Below is the next in a series of Guest Blogs on BRHP. The opinions expressed in this Guest Blog are of Victor Leach of ORSAA himself. Publication of these opinions in BRHP does not imply that BRHP automatically agrees with or endorses these opinions. Publication of this, and other guest blogs, facilitates an open debate and free exchange of opinions on wireless technology and health.
On March 17, 2021, ARPANSA heralded the publication of “World-first reviews into 5G radio waves”.
ARPANSA was mistaken, as I commented in my blog.
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Guest Blog on ARPANSA’s unfounded claims
by Victor Leach of ORSAA
What can I say about these two latest papers that are the work of Dr Ken Karipidis (ARPANSA) and Prof. Andrew Wood from Swinburne University? I too am a product of education at Swinburne Technical College Junior school where my love of science began and I also once worked for ARPANSA when it was called the Australian Radiation Laboratory. However, my understanding of the science of radiation protection and the setting of health standards are quite different.
This is also not the first time that I have called out Karipidis and Wood with respect to their poor-quality publications of the past relating to WiFi in schools and reports like TRS-164. but this really takes scientific misinformation to a new high. ARPANSA declares “5G is safe, look at Airport RF scanners” but a 10 second security scan at an airport is hardly comparable to 24/7 exposure of the public to mmWaves on an ongoing basis. True, people are not dropping dead after having a scan but this only validates that an acute exposure impact is not directly killing people immediately. Accumulated exposures, cellular damage and subsequent diseases such as cancer develop over years.
For most lay persons the science can appear to be very complicated. They want a simple message and ARPANSA provides that message but is it the right message? When I read this statement from the abstract “This Review also included 31 epidemiological studies that investigated exposure to radar, which uses RF fields above 6 GHz similar to 5 G.”, most readers would blindly think this is an okay statement, except while it may be true that the carrier frequencies are in the same GHz range or mmWaves range this 5G wireless radiation characteristics are nothing like radar. So again, we have misinformation at work here. This is because 5G is embedded with Gigabits of low-frequency data referred to as modulations and this makes it a completely different physical agent. In fact, the US Airforce has studied the propagation of these waves in tissue and have warned that the wave front may travel much deeper in tissue. This is called the Brillouin Precursor. Again, this casts doubt over the degree of applicability of the ICNIRP heat modelling approach which has not been resolved to any degree of certainty.This modelling treats skin as an inert substrata. Skin tissue is not just a wet sponge. The problems with treating skin as just an overcoat, as Dariusz has stated in his excellent article , is a problem and more research is needed if we are going to blanket the earth with mmWaves. The problem with treating skin as just an overcoat or a wet sponge as ICNIRP do in their assessment of the health effects of millimetre waves is they ignore that skin is part of a whole-body biological system. The ICRP critical organ approach is lost on ICNIRP and ARPANSA because ICNIRP lacks medical representation and is too closely aligned to the telecommunication industry. Skin as an organ is rich in nerves and is the body’s first defence from chemical or mechanical exposures. The skin has receptors that carry out abundant innervation associated with the central nervous system. Skin innervation is carried out by both branches of the cerebrospinal nerves and nerves of the autonomic nervous system. Skin is rich in protective bacteria.
One example of many includes the production of vitamin D in a chemical reaction that occurs when sunlight hits the skin. Ultra -Violet (UV) another form of non-ionising radiation is used to make Vitamin D that our bodies need for health. Is this man-made 5G radiation going to change Vitamin D production? We don’t know because nobody has studied this. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium so that blood calcium levels are at the ideal point. This helps enable the mineralization of bone that is required for strong, healthy bones. Low Vitamin D makes an individual more prone to infections and illness, cardiovascular disease and mental illnesses, including mood disorders like depression. Skin plays an important and integral role in our immune, waste management and endocrine systems.
The biological impact of 5G is not being addressed by these papers that relegate most of the research of super-high-frequencies or mmWaves to the dust-bin because of claims of methodological limitations.
We have not done enough research to blanket the earth with this man-made radiation with little regard for life on this planet.