Science Vs - 5G: Welcome to the Revolution?

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

How should we feel about 5G? Is it a breakthrough technology that will revolutionize our world, or in a bid to get new gadgets, are we risking our health? To find out, we spoke with electrical engineer Prof. Jeff Andrews, biologist Prof. Henrik Mouritsen, radiology safety expert Prof. Chris Collins, and psychologist Prof. Rodney Croft.  Check out the full transcript here: http://bit.ly/2qd2MIR  Selected references:  Jeff’s paper on the future of 5G: http://bit.ly/36ob7tW  Chris's review on 5G’s safety: http://bit.ly/336losL  Henrik's article on the effect of electromagnetic radiation on migratory birds: https://go.nature.com/338t3Xy  Review on symptoms associated with electromagnetic waves: http://bit.ly/2JF7C8V  Credits: This episode was produced by Meryl Horn with help from Wendy Zukerman, Lexi Krupp, Michelle Dang and Rose Rimler. We’re edited by Caitlin Kenney. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, Lexi Krupp, and Michelle Dang. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord and Emma Munger. Recording assistance from Olivia Aldridge, Beth McMullen, and Mirjam Steger. A huge thanks to all the people we spoke to for this episode including: Dr. Sarah Loughran, Dr. Stefano Cucurachi, Professor Muriel Médard, Dr. Harish Krishnaswamy, Dr. Christopher Labos, Dr. Jordan Gerth, Dr. Arno Thielens, Prof. David Carpenter, Dr. Jerrold Bushberg, Dr. Patrick Mineault, Norman Carreck and ARPANSA. Extra thanks to Kaitlyn Sawrey, Shahzad Ahsan, Rachel Ward, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan Eleven? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves.

Get ready to learn. I'm Jan Eleven. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology, and what do they think?

I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. This is the show that pits facts against frequencies. On today's show, 5G. It's a brand new mobile network that's being rolled out right now.

And some say that this new tech is going to revolutionise our world, while others say it'll ruin it. Let's start with its cheerleaders. Tech enthusiasts reckon that 5G will turbocharge our devices. Yeah, 5G... ..will make way for ultra-fast downloads and things like self-driving cars. They say all of our gadgets will become connected

through the internet of things. And we'll even get... Robot hands. Robot feet. And... ..a robo-worm. Robo-worms! They're coming! Governments are also so excited about this that they're falling over themselves Robo-worms! They're coming!

Governments are also so excited about this that they're falling over themselves to be the first to connect their cities with the 5G network. The race to 5G is moving forward at full speed. President Trump tweeted today, American companies must step up their efforts or get left behind. But the rollout of 5G has become a political hot potato. There's conflicting information about this tech being thrown around. And there are now genuine fears about 5G.

In fact, protests have broken out around the world against 5G. In Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Canada, and right here in New York City. Hey, hey! Ho, ho! 5G rollout's got to go. We wanted to hear what people were worried about, so we went to this protest in Greenwich Village. I'm worried about potential cancers. Damage to DNA, brain cancer.

It also affects all living things, not just humans. 5G is being rolled out without any adequate testing. They were worried about how 5G would affect wildlife and one protester had heard stories of people getting sick once 5G was installed in their neighbourhood. And they're going to put these towers everywhere and people so hooked on their toys they don't even know what's going down. And eventually we're going to pay the price. These concerns have gotten so loud that a scientific committee in the EU recently listed 5G as an emerging health and environmental issue. It was right up there with e-cigarettes and microplastics.

So, how should we feel about 5G? Is it a breakthrough technology that will revolutionise our world? Or, in a bid to get robo-worms, are we risking our health? On today's show, we will answer the following questions. 1. What is 5G? Like, seriously, what is it? 2. Will it harm our environment? And 3. Will it be dangerous for you and me?

