With all of this 5G talk going around, I have a few questions. I would like to state- I am NOT someone who thinks 5G is any sort of conspiracy- I just want facts to be able to argue with those who do. (I have some relatives that are VERY against it) Moving on…
Everyone seems to say 5G is safe because it’s non-ionizing.
However, if I look at the elecromagnetic spectrum, I can see that Microwaves are also non-ionizing. I use microwaves every day to heat up my food. This seems like it would be dangerous to a human.
What’s the difference between these two waves (other than wavelength, obviously), and why don’t I have to worry about 5G towers hurting me?
I guess my true question is why don’t cell and radio towers hurt people? They must be high powered to travel long distances- but microwaves are relatively low powered home devices that absolutey can hurt people.
In: Physics
Ionizing radiation causes chemical bonds to break, including the bonds that hold DNA together, and the chemical structure of other things your cells require to live.
Radio waves(including 5G), infrared, visible light, UV, X-Rays, and gamma rays are all electromagnetic radiation, just with a different amount of energy per photon. An X ray or gamma ray might blow off an electron that’s already part of a chemical bond, where a radio wave is only going to influence unbound electrons or slightly move polar molecules.
You need a whole lot of radio waves to hurt someone, mostly by warming them up until they burn from the temperature. The same way you’d get hurt by visible light or infrared. A 100w light bulb can burn you if it’s light output is focused down into a small area, but how many light bulbs would you have to put on a cell tower before the light was bright enough to be dangerous to people on the ground?
There’s a few different ways the EM spectrum can ruin your day. The common ones are:
1. Ionizing radiation – Short wavelength, so short it can jiggle your DNA around. Most jiggled DNA is either repaired or results in cell death. Some small percentage will result in cancer.
2. Exciting molecules in your body – This is what microwaves do to food. They excite water molecules and get them all bouncing around and making heat. Microwaves of a wavelength small enough to interact with you, and a power level high enough to heat you up, are no bueno. Don’t cook yourself in a giant microwave kids.
3. Inducing current – Radio waves can induce an electrical current in a conductive material. This is how radio antennas work. For most applications that current is *very* small. However if you were to grab the conductive part of a large radio mast and then ground yourself you’d be a crispy critter. So don’t do that.
5G towers are on the radio end of the spectrum and are operating at a maximum power output of about 120W. Same as a decently bright lightbulb, and about 10 times less powerful than an average microwave oven. They’re using a frequency that doesn’t meaningfully interact with humans, and a power level so low you’d have to really try quite hard to generate enough of a current do do any damage with it.
The key to your answer is power or wattage. A microwave oven is often 500-2000 watt range. A cell broadcast tower is typically in the 10-50 watt range. Your phone can transmit from 0.6-3 watt.
Sounds like your question is more about microwave ovens vs radios so I’ll address that. Microwave ovens are indeed dangerous in the sense that they can burn you. The burns target nerves preferentially as well, so the damage is more likely to be permanent. This damage is done *exclusively* through heating, and so just like anything else warm it is entirely (no ifs or buts) harmless unless you get a lot of it in one place.
Now, a microwave oven does get a lot of it in one place. About a thousand watts are forced into the food. However, this spreads out very quickly outside of the box. If you ran a microwave with the door open, you would be safe within a few feet of it. You’d feel very little warmth. The same goes for radio towers (not even 5g – just your average fm station). People *can* get rf burns from touching the antenna or getting too close if it is too high-powered. By the time you get to even ground level, much less a few hundred or thousand feet away, it is down to minuscule amounts. In this sense, 5G is no different from your local fm radio stations – they are both *just as dangerous in this regard*.
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