You really should have paid more attention in high school science class. As science communicators like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson have pointed out, learning about science helps to innoculate you against charlatans. The hoopla over 5G is a perfect example of that.
As you no doubt heard a long time ago, morons are setting fire to 5G towers because they believe 5G causes cancer. What I want to talk about is why high school science should have let people know that this claim is nonsense. It's hard to believe that the UK has even worse science education than America.
There are alpha rays (helium nuclei), beta rays (electrons), neutron emissions, and gamma rays (electromagnetic radiation). Neutrons can cause nuclear reactions under the right conditions, which can indeed cause serious health problems. Alpha and beta rays can be stopped with a sheet of paper or a couple of feet of air. If gamma rays are above a certain frequency, they can break ionic bonds and alter the chemistry of a living organism. I think this is the part where people freak out.
Long before the 5G conspiracy theories, there has been a large contingent of people who were convinced that cell towers and/or cell phones cause cancer. Some of them claim that "magnetic fields" cause cancer, which shows that they don't know squat about science. Some claimed the radiation causes cancer, which shows that they don't understand how ionizing radiation works. We'll get to ionizing radiation later.
Normal cell networks use two frequency bands: a lower frequency band and a higher frequency band. As with the WiFi in your home, the higher frequency band has a more difficult time penetrating physical objects but can carry data at a higher rate than the lower frequency band. The higher frequency band also uses more battery energy. (When the 5GHz band was made available for WiFi, people assumed that the 2.4GHz band would be abandoned. I just explained why it still hasn't been abandoned all these years later.)
5G introduced a new, much higher frequency band. This one is 25GHz to 39GHz. Not all cell carriers are using this band yet, and those who have this band do not have it available in all areas yet. You already know how bad the 5GHz frequency band at home is at penetrating walls, so you can imagine that this new frequency band of 5G has an even more difficult time penetrating physical objects. While it has spectacular data bandwidth, you almost have to be standing directly under a 5G node to use it, and even inclement weather can mess up your connection at close distances. Because of this, cell transmitters of this new frequency have to be much closer together than existing cell towers, which means a very large increase in the number of transmitters for any cell carrier that offers it.
Higher frequency radiation means more energy, and I think this is where people freak out. The new band is so high in frequency that it is no longer in the radio spectrum. This is in the microwave spectrum. Also, the fact that cell companies will have to double the number of transmitters has also made people nervous.
First, as mentioned, radiation in this frequency has a lot of signal attenuation, which means it is really terrible at penetrating physical objects. If you read the early reviews of the first 5G phones to use the new frequency band, you know how incredibly bad this frequency is at penetrating physical objects.
But as for the higher energy being a greater threat to the chemistry in your body, this is where we talk about ionizing radiation. The frequency at which ionizing radiation occurs depends on the ionic bond in question. Different chemical bonds break at different energies, as you should remember from high school chemistry class. While ionizing radiation happens at different frequencies, if you paid attention in high school chemistry or physics, you should remember that all the cutoff frequencies for ionizing radiation are above the visible spectrum.
While the new 5G frequency band is very high compared to the other bands, it's still in the microwave spectrum, which means it is below the frequencies of human vision. While this radiation is much higher in energy, it's still not high enough to break chemical bonds. At most, this new frequency band could heat you up the same way a microwave oven can. If it does so, you will be able to feel it. It is extremely unlikely to heat you up enough to cause you any health problems, and if it does, your body has plenty of the appropriate nerves to warn you when you are getting enough heat to put your health at risk, as warm-blooded animals need to maintain a very specific internal temperature to avoid losing the ability to process oxygen.
Granted, if any of your high school science classes mentioned ionizing radiation, it was probably for only a few seconds at best, but even so, if you took high school science classes, you should understand enough to search the Internet for "ionizing radiation" and understand at least one of the search returns.
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