When it comes to 5G, there's a lot of... Towers everywhere. But then there's science. Science vs 5G is coming up just after the break. Welcome back. Today we're asking, in our rush to move to 5G, are we risking the health of ourselves and our planet just to get some fancy new toys? Now, before we can know if this tech is bad for us,

we've got to know what on earth is 5G? And one way to think about it is that it's the new way that your phone is going to connect to the internet. So if you look at your phone right now, in the top corner of your screen there might be a little 4G, which is also sometimes called LTE. Well, in the future, you might be holding a phone that shows 5G. The G stands for generation, and to fully understand what this will mean, it's helpful to go back in time a little. In the 1980s, we got 1G. It basically allowed us to make cellular phone calls. Then 2G gave us the power to text. 3G gave us mobile internet.

Peanut butter jelly time! Peanut butter jelly time! But it was a bit crappy. Jelly time! And then we got 4G. Good quality internet from anywhere. Oh, my God, it's full. I'm double rainbow all the way across the sky.

Johnny, that really hurts. Don't let rain... Damn, Daniel, back at it again with the white vans. I don't know what to do. All I do is stand by. I hold on. Back at it again with the white vans. Also, with 4G, Google Maps got really reliable and Uber started taking us places. But if we want to keep gorging data the way that we have for years, then we have to upgrade.

Because the tech that we use for 4G is so full of streaming videos and other stuff that it's getting crammed. We've run out, and we've run out like some time ago. That's Jeff Andrews. He's worked for the big cell phone companies, and he's a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Texas in Austin. And Jeff reckons that 5G is going to be a huge upgrade.

For the nerds out there, he compared it to going from Lamo DSL to a fiber optic connection. You notice a huge difference in how everything works in your house. And I think that's what we would expect on 5G. The video qualities will go up. The speed with which you can do things will go up. In demos, people have used 5G to download an entire season of Stranger Things in less than a minute. And so just think about how fast you'll be able to download the entire back catalogue of science verses. Now, cell phone companies are using all sorts of tech to get up to these higher 5G speeds. And we'll get to those in just a tick. For now, though, you've got to know that for most of us, 5G isn't here yet.

It's being rolled out slowly across the US, and to get it, you're going to need a new phone with a fancy 5G chip, which means if you've got an old phone and in the corner it says 5GE, your cell phone company is basically lying to you. They aren't regulated and so it's often just irresistible for a marketing person to label something 5G even if it's not really 5G. And if a cell phone company is willing to play fast and loose

with the facts about what service they're actually providing, what else might they be hiding? Could 5G actually be dangerous? Well, one of the things that protesters told us they were worried about was that with 5G, cell phone towers will be all over the place. And they're going to put these towers everywhere. Is that true? Well, there aren't actually going to put these towers everywhere. Is that true? Well, there aren't actually going to be giant towers everywhere.

Instead of towers, 5G uses little boxes full of antennas. They're called base stations. You know, they'll be small. If you look on a lot of lampposts, there's like little transformer boxes. It'll be something like that size. But the protesters were right in that there will be way more of these base stations. Jeff reckons that if you live in a big city, eventually, they could be basically everywhere. I think going to, say, like 10 times more base stations in an

urban area is definitely what people have in mind. 10 to 20 times more. Wow. So does that mean they'll be on like maybe every second block you'll see a base station? Even every block. Wow. Yeah. Here's why we need all these base stations. Generally speaking, for your phone to work, it sends out little invisible electromagnetic waves

through the air. And there are electromagnetic waves of different sizes. So, for example, with 4G waves, some are around 15 inches long. What's new about 5G is we're using much shorter wavelengths. Specifically, they're about a millimetre long. Yeah, so with 5G, it's expected that a lot of companies are going to start using millimetre waves that are like the size of a pea. Now, there are two things you need to know about these little waves. The first is that they don't travel very far. They only go about a football field or two before they get tuckered out. The second is that these new waves, unlike 4G, have a hard time traveling through

things like walls. They get blocked very easily. One way to think about these waves is like music. So music with a lot of bass is like these longer 4G waves. You know, bass, you know, travels much further and, you know, can go through walls. You know, when you're on the other side of a wall and somebody's blasting their stereo, you hear the bass much more. The shorter 5G waves, on the other hand... 5G is more like treble. It's higher frequency, you know, the squeakier, you know, tingier sounds, and these, you know, don't go through walls as well.

