Health

Cellphone radiation warning as researchers reveal new risk factor for 5G networks

January, 04, 2025-03:07

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Cellphone radiation warning as researchers reveal new risk factor for 5G networks:

Anyone uploading videos of their scenic hike in a rural area with 5G is exposed to nearly twice the radiation of someone in a city, according to a new study. Researchers believe the extra radiation stems not from 5G cell towers, but from users' own mobile devices which work overtime to get out a signal in rural areas. A team at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), tracked 5G cell phone users' exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) across two cities and three rural communities

RF-EMF are the means by which radio waves transfer energy, allowing wireless devices to communicate across frequencies that include microwave radiation — which under the wrong circumstances can deliver a dangerous amount of energy.
The team found that the average exposure in the rural areas was 29 milliwatts-per-square-meter (mW/sq-m) when uploading, nearly three-times the safety risk threshold recommended by the World Health Organization, 10 mW/sq-m.

That was also much higher than the amount recorded for phones uploading content in the two Swiss cities, for which the team found an average reading of 16 mW/sq-m. The measurement represents how much radiofrequency energy is passing through a given surface area (like human skin) in the path of these wireless signals. In summary, this study shows that environmental exposure is lower when base station density is low,' said the study's lead author, epidemiology researcher Adriana Fernandes Veludo.

'However,' she added, 'in such a situation, the emission from mobile phones is by orders of magnitude higher.' 'This has the paradoxical consequence that a typical mobile phone user is more exposed to RF-EMF in areas with low base station density,' according to Fernandes Veludo, a PhD student collaborating with the 5G investigation Project GOLIAT. But Fernandes Veludo also noted that the new findings 'might underestimate the real exposure' coming from these 5G cell phones, when operated in rural areas. While European nations deem such levels as 29 mW/sq-m high, they are well below America's own more lax threshold limits. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has set the maximum permitted exposure level to 10,000 mW/sq-m.