Feature
What do GPs need to know about the new 5G network?
Do community concerns about the health impacts of the new 5G mobile network match the evidence? Scientist Dr Ken Karipidis lays out the facts.
Although some in the community are alarmed about the rollout of 5G technology in Australia, there is no evidence to support fears of health harms. (Image: Mick Tsikas.)
5G, the fifth generation of mobile networks, is being rolled out across the country, with estimates that most Australians should be able to access it by 2020.
Touted to be much faster than 4G, with a far greater capacity for data transfer, many predict the new network will enable as much of a leap forward in telecommunications as its predecessor did in 2011.
However, some are also concerned the implementation of 5G, and the associated increased exposure to electromagnetic fields and radiation, will also cause serious health issues.
But Dr Ken Karipidis, Assistant Director of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency’s (ARPANSA) Assessment and Advice Section, wants GPs and their patients to know there is no evidence to support the concern that 5G technology, which uses radio waves and emits low-level radiofrequency (RF) electromagnetic energy (EME), will cause harms to the public.
‘There’s been a lot of research into whether radio waves cause adverse health effects, and the only established health effects of radio waves are very high power levels, where they raise temperature,’ Dr Karipidis told newsGP.
‘An everyday example of that is your microwave oven at home; inside the microwave is very powerful radio waves which make the water molecules in the food bounce very fast, heating them up.
‘At very high power levels, radio waves can raise temperature and that can have serious health consequences. However, the power levels at which telecommunications operate are extremely low, and in those low levels there is no rise in temperature – we’re talking millions of times below what you would find inside of a microwave.’
Dr Ken Karipidis says that telecommunications radio waves operate at a far lower power than those of a microwave oven.
Despite the lack of evidence for adverse health effects, Dr Karipidis does understand some of the reasons for community concern. He believes the fact the 5G network will use a different frequency from its predecessors is a strong contributor to those fears.
‘5G has already started, and it’s currently using similar frequencies to the 4G network,’ he explained. ‘With current mobile phone technologies, some of the energy is absorbed inside your head, but it’s too low to cause any significant temperature.
‘However, in the future – we’re thinking in about two to three years’ time in Australia – 5G will use different sorts of frequencies called millimetre waves. Millimetre waves don’t penetrate the skin, but that also means they don’t travel very far.
‘The way mobile phones work, there’s a base station – your phone communicates with the base station, and then my phone communicates with a base station. So the future 5G network will require a lot more base stations, there will be lots of them everywhere. And I think people don’t like to see base stations around where they live and work.’
While the increased presence of 5G base stations is often perceived negatively, Dr Karipidis has found this to be more of a psychological issue than a cause of genuine harm.
‘The funny thing is, exposure from base stations tends to be thousands of times lower than exposure when you’re using a mobile phone,’ he said. ‘When you’re talking on a mobile phone, your exposure is still low, but it’s much higher than what you’re exposed to from a base station.
‘So people love their mobile phones, but they don’t like base stations, and unfortunately you can’t have one without the other.’
Some people experience a condition known as electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EMH), which they fear will be further exacerbated by the presence of the 5G network. These people include ‘Oliver from Mackay’, who wrote to the ABC’s Hack earlier this year, ‘I’m very concerned about 5G – I already get headaches from 4G and Wi-Fi’.
‘EMH is when people self-report a range of non-specific symptoms, like headaches and lethargy, as being due to electromagnetic sources,’ Dr Karipidis said.
‘So, for example, when they’re in a room and there’s Wi-Fi, or they’re talking on a mobile phone, or there’s a mobile phone tower or a power line next to their house, they’ll report non-specific symptoms to exposures that the majority of the population doesn’t have a problem with.’
Dr Karirpidis explained that while people who experience EMH feel very strongly that electromagnetic fields and radiation are the cause of their symptoms, the evidence does not support this connection.
‘There’s been quite a lot of double-blind placebo trials on this. In other words, they’ve tested people who identify as electromagnetic hypersensitive in a lab situation, where they’ve exposed them to an electromagnetic source in a double-blind scenario so the person doesn’t know, and neither does the researcher,’ he said.
‘And in those scenarios, there’s been no difference in reported symptoms between when the exposure has been on, compared to when the exposure has been off. That’s a good indicator to researchers that this condition is not related to electromagnetic fields.’
Regardless, Dr Karipidis made sure to emphasise that these findings do not invalidate the patient’s symptoms.
‘We [ARPANSA] believe that the symptoms are real, but we’re not actually sure what’s causing them,’ he said.
5G Electromagnetic hypersensitivity Mobile networks Radiation
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