This means that if you walk past a building or even a tree, your 5G connection could be blocked. You could lose your signal. So to get around these problems, engineers have to build way more base stations so that the signal can hop from station to station to station, meaning you'll get more coverage. So yes, with 5G, we're going to have a lot more little base stations in our cities. And while tech fluences are gushing over 5G, there's actually quite a lot to be ironed out here. These new millimeter waves with their signals hopping around everywhere, it really complicates things. And engineers are still trying to make this

technology work at its best. In fact, one of the coolest things that they're trying is called beam forming. It's where they concentrate the millimeter waves in one direction, kind of like a laser beam. You have to direct it. That's the trick. I'm imagining that it's like in Star Wars where the lasers come from all different directions and it's like zoom, zoom, and then they form into one big laser beam. Yes. Is that? Yeah, that's exactly right. So like the Death Star, when it sends all the laser beams together and creases one huge beam, and of course, pointed in a specific direction, that is like how a millimeter wave works.

Of course, you know, it's not blowing up planets or anything. But will 5G blow up the planet? According to some reports, it sure seems that way. There are stories of bees dying near 5G base stations, and people are worried that this new tech might be harmful to birds and other wildlife. And they point to scientific studies to back up their claims. These people say that one of the reasons that some birds

might be in trouble when it comes to 5G is that they use the Earth's electromagnetic field to migrate. And since 5G will send out electromagnetic waves, maybe these fancy new waves will get in the way. Henrik Moritzson wrote one of the studies that's often used to build a case against 5G. He's a professor of neurobiology at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. wrote one of the studies that's often used to build a case against 5G. He's a professor of neurobiology at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. And the first thing that you should know about Henrik is that he loves birds.

I mean, listen to him tell us his favourite bird story. It's about kakapos, which are these amazing giant parrots. Henrik told us about seeing one on a research trip in New Zealand. And suddenly one of my friends screamed, there's an F dot dot dot kakapo here. And I just remember that I basically ran in the direction of where that sound came. And I came around the corner and here was a half a metre big green fat parrot sitting on a tree stump. And this was this flightless kakapo that I had been fascinated about since I was a kid.

So that was extremely exciting. Okay, but we aren't here to talk about kakapos. As cool as they are. We called up Henrik to talk to him about his paper that gets cited by the anti-5G crowd. It was published in the Cadillac of journals, Nature, and it inspired the headline from a blog post shared on Forbes, quote, your smartphone is making birds stupid, end quote. The study started when he was researching European robins, which, I gotta say, compared to the kakapo, seem a little boring.

Like when Henrik brings them into his lab. They don't sing in there. They don't chat in there. They just sit there and jump around. Can you imitate it? What sound does it make? No. You almost went there, didn't you? No. No. You almost went there, didn't you?

No. No. Henrik didn't set out to study 5G. He was actually just trying to do a simple experiment that would show the birds in his lab knew which direction to fly in, the first step to migrating properly. And studies like this had been done tonnes of times before. But this time? Didn't work. They were jumping around randomly. The birds couldn't figure out which direction to

fly in. Something was very wrong. Months went by and nothing changed. So we tried to give them different food, added all kinds of vitamins, studied bird nutrition, maybe we fed them, could feed them better. But nothing worked. Until someone in his lab made a curious suggestion. He suggested that maybe electromagnetic waves coming from devices nearby might be messing with the birds. And so Henrik should try to block those waves. And how do you do that?

Well, you make a little tinfoil hat for each bird. Not exactly. He suggested blocking the waves using aluminium plates. Had he made that suggestion five seasons earlier, I would certainly not have listened. But at this stage, you know, I was willing to try anything. So we put aluminium walls inside these huts But at this stage, you know, I was willing to try anything. So we put aluminium walls inside these huts and suddenly the experiment worked.

