Submission to the Australian Federal Parliament’s House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts: Inquiry into health and environmental effects 5G mobile telephony
This submission by ORSAA addresses the deployment, adoption and application of 5G technologies in Australia. It specifically refers to the committee’s terms of reference: Investigate the capability, capacity and deployment of 5G. ORSAA has identified the following serious issues in relation to the proposed deployment of 5G in Australia:
Harm to human health and likely wider harm to the environment, as well as alterations of atmospheric physical and ecological systems.
At the turn of the century the Australian Senate conducted an inquiry into the health effects of electromagnetic radiation (Commonwealth of Australia, 2001) when the scientific evidence for harm was uncertain. Since then, the evidence for harm has become clearer, so that parliaments across the world have been calling for precaution due to the serious risks (e.g., European Parliamentary Assembly, 2011). These risks are described in more detail below.
The Oceania Radiofrequency Scientific Advisory Association (ORSAA) is the only independent scientific organization in the Australia-New Zealand region investigating the health risks of low-intensity radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMR), mostly microwave range RF-EMR generated for wireless communications and surveillance. Within a few years of inception, ORSAA has established the world’s largest freely available categorised database of peer- reviewed scientific research on RF-EMR biological/health effects: www.orsaa.org. This database is intended to facilitate an evidence-based approach to risk assessment of wireless technologies. The ORSAA database currently contains over 3000 scientific studies sourced from all over the world. ORSAA is not funded by commercial entities and therefore without any financial conflicts of interests.
Excerpts
Evidence for health effects from 5G frequencies
While the existing large volume of scientific studies show clear health risks with the frequencies used in the first phase of 5G deployment, very little research has been done so far on the health effects of millimetre waves to be used for the second phase of 5G (6 to 86 GHz). The existing review papers (Oughton, Frias, Russell, Sicker, & Cleevely, 2018; Russell, 2018) reveal the current known effects of these waves:
- Despite shallow penetration (compared to lower frequencies) 5G millimetre waves pose harm to the largest organ of the body, the skin, with the possibility of permanent tissue damage (Neufeld & Kuster, 2018).
- Effects on eyes (including cataracts), heart rate, immune system and DNA have been shown.
- Millimetre waves can also affect important components of skin such as nerves, immune cells, blood vessels causing systemic effects involving internal organs. It has been found that sweat ducts of skin act as helical antennae for millimetre waves.
- Due to the pulses from 5G phased arrays, the moving charges within the body become tiny antennas. They then reradiate waves called ‘Brillouin Precursors’ deeper into the body (Albanese, Blaschak, Medina, & Penn, 1994), which become dangerous with rapid changes in power or phase of the waves (Xiao & Oughstun, 1999) as will occur with 5G.
Risk of harm to birds, bees and insects
Microwave radiation is already having effects on birds, bees and pollinators (Bandara & Carpenter, 2018; Lázaro et al., 2016; Warnke, 2009). Moreover, insects will maximally absorb 5G radiation due to the length of their bodies being measured in millimetres and the subsequent resonance effects (Thielens et al., 2018). Therefore, 5G radiation could have catastrophic effects on the already endangered insect populations worldwide, which has implications for Australian agriculture and for global food supplies.
