INTERNATIONAL APPEAL Stop 5G on Earth and in Space

In order to transmit the enormous amounts of data required for the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G technology, when fully deployed, will use millimetre waves, which are poorly transmitted through solid material. This will require every carrier to install base stations every 100 metres^[1] in every urban area in the world. Unlike previous generations of wireless technology, in which a single antenna broadcasts over a wide area, 5G base stations and 5G devices will have multiple antennas arranged in “phased arrays” ^[2],[3] that work together to emit focused, steerable, laser-like beams that track each other.

Each 5G phone will contain dozens of tiny antennas, all working together to track and aim a narrowly focused beam at the nearest cell tower. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted rules ^[4] permitting the effective power of those beams to be as much as 20 watts, ten times more powerful than the levels permitted for current phones.

Each 5G base station will contain hundreds or thousands of antennas aiming multiple laser-like beams simultaneously at all cell phones and user devices in its service area. This technology is called “multiple input multiple output” or MIMO. FCC rules permit the effective radiated power of a 5G base station’s beams to be as much as 30,000 watts per 100 MHz of spectrum,^[2] or equivalently 300,000 watts per GHz of spectrum, tens to hundreds of times more powerful than the levels permitted for current base stations.

At least five companies^[5] are proposing to provide 5G from space from a combined 20,000 satellites in low- and medium-Earth orbit that will blanket the Earth with powerful, focused, steerable beams. Each satellite will emit millimetre waves with an effective radiated power of up to 5 million watts^[6] from thousands of antennas arranged in a phased array. Although the energy reaching the ground from satellites will be less than that from ground-based antennas, it will irradiate areas of the Earth not reached by other transmitters and will be additional to ground-based 5G transmissions from billions of IoT objects. Even more importantly, the satellites will be located in the Earth’s magnetosphere, which exerts a significant influence over the electrical properties of the atmosphere. The alteration of the Earth’s electromagnetic environment may be an even greater threat to life than the radiation from ground-based antennas (see below).

Even before 5G was proposed, dozens of petitions and appeals^[7] by international scientists, including the Freiburger Appeal signed by over 3,000 physicians, called for a halt to the expansion of wireless technology and a moratorium on new base stations.^[8]

In 2015, 215 scientists from 41 countries communicated their alarm to the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization (WHO).^[9] They stated that “numerous recent scientific publications have shown that EMF [electromagnetic fields] affects living organisms at levels well below most international and national guidelines”. More than 10,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies demonstrate harm to human health from RF radiation.^{[10] [11]} Effects include:

Effects in children include autism,^[28] attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)^[29][30] and asthma.^[31]

Damage goes well beyond the human race, as there is abundant evidence of harm to diverse plant- and wildlife^[32][33] and laboratory animals, including:

Negative microbiological effects^[48] have also been recorded.

The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded in 2011 that RF radiation of frequencies 30 kHz – 300 GHz are possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B).^[49] However, recent evidence, including the latest studies on cell phone use and brain cancer risks, indicate that RF radiation is proven carcinogenic to humans^[50] and should now be classified as a “Group 1 carcinogen” along with tobacco smoke and asbestos.

Most contemporary wireless signals are pulse-modulated. Harm is caused by both the high-frequency carrier wave and the low-frequency pulsations.^[51]

The Earth, the ionosphere and the lower atmosphere form the global electric circuit^[52] in which we live. It is well established that biological rhythms—of humans,^[53][54] birds,^[55] hamsters,^[56] and spiders^[57][58]—are controlled by the Earth’s natural electromagnetic environment and that the well-being of all organisms depends on the stability of this environment, including the electrical properties of the atmosphere.^{[59][60][61][62]} Cherry, in a groundbreaking paper, ^[63] explained the importance of the Schumann resonances^[64] and why ionospheric disturbances can alter blood pressure and melatonin and cause “cancer, reproductive, cardiac and neurological disease and death”.

These elements of our electromagnetic environment have already been altered by radiation from power lines. Power line harmonic radiation^[65] reaches the Earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere, where it is amplified by wave-particle interactions.^[66][67] In 1985, Dr. Robert O. Becker warned that power line harmonic radiation had already changed the structure of the magnetosphere, and that the continued expansion of this effect “threatens the viability of all life on Earth”.^[68] The placement of tens of thousands of satellites directly in both the ionosphere and magnetosphere, emitting modulated signals at millions of watts and millions of frequencies, is likely to alter our electromagnetic environment beyond our ability to adapt.^[69]

Informal monitoring has already provided evidence indicating serious effects on humans and animals from the approximately 100 satellites that have provided 2G and 3G phone service from low orbit since 1998. Such effects cannot be understood only from consideration of the low levels of radiation on the ground. Knowledge from other relevant scientific disciplines must be taken into account, including the fields of atmospheric physics and acupuncture.^{[70][71][72][73]} Adding 20,000 5G satellites will further pollute the global electric circuit^[74][75] and could alter the Schumann resonances,^[76] with which all life on Earth has evolved. The effects will be universal and may be profoundly damaging.

The idea that we will tolerate tens to hundreds of times more radiation at millimetre wavelengths is based on faulty modelling of the human body as a shell filled with a homogeneous liquid.^[77][78] The assumption that millimetre waves do not penetrate beyond the skin completely ignores nerves,^[79] blood vessels^[80][81] and other electrically conducting structures that can carry radiation-induced currents deep into the body.^[82][83][84] Another, potentially more serious error is that phased arrays are not ordinary antennas. When an ordinary electromagnetic field enters the body, it causes charges to move and currents to flow. But when extremely short electromagnetic pulses enter the body, something else happens: the moving charges themselves become little antennas that reradiate the electromagnetic field and send it deeper into the body. These reradiated waves are called Brillouin precursors.^[85] They become significant when either the power or the phase of the waves changes rapidly enough.^[86] 5G will probably satisfy both criteria.

In addition, shallow penetration in itself poses a unique danger to eyes and to the largest organ of the body, the skin, as well as to very small creatures. Peer-reviewed studies have recently been published, predicting thermal skin burns^[87] in humans from 5G radiation and resonant absorption by insects,^[88] which absorb up to 100 times as much radiation at millimetre wavelengths as they do at wavelengths presently in use. Since populations of flying insects have declined by 75-80 per cent since 1989 even in protected nature areas,^[89] 5G radiation could have catastrophic effects on insect populations worldwide. A 1986 study by Om Gandhi warned that millimetre waves are strongly absorbed by the cornea of the eye, and that ordinary clothing, being of millimetre-size thickness, increases the absorption of energy by the skin by a resonance-type effect.^[90] Russell (2018) reviews the known effects of millimetre waves on skin, eyes (including cataracts), heart rate, immune system and DNA.^[91]