Yeah, when Henrik blocked those electromagnetic waves, the birds knew which direction to fly in. Well, the birds started jumping north in spring and they started jumping south in autumn. So that was quite nice. Now, there are lots of different kinds of electromagnetic waves out there, even AM and FM radio waves. They're electromagnetic. So what kind of waves were affecting the birds? Was it waves from cell phones? No. No. Henrik told us that the waves that were messing with the birds in his experiment had nothing to do with cell phones at all. These waves were much longer, like thousands of times longer. Henrik said they actually looked more like AM radio waves than the waves that our phones are using.

It's not affected by mobile telephone signals because the frequencies are too high. So he specifically said that in the paper. Unfortunately, a very large number of people who refer to the paper overlook those sentences and use it to say that this demonstrates that mobile phones are a problem for birds, but this is simply scientifically wrong. And how do you feel when you read that? I mean, it's wrong. It's scientifically wrong. Other studies have found the same thing that Henrik's has. If electromagnetic waves are causing problems for birds,

the waves doing that don't come from cell phones. The ones causing trouble are more like AM radio waves. But that's just birds. Anti-5Gers say that there are tons of studies which back up this idea that the waves used in cell phones are dangerous to wildlife. So we got the best and brightest on the case. I can't get this mic to go down. You know, they just keep wanting to pop up. We got our producer, Meryl Horne, PhD.

All right, I'm ready. To scour through the literature on whether electromagnetic waves emitted in cell phones can hurt wildlife. She looked at five big review papers that went through dozens of studies. They do point out a ton of problems with the papers in this field. Like what kinds of issues? So some of them, they will get the math wrong when they're trying to do the physics equations. Others were basically just anecdotal. They had really small sample sizes.

And other ones were just like, they just looked ridiculous. What do you mean? Give me an example. There is one paper that was looking at the effect of cell phone waves on ants and their ability to find some food that was nearby. So they got some ants and put some cockroach parts around. Cockroach parts? Yeah, it's very tasty if you're an ant. Okay. And then they turned on the thing that emitted these waves and it did seem to affect the ants. Well, but the problem is that the researchers didn't take into account the fact that this thing that made the cell phone waves also generated wind and made noise. And so maybe it was like this wind and the noise

that was actually affecting the ants, not the cell phone waves. Oh man, and they didn't control for that. No, it didn't seem like they did. Science! I'm so embarrassed for you. Okay, so what do you think the takeaway is here? Like, do you think that these waves are dangerous? I mean, I'm not convinced myself.

Like, some of the studies do look okay, but there isn't, like, one effect that I've found that's been replicated again and again that convincingly shows that cell phone waves are hurting the environment or the wildlife. A lot of the research that Meryl looked at was about the waves used in 3G and 4G technology. We actually don't have much research into 5G yet. It's just so new. And it is possible that some unexpected things could come up. But we also shouldn't be assuming that just because 5G is a higher number than 4G and 3G, that this technology is stronger and more dangerous for wildlife, or for you and me.

In fact, there is reason to believe that it won't be. After the break, what happens when 5G waves get into our bodies? Welcome back. We've just learnt that 5G is a brand new technology that will make our gadgets snappier. But at what cost? We've talked about the 5G is a brand new technology that will make our gadgets snappier. But at what cost? We've talked about the kakapos. Now it's time to talk about you and me.

There will be so many new 5G base stations that when you're walking around your city, you probably won't be able to avoid the electromagnetic waves being emitted from them. So, should you be worried? For this, we talked to Chris Collins, a professor of radiology at NYU School of Medicine. And he is so excited about electromagnetic waves

that he played us a little ditty he wrote about MRIs, which also use these waves. When they make you strip down to your socks and a gown, But Chris doesn't just write songs He also writes scientific papers And he wrote a big review on the safety of 5G And Chris told us that to understand where these fears about 5G giving us cancer are coming from, you need to understand that there are some really scary things on the electromagnetic spectrum. You've got gamma rays

from nuclear radiation, x-rays, as well as UV rays from the sun. And even Billy Ray. You know, Cyrus. Ultraviolet radiation, X-ray, gamma rays. We know that they can cause cancer. The reason that stuff like gamma rays and X-rays are so dangerous is that they are powerful enough to literally break atoms and molecules apart, ultimately causing damage to our DNA. It's why you have to wear those heavy apron things

at the dentist's office when you get an X-ray. To help us get it, Chris pulled out his ukulele again. Just kidding. But he did have a great analogy for us. So if you think about Batman, and you think about Batman's fist, and his fist flies across and hits the bad guy in the comic book and there's this big pow. The punch is like the waves that make up X-rays.

