Scientific American Created Confusion about 5G's Safety: Will They Clear It Up?

Bron: www.saferemr.com/2020/02/will-scientific-american-clear-up.html
19 febr. 2020

In September 2019, Scientific American, the oldest, continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S., published an opinion piece on its website entitled, “5G Is Coming: How Worried Should We Be about the Health Risks? So far, at least, there’s little evidence of danger.”

The piece was written by Kenneth Foster, an emeritus professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Foster is a member of a committee that sets exposure limits for wireless radiation and consults for industry and government. His article discussed the controversy about the rollout of 5G based upon widespread concerns about the adverse impact of this technology on our health. Foster argued that exposure to radio frequency radiation (RFR) from 5G will be similar to, or lower than, current levels because of the deployment of many “small cell” antennas. Hence, 5G exposure will comply with current RFR exposure limits that protect against “excessive heating of tissue.”

Although Foster admitted that research on the effects of long-term exposure to 5G millimeter waves was lacking, he restated the FDA’s position that ''the available scientific evidence to date does not support adverse health effects in humans due to exposures at or under the current limits.” Thus, “the request to ‘stop the distribution of 5G products appears too drastic a measure. We first need to see how this new technology will be applied and how the scientific evidence will evolve.’”


In October, Scientific American published an opinion piece which I wrote entitled, “We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe:The technology is coming, but contrary to what some people say, there could be health risks,” that rebutted Foster’s article. My piece is reprinted on my Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website.

In the eleven years that I have been writing about the effects of RFR exposure, I anticipated that my response to Foster would provoke an attack by industry-affiliated scientists so I began my piece as follows:

“The telecommunications industry and their experts have accused many scientists who have researched the effects of cell phone radiation of ''fear mongering'' over the advent of wireless technology's 5G. Since much of our research is publicly-funded, we believe it is our ethical responsibility to inform the public about what the peer-reviewed scientific literature tells us about the health risks from wireless radiation.”

I laid out the evidence that rebutted many points in the Foster piece and concluded:

“We should support the recommendations of the 250 scientists and medical doctors who signed the 5G Appeal that calls for an immediate moratorium on the deployment of 5G and demand that our government fund the research needed to adopt biologically-based exposure limits that protect our health and safety.”


About two weeks later, Scientific American published an opinion piece that attacked me and my article: “Don’t Fall Prey to Scaremongering about 5G: Activists cite low-quality studies in arguing radio-frequency radiation is dangerous, but the weight of evidence shows no risk.” This piece was written by David Robert Grimes, a science writer, cancer researcher, and physicist.

Shortly after Grimes’ piece was published, the International EMF Alliance sent a 5-page letter to the editor of Scientific American that critiqued Grimes’ flawed interpretation of the science. Subsequently, Microwave News published a story entitled, “Open Season on 5G Critics: First NY Times, Now Scientific American,” reprinted by TruePublica, that criticized Grimes’ ad hominem attacks and explained why “it’s Grimes who gets the science all wrong.” The article raised the question “Why Did Scientific American Publish Grimes’s Hit Piece?


Scientific American originally informed me that they would not publish a rebuttal to Grimes, but in January 2020 they invited me to submit a rebuttal. Two weeks after submitting my rebuttal, Scientific American sent me the following message:

“Thanks again for your recent submission, but we’ve decided against running it. You raise some valid points, but this is clearly a field where we’re a long way from definitive answers and the editors here have agreed that continuing this point-counterpoint argument in our opinion section is not the best way to serve our readers.

What we’ve decided to do instead is to commission an independent journalist to look at all of the evidence gathered so far and give readers an objective sense of what we know, what we don’t know, why uncertainty exists, and how scientists are trying to gather the evidence that governments and consumers need to make the most informed decisions possible.”

My unpublished rebuttal to Grimes, “5G, Public Health and Uncomfortable Truths” appears below.

--

5G, Public Health and Uncomfortable Truths

Joel M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.
School of Public Health
University of California, Berkeley
February 19, 2020


Zie voor dit lange verhaal en verder voor alle links in bovenstaande tekst, de link bovenaan.



Lees verder in de categorie Artikelen | Terug naar homepage | Lees de introductie