Thrive Global. Washington DC is Ground Zero for the Race to 5G but is the American Public Fully Informed?

Washington DC is Ground Zero for the Race to 5Gbut is the American Public Fully Informed?

by Devra Lee Davis, PhD, MPH, Founder & President of Environmental Health Trust & Visiting Professor of Medicine The Hebrew University

For both reporters and scientists, frank and candid discussions of telecommunications science has become a third rail – – touch it and you perish. Last month PC Magazine reporter J.C. Dvorak highlighted important gaps in understanding of new technology, in “The Problem with 5G.” 5G is the highly touted system that will connect the internet of things allowing your coffee pot, refrigerator, and garage door to talk to your cell phone. 

Dvorak revealed that 5G is still on the drawing boards but will employ both the current wireless frequencies of 3G and 4G and add in higher millimeter wave frequencies which can uniquely penetrate the eyes and skin.Moreover, these frequencies have the distinction of having been field tested as a military weapon for crowd control. Soon after his report appeared both Dvorak and his article were summarily removed and replaced with “What is 5G“ –an article boasting of growing markets for 2019.

Stunned by his experience, Dvorak explained that “5G Got Me Fired” warning readers “to be a little more than cautious when believing anything. As his suppressed article had also indicated, “many systems calling themselves 5G are currently 4G using 5G as a marketing tool” whereas “true 5G …needs all these mini-towers all over the place” which “leaves plenty more time for the public to get a clue and be freaked out.”

In Washington DC—that is precisely what is happening. After the City released draft small cell guidelines that would allow up to 18 new cell antenna poles on a single block throughout the nation's capital, Advisory Neighborhood Commissions and historic preservation groups from Georgetown to Anacostia raised their serious concerns about health and environmental impacts as well as property values with resolutions, comments and testimony at the public hearing in Washington DC. 

Although the science on wireless radiation has become far more clear linking exposures to cancer, memory problems and damage to the nervous and reproductive systems, policymakers feign little interest. Levels that will be commonly be found in the environment near cell antennas can disrupt insect and bird orientation and compromise basic processes of beehives, trees, and plants. If it’s not good for the birds and bees then why assume it’s OK for us?

Read the full Op-Ed at Thrive Global at https://www.thriveglobal.com/stories/47510-washington-dc-is-ground-zero-for-the-race-to-5g?fbclid=IwAR1zkWfXCB8ks1wQG-M6S01a7WKWA4O-aaYvIdC4E5_4w1U9PHhsNohwAcU