They're powerful and they can knock an electron out of its socket. Exploding out of there. Pow! But what if Batman hit the Joker with a 5G wave? The pow from 5G is really hardly enough. The Joker wouldn't even notice it. It's not powerful. Or in real life, 5G won't break the chemical bonds in cells that can cause cancer. It doesn't have the energy.

That's right. It doesn't have the energy to break that bond. And this is true for all of the waves that are used for cell phones. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G. They're all too weak to break these chemical bonds. And this is backed up by decades of research into cell phones. But if you're still not convinced, there's actually something about 5G which should make it even safer than 2G, 3G and 4G. So remember how we told you that the waves of 5G are really crappy at travelling long distances and they get blocked really easily, like when you walk past a tree? Well, from everything we know about the physics here, these waves also get blocked when it comes to your skin. It can't penetrate more than a couple of millimeters. It can't penetrate any further than that.

Nothing's going to get into your deep tissues, brain, anything. So since the waves from 5G can't get into our brain, and even if they were there, they wouldn't be powerful enough to affect our DNA, we really don't know how 5G could cause brain cancer. And the fact that these waves can't penetrate more than our skin might also mean that they won't affect other animals that much either. But there is one effect that 5G can have on our body that we know is real. So 5G waves can't our body, that we know is real. So 5G waves can't get past your skin, but some of them actually do get absorbed into our skin.

And experiments have found that if you crank up the power of devices that emit 5G high enough, this can actually mean that your skin gets hotter. How much hotter will my skin get once there's 5G base stations everywhere? You shouldn't notice any difference, much less than what you experience when you walk out on a sunny day. Chris told us that the safety regulations that are on base stations ultimately mean that it's unlikely the power on them will be high enough to feel anything.

And so when we look at 5G through the lens of how this technology could possibly hurt us, it looks pretty safe. It can't hurt us the way that other kinds of electromagnetic waves can. And the International Group, which looks at all of the literature on radiation safety, said that the chance that these waves could do anything other than heat us up is, quote, very low, end quote. As a scientist, I think it's healthy to be skeptical

of current knowledge. But is there enough evidence? Is there any reason to be worried about 5G technology or communications technologies at all? The simple answer is no. If there is a harmful effect, I honestly think we'd know about it by now. All right. So if the scientific consensus is that all 5G waves can do

is heat you up a little bit, then why are people so worried about 5G making them sick? Well, this actually isn't new to 5G. For years, people have said that they get all sorts of symptoms when they're around things like cell phones or Wi-Fi. And this condition actually has a name, a long name. Idiopathic environmental intolerance attributed to electromagnetic fields.

Or IAAATF. Hmm. The reality for these people is terrible. This is Rodney Croft. He's at the University of Wollongong in Australia. He studies this condition and he's seen the effects it can have on people. Maybe the headaches are unbearable. Maybe there's nausea.

I mean, people might start finding it difficult to go to work because they're aware that at work there's a lot of Wi-Fi around, for instance. Rodney wanted to find out if electromagnetic waves were making these people sick. So he did this small study. Here's how it worked. Someone would just be sitting in a chair. They would have the exposure device next to them. And what does that look like?

It's actually a suitcase. So we've got a yellow suitcase to add some colour to the room. Inside the exposure device, aka yellow suitcase, was a gadget that emitted 2G, 3G and 4G waves. So Rodney would press a button. And a 3G, 4G exposure might come on or a pretend exposure might come on. You heard him right.

He said pretend. That is, sometimes nothing would come out of the suitcase at all. Rodney would then ask the people, how are you feeling? Do they have a headache? Do they not have a headache? He'd do this over and over again. We do it lots of times. For an hour.

