Is 5G Dangerous? Truth about Mobile phone Radiation
How Mobile communications work?
Mobile communication is a segment of Telecommunications where information is transferred without any medium. This technology is developed such that the end-users can communicate from any location in a certified area. Mobile phones communicate with their nearest cell phone tower with cellular technology. In cellular technology, a geographic location is divided into hexagonal cells, where each cell has its cell tower. A cell tower transmits and receives data from mobile phones with help of radio signals (a part of EMR). Only the mobile and tower connections are wireless, but all the towers are connected by wires (optical fibers). The information is transferred in a sequence of binary numbers which is achieved by modifying frequency and amplitude.
What is 5G?
5G is the 5thgeneration of wireless networking technology. The previous-generation 4G offers to download and upload speeds of 12Mbps and 5Mbps respectively which is 10 times that of its predecessor 3G. 5G offers a download speed ranging from 50Mbps to over 1Gbps. 5G frequencies are categorized into low-band, mid-band, and millimeter waves. Low-band 5G uses similar frequencies that of 4G ranging from 600-700 MHz with download speeds a bit more than 4G which is 30-250 Mbps(download). Mid-band uses a frequency range of 700 MHz to 6 GHz providing speeds up to 900 Mbps and finally, the millimeter waves use frequencies ranging from 6-28 GHz achieving speeds over 1Gbps. Millimeter waves are the high-band 5G having wavelengths in order of millimeters. These frequencies come under microwaves in the light spectrum. The drawback of wireless networking is that high speeds and long ranges don’t come along. Low-frequency singles can penetrate through objects, they have long-range while high-frequency waves interact with objects and get absorbed or reflected by them. Millimeter waves have a high frequency which makes it hard to travel long distances. So 5G can be operated only at shorter distances.
Is 5G Dangerous?
The term Radiation misled people into thinking about ionizing radiation which is harmful if we receive enough dose of it. Ionizing radiation can rip electrons out of its orbit which can lead to breakage of DNA and can cause cancer. These frequencies carry high energy by the formula E = hν where h is the plank’s constant and ν is the frequency of the wave. Examples of these types of radiations are UV, X-rays, and γ-rays. We receive a small dose of these radiations daily which are from soil, sun, background radiation of earth and our body itself. These exposures are too little of causing and damage for cells. Ionizing radiations don’t even take half of the light spectrum, most of them are non-ionizing radiations that don’t carry enough energy to remove electrons from their orbits. 5G belongs to radio and microwave frequencies which are far left in the spectrum table so they can’t disrupt DNA. While there were many studies conducted on Cell phone radiation, but the results were inconsistent. An experiment on mice showed an increase in tumors, where they were exposed to Radio frequencies for longer durations but, only male mice developed these tumors and they are the ones that lived longer. There is no scientific evidence that Cell phone radiations can cause cancer. The only thing they can do is heat things up. Ovens use microwaves to heat food, it is done by flipping the water(bipolar molecule) molecules rapidly such that it produces heat by friction. Microwaves produced by wi-fi routers and mobile phones are very less to cause and heating effect. They are only effective when exposed for longer durations and should be held close to our body because as the distance increases intensity decreases exponentially. Even then we don’t see much warming because of our body’s temperature management. If mobile radiation is dangerous then standing in sunlight is much more dangerous as Infrared and visible light have more energy.
Advantages of 5G
As 5G provides greater speeds than 4G, data transfer is much faster with low latency. With 5G more devices can be connected and can seamlessly transfer data without any connectivity issues. 5G is the key for autonomous driving technology, in this, every vehicle nearby talks to each other faster and can maintain connectivity with more vehicles such that they do not collide with each other and reduces accidents.
What things excite you the most about 5G? Comment Below!
