to have the power to have some confidence in the results,

whether they came out negative or positive for increases in cancers. So we exposed rats and mice to radio frequency radiation in 10-minute-on, 10-minute-off increments over the course of 18 hours every day using power levels that were somewhat above to slightly below the currently permitted upper power levels for what is termed local. tissue exposures from cellular telephones. But in our studies, the whole bodies of the rodents were exposed. And what we found was that in mice and in female rats,

these were largely negative with respect to increases in cancers, with the frequencies and the modulations that we used. But in male rats, we were concerned over finding some increases in cancerous tumors of glial cell origin in the brains and the hearts. So to us, at the very least, the assumption that non-ionizing radiation is completely benign is to us perhaps not correct, but for perspective on our findings, the exposure conditions that we used were sufficiently high to have relevance to the regulatory limits, and we're on the order of perhaps a thousandfold higher than what one would receive during a typical cell phone call when holding a phone next to the body. but that's not necessarily the case when you're going in a subway and trying to talk on the phone or in an elevator, for example. Jonathan Sammett, you were following the study when it came out in 2018. What was your assessment of the methodology and the results?

Well, to me, the importance of the results lay in there, finding these cellular effects that John mentioned in the tumors of the heart, and there were parallel findings in another bioassay. So I think that the warning was clear that this type of radiation could cause in these animal systems, as facts that could be construed as adverse have extended to people. We're left with the usual quandary of how do you extend, as John mentioned, these findings to people, which really brings up the need for more research. Yes.

And Dr. Booker, has there any been a follow-up stuff? those were with 2G and 3G radiation, correct? Yes, that's correct. Any follow-up to possibly 5G radiation in the works? So we are currently in the process of assembling a much smaller and much more flexible exposure system that will allow us to be able to look at other frequencies, durations, various intermittent exposures,

and also allow us to look at the, now that we know the target organs, in essence of radio frequency radiation, the most sensitive organs, we can begin to look at the molecular changes in those organs and hopefully understand a little bit more about how those changes might relate to the carcinogenic process. And if we do that with the technologies that we had currently used in the 2G and 3G studies, we can then extend those biological outcomes to studies of 4G and perhaps 5G, although those are technologically very difficult studies to accomplish.

Jonathan, critics have brought up a few strange things in the study, namely that the radiation only seemingly seemed to affect male rats and that the rats that received the radiation treatment actually lived longer than the control rats. Right, and I think that often with animal studies, and I think this is more, perhaps John's domain than mine, there are often inconsistency something seen in males or females or one species and not another, as in this case. To me, that doesn't change sort of the bottom line that effects were found, and I think that leaves us struggling with how did these effects occur? What is the underlying mechanism? And John talked a little bit already about the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.

One thing we really need to hone in on is what are the mechanisms by which non-ionizing radiation could have effects that we think of as adverse to potentially the human health. So, Dr. Booker and you, John, asked the same question. So if we don't have any studies right now about 5G and 5G is being rolled out without these studies, aren't we basically conducting a population study of billions of people who will be exposed to 5G to see what happens to them? Well, yeah, let me weigh in here. I mean, I think, you know, we say that something is safe if it's risks or judge. to be acceptable. And if we don't have information on the risks, we're left unable to judge safety. And I think, as you put it, that's right where we are. We have some ways to track

if something goes awry in what you've described as experiment of human exposure, if brain cancer rates rise. We have tumor registries that monitor cancers throughout the U.S. and other countries. The problem is we don't want to find out that there's a problem because we've seen brain cancer rates rise. That's just like the smoking story where we learned that smoking could cause lung cancer because lung cancer rates went up. So I think we need the right studies that will help us look at the risks. Animal studies are part of that picture, I think, you know, probing the mechanisms and thinking of if we can do some clever observational or epidemiological studies as well. I have a tweet from Jim who says something that a lot of people say who are pushing, who push back

against the idea that cell phones may cause health problems. And Jim says, if this non-ionizing radiation is causing cancer, would we have an explosion in the number of human cancers by now, given the rapid adoption of cell phones and other wireless devices? John? Yeah, we have an answer to that. I mean, we know that cancers develop over a long period of time. And, you know, if you've turned to the atomic bond survivors,