So, what did Rodney find? Do the waves cause these symptoms? Does it matter if they're on or not? It doesn't matter whether the 2G, 3G, 4G is on or not. Yeah, so it's really the power of the mind. What's happening is they believe that the exposure is occurring. That belief is enough to give them a headache. That is, if they thought the waves were coming out, they felt the effects. And while Rodney's was a small study, seven other papers have found the same thing. These people have real symptoms, but they're not caused by the waves. What's going on here is called the nacebo effect. It's like the darker cousin of the placebo effect. So instead of sniffing some essential oils and feeling relaxed, someone thinks cell phones are dangerous,

and then they really do feel bad around cell phones. And get this. The power of suggestion is so strong that when people are told that these same kinds of waves are good for them, they can actually feel good. Yes, in a bizarre twist, there's a niche industry selling the therapeutic value of the very same millimetre waves used in 5G. Except it's rebranded as millimetre wave therapy. And apparently it works for just about anything. Ulcers, diabetes, herpes, constipation, asthma and pain. I had some pain and I'm now using this millimetre wave machine. In one video, we saw a woman putting a device to her head

that looks a bit like a beer pong cup. It emits those little 5G waves and voila, her pain was gone. I've miraculously taken away all of my pain in just two minutes, which is pretty amazing. You can buy your own millimetre wave therapy device for more than $1,000. Or you can just buy a new 5G smartphone, which can do some other stuff too, you know, make calls, text,

things like that. So when it comes to 5G, should we be freaked out? Well, this is such a new technology. After all, 5G is just being rolled out now. So it's possible that decades from now, something unexpected will pop up. But when we look at the research around other types of existing cell phone technology, say 3G or 4G, we can't find convincing evidence to suggest this will damage us or the environment. Plus, 5G is going to be different.

These waves are tiny and don't travel well, so they can't get past our skin. And even if they miraculously did, as best as science knows, these waves are just too weak to hurt our DNA. And so, to take us out, we wrote a little song about 5G and asked Chris to whip out his ukulele once more. When you download real fast From TV to podcasts

That's 5G When they use tiny waves that can't travel long ways, that's 5G Base stations, antennas, we'll need lots to get signal all over Since these waves can't penetrate through a wall, you'll have little exposure That's Science Versus 5G Hey, Meryl Horne, producer at Science Versus. Hey!

Oh, it's us. Hello! No, I saw you putting it on the mic! How many citations in this week's episode? This week we have 121 citations. 121. And if people want to read more about 5G and see these citations, where should they go? They can look at our website or our show notes and follow the links to the transcripts. Thanks, Meryl.

Yep. And hey, we had to update our exercise episode. There are some new clinical trials about depression that I missed, and they show that exercise can help with the symptoms of depression. It's no magic bullet, but after reading those studies, we think the research in this space is stronger than we made it sound. I am really sorry I missed those studies the first time. What a boo-boo. Seriously. What a boo-boo.

Seriously, what a boo-boo. We've updated the episode. Next week, the weird and wonderful world of sleep. How groundbreaking science is helping us to understand the land of Nod. And I remember taking my bed outside, put it outside in the rain, so the rain was coming down. Wait a sec. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

You did that when you were asleep? Yeah. This episode was produced by Meryl Horne with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Lexi Krupp, Michelle Dang and Rose Rimler. We're edited by Caitlin Kenney. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Lexi Krupp. Mix and sound design by Peter Leonard and Bobby Lord. Music written by Peter Leonard, Bobby Lord and Emma Munger. A huge thanks to all the people we spoke to for this episode,

including Dr Sarah Logren, Dr Stefano Cucuraci, Professor Muriel Medard, Dr Harish Krishnaswamy, Dr Christopher Labos, Dr Jordan Gurr, Dr Arno Theolens, Professor David Carpenter, Dr. Gerald Bushberg, Dr. Patrick Minow, Norman Carrick and Arpanza. An extra thanks to Caitlin Sorey, Shehzad 6G-Assan, Rachel Ward, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wilson. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.