Will the switch to 5G give us all cancer?

5G continues to grow in popularity as it moves closer to reality. All of your favorite cellular providers are working hard to roll out 5G to their customers, and your favorite manufacturers are working hard to roll out exciting new phones that support it all. It’s a really a big deal.

This is because 5G will change everything we do. From the phone in your hand, to how you supply internet to your house, to how every electronic device around you is going to be able to communicate with the internet and to each other. All of this with very low latencies (response time). That latter part will be amazing if it meets expectations since they are shooting for latency to only be around 5 ms (milliseconds). Which means it will be perfect for industries that rely on safety and speed, including traffic control, autonomous cars, hospitals and more.

The speed of data is going to go through the roof, and as I said, change everything. Of course, we have already spoken about a lot of this and more in a past article late last year. Right now, we wanted to focus on a popular topic that seems to have gone viral. No surprise there since those creating viral emails and posts that get shared around until they are proven false, feed off of the fears of the general public. That fear this time, is that 5G is going to give us all cancer!

OH NO! Well I know I don’t want any cancer forming in my head. Thankfully however, you won’t have to worry much about this. A lot of these messages that make their rounds claim that 5G tests have been killing species and causing cancer, but none of the reports…I mean “stories”, can be backed up by anything solid (or anything at all in a lot of cases). They are stories thrown together to cause trouble and convince you to forward it to all of your friends.

I say you don’t have to worry “much” about this, because with anything being thrown around in the air like that, there is a small chance that you could be affected by it. The chance of this has been around since cellular phones first became popular. However, to this very day, they still have troubles in studies trying to prove how possible it really is. With 5G, it isn’t going to be much worse than that. It’s the same technologies in some forms and different in others, and using different frequencies. I say “different in others” since it doesn’t apply to many of the studies that have been done on cellular radio effects on humans (or usually rats).

To really feel the effects of cellular radiation, you would most likely have to spend a lot of time next to a cell tower. Of course, 5G is going to require more cell towers for it to really work since it doesn’t have the same throw distance as some of the other networks. That being said, you might have a greater chance of being near one than before. However, to battle this thought, you could survey the many technicians that spend their career working on cell towers every day, and ask how many of them have developed cancer during their career. Since we don’t seem to have a large number of technicians dropping dead or being diagnosed with anything, I would say you are more than likely going to be just fine.

In the end, there hasn’t been a hard study on 5G yet that can prove that there is a greater chance of it affecting the lives of people living with the coverage areas in such a way. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t continue to work hard at finding alternative technologies. It just means that there isn’t any proof that you should be freaking out about anything (yet). So keep calm, and get ready to get your 5G on!