is one of the largest populations exposed to radiation. There was a rise in acute leukemia early, but the burden of cancer's colon, breast, lung, that came 30, 40 years later. So we don't have enough experience in hand. And then, of course, exposures are always changing, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, and whatever is to come. So we need to get a basic foundation of understanding

that we're still lacking. Speaking of understanding, John Booker, any idea of what the possible mechanism could be for what you saw in this study if the radiation is not actually breaking chemical bonds? So there have been a number of potential mechanisms that have been studied throughout the years. There still is a question about the role of heat in radio frequency radiation induced biological effects. We know RFR does cause heat, but the regulations are put in place such that that would be expected to be limited during the use of cell phones. There are other ways other than causing ion-induced damage to cause genetic injury. It may not be direct. It could be through oxidative stress.

could be through inhibition of the DNA repair mechanisms that normally repair damage that occurs every day. Some studies have suggested that there might be a diminished immune response in individuals that are heavily exposed to radio frequency radiation, which might limit the tumor surveillance that goes on. and then there are all possibilities that people have raised about changes in the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, which might expose brain tissues to agents that would not normally occur. So really there are lots of possibilities, but we don't really have a good idea of the best ones at the moment. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking about the potential health hazards of 9.5. ionizing radiation, radio waves.

Okay, so Dr. Booker, what would be the study that could answer all these questions? And who would pay for that? Well, if we are correct in our presumption that we could establish biological markers of radiofrequency radiation-induced effects in the organ systems that we've seen have been responsive, in our studies, then we could monitor those same molecular changes using a 5G technology exposure system. Now, the 5G is at the higher frequencies proposed to not penetrate much beyond the skin. We know that the frequencies that we used in our studies do penetrate the body. And in fact, one of the reasons that their male rats might have been responsive as opposed to females and mice was that we had evidence that they did tend to absorb more of the radio frequency radiation simply because they're larger.

So there are a lot of geometric issues at play here with respect to where radiation actually goes, how far it penetrates, and what the targets might be that we need to sort through. Okay, we're going to have to leave it there. We've run out of time. I'd like to thank my guest, John Booker, senior scientists at the National Toxicology Program and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and a former associate director there, Jonathan Samitt, dean of the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado in Denver. Thank you both for taking time to be with us today. Certainly, thank you.

You're welcome. One last thing before we go. This week, we got word of the passing of Nobel-winning neuroscientist Paul Greenguard. He was known for his studies of how neurons. communicate. He joined us in October of 2000 with co-nobel winner Eric Candell to discuss his work. What's your biggest challenge, you think? I think the biggest challenge, not only for me, but for the whole neuroscience community, would be to see whether there's one or several, and if so, how many basic underlying principles to how the brain works. In the case of heredity,

there was the double helix. That's a single principle and everything else, close from that. My guess, and I think, my guess is that is Eric's guess and the guess of most other neuroscientists, is that there probably is not a single principle, but there is sort of a cluster of principle, some of which we're learning

like fast transmission and slow transmission. No grand unifying theory. That would be my guess. I think Paul was absolutely right on that. I think... But we can't stop trying to see if there is such one, right, Eric? Paul Greenguard passed away this week at the age of 93.

Burkwest is our director, a senior producer, Christopher Taliatta, and our producers are Alexa Lim, Christy Taylor, and Katie Feather. We had technical on engineering help today from Rich Kim, Sarah Fishman, and Kevin Wolfe. A program note, next week marks the kickoff of our new climate series, degrees of change. Now, over the coming year, we're going to be talking about the changing climate in communities around the world, new innovations to adapt to the effects of climate change, and what you can do to be part of the solution. And we want to hear from you. Join our newsletter to hear from SciFri producers about the biggest climate stories of the week and tell us how communities like yours are looking to the future. Here's how you get involved. Sign up at ScienceFriiday.com slash degrees of change. That's

science friday.com slash degrees of change. Our degrees of change series starts right here next week. We want to hear from you. You want to let you know. what we find out about communities like yours. Have a great holiday, Passover Easter weekend. I'm Ira Flato in New York.