I disagree: saying "we don't have data" [0] doesn't say anything about the existence or lack of existence of underlying models. Models are refined all the time to account for exceptions and transitions shown in empirical measurements (Mercury's orbit, deflection of light & general relativity, for example).
The tetrahertz range is especially interesting precisely because it is an unknown between known non-ionizing and known ionizing effects. Extrapolating down from ionizing radiation biological effect data and panicking makes as little sense as extrapolating up from non-ionizing radiation biological effect data and making fun of the panic-ers.
I think it's a fantastic opportunity to prove or modify our existing models. But a mistake to assume the models hold true, given the historical intensity of debate around the (discredited) Linear No Threshold Model and subsequent alternative proposed models.
Edit: I would personally say 5G is more likely to be safe (no acute radiation-caused long term health effects) than unsafe. But I'm not one who likes to gamble, especially with the lives of the public.
There has been a fabled danger of low levels of non-ionizing radiation without an explained mechanism for decades. There is no data to support it, but there will never be enough “studies” to disprove it.
Although this research is interesting, it isn't widely accepted yet. All major authorities still contend that there's not enough evidence to prove that low doses of radiation aren't harmful:
From what I know, the risk is not high enough to leave a strong signal. The problem is the overall high cancer rate for humans. As far as I know, we still don't have a model for predicting cancer rates after low exposure to ionizing radiation.
Also, we should keep in mind that the health effects of radiation may not be something you can linearly extrapolate to low doses, and there is evidence to suggest that they aren't.
It's rather that just because it would be statistically undetectable, we don't really know what the expected increase is. We really don't have good empirical data on the harmful effects of low amounts of radiation. Especially when the best data we could have had, happened to coincide with an empire collapse with major health impacts on the population.
That's like saying your TV would cause cancer if it emitted X-rays. I don't know what point a made up scenario contributes. This was a reply to someone saying that 'we don't have the data to know if sub light frequencies of radiation are non ionizing'.
That study is entirely based off simulation with the ultimate data being derived from survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki bonbings. We do not categorically know if there is a linear, no threshhold relationship between diagnostic radiation dose and cancer induction or if there is a threshhold dose below which radiation dose is “safe”. We also don’t know if low-level radiation is potentially beneficial (radiation Hormesis hypothesis).
That’s a lot of words to say, take that paper with a huge grain of salt.
No one has conclusively shown that radiation causes or does not cause cancer at low doses, on the order of the world's variation of the natural background radiation dose. There are lots of data. It is noisy.
While the effects of the latter three are pretty well understood for certain kinds of radiation (ionizing and non-ionizing) ranging from "acute radiation sickness due to gamma burst" to "listening to the radio your whole life doesn't have a link to cancer", there is truth that a specific band of millimeter 5G has been less studied than others.
However, science follows patterns, and interpolating the existing data to this sub-infrared region opens a kind of wiggle room similar to, but in fact the opposite to, low dosimetry of ionizing radiation that has given the Linear No Threshold model a run for it's money. Except in this case, skeptics are typically concerned about chemical effects due to subdermal heating (not really as compelling as ionizing radiation effects), or debating the "non-ionizing-ness" (which is less common because its even less supported by evidence).
It comes down to a persons personal risk. In my opinion, the sun beats out all non ionizing radiation concerns, particularly when it comes to heating of the skin and subdermal tissues. Wear a hat and sunscreen (against the sun).
Still worth researching and acknowledging the data gap, as the EU does in its metastudy of 40+ years and X00 scientific papers [0], but there's no reason to be alarmed based on the existing corpus of evidence.
There are a huge range of models, it’s not clear which ones are correct. Nuclear proponents tend to push threshold models suggesting there are safe doses.
On the other hand: “Approximately 38.4% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2013–2015 data).“
That makes it very hard to validate small changes and any reasonable study size is going to fall below the noise floor. In other words people pushing those models lack any direct evidence to support them.
We know that ionizing radiation has no safe upper limit.
We know that non-ionizing radiation can be harmful at a high enough dose (like sticking your hand in a microwave.)
This research suggests that non-ionizing radiation might not have a safe upper limit, either, only that we haven't totally quantified the damage it causes.
I agree that the level found in the wine is inconsequential, but it's worth pointing out that studies of radiation workers have found that the linear no threshold model does a pretty reasonable job of explaining non-leukemia cancer risk, at least around the levels of radiation equivalent to, say, a multi-decade career as a flight attendant. Granted, the error bars are pretty big, and you have to get to levels equivalent to a trip to Mars for it to get appreciably above background.
TLDR: It's overenthusiastic to think the literature has concluded that low-level radiation is probably good for you, but good experiments are hard.
But you only seem to be pointing at the "the great unknown", yet we don't have a huge,sudden increase in cancers and other things associated with EM radiation by those who are concerned about it. Science is about proving things and speaking with authority on that. I can sling "what ifs" all day long and it's almost useless unless I have an intention to act on it and prove or disprove it.
> A big limitation is that mice are tested with orders of magnitude higher incidence rate of the disease to quickly find RR
Do people also assume that EM radiation is a linear no threshold? Because we know it isn't true for ionizing radiation, but it is a great model to use in practice because it overestimates harm (which we'd rather over estimate than under).
I've read a few of those papers on the EM radiation on mice and they seem to assume a LNT model, which doesn't seem all that honest to me. A few of the papers I read didn't have great p-values either and had drastically differing rates of cancer development for radiation levels and sex (IIRC one big one had high cancer rates for low power, nothing for medium, and moderate cancer rates for high power. Which there was no explanation to this. But that might have just been one bad paper).
Unfortunately, we don't have the data. Yep, it's non linear, but all of our data is basically on two ends of the spectrum. Low amounts of radiation on one end, accumulated from natural sources or working at nuclear plants, and high amounts of radiation on the other, accumulated from survivors of Hiroshima, Cherynobyl, and some nuclear accidents.
So, given those data points, with clusters on two ends of this spectrum you're stuck with interpolation. Ideally, we'd like a good, predictive, biological based model that explicitly showed how you go from biological damage to cancer or death. We don't have that (though there are people researching it), so we go with statistical techniques. This results in basically 3 different proposed models.
This is clearly wrong for very large doses, but is used mostly to try and estimate the effect of a small change in radiation exposure to predict increase in cancer incidence. This is very important for public policy. Of course, this makes all these models politically contested.
This model predicts that small amounts of radiation has zero effect on cancer incidence. According to this model, going to higher altitude, or taking a plane flight, won't increase your risk of cancer.
A little radiation is good for you! The biological argument is that your body gets used to dealing with damage from radiation. Don't tax it too hard and you'll be stronger. So take a plane trip, and enjoy the X-ray scans!
The tetrahertz range is especially interesting precisely because it is an unknown between known non-ionizing and known ionizing effects. Extrapolating down from ionizing radiation biological effect data and panicking makes as little sense as extrapolating up from non-ionizing radiation biological effect data and making fun of the panic-ers.
I think it's a fantastic opportunity to prove or modify our existing models. But a mistake to assume the models hold true, given the historical intensity of debate around the (discredited) Linear No Threshold Model and subsequent alternative proposed models.
Edit: I would personally say 5G is more likely to be safe (no acute radiation-caused long term health effects) than unsafe. But I'm not one who likes to gamble, especially with the lives of the public.
[0] DOI: 10.1080/10643389.2011.574206
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