Despite what your uncle’s Facebook PSAs say, 5G isn’t turning your body into a hotspot or melting your DNA or turning you gay or whatever absolute batshit nonsense conspiracies right-wing lunatics have devised.
A recent study from Constructor University just called BS on a conspiracy theory that 5G signals might somehow be zapping our skin cells into death.
To settle the debate once and for all, researchers nuked two types of human skin cells with 5G electromagnetic fields — fibroblasts and keratinocytes. This wasn’t any normal 5G signal, either. To really put the conspiracy to the test, the researchers cranked up the juice to intensify the signals, making them far more powerful than anything your phone or a local cell phone tower can generate. Go big or go home.
For up to 48 hours, these skin cells were blasted with frequencies of 27 and 40.5 GHz…which did nothing. No gene mutations or changes to speak of. Not even a hint of suspicious cell behavior.
The study, which ran under tight conditions including temperature control and blind testing, the kinds of processes that make science a trustworthy and worthwhile endeavor, found no changes in gene expression or methylation patterns.
In other words, your skin cells don’t care about 5G, even under worst-case conditions. 5G simply has zero effect on your cells. None. Get over it already.
One of the big complaints from conspiracy theorists is that 5G operates in frequency bands that freak people out and have them clutching their 5G-blocking amethyst crystals or whatever the hell. Most networks currently use frequencies under 6 GHz, but newer 5G bands could creep into the 24–43 GHz range. Still, these high frequencies don’t penetrate deeply, topping off at only one millimeter of penetration at the absolute most.
Take this whole experiment one step further, the researchers acknowledge that high-intensity electromagnetic waves can heat biological tissue. So, they controlled for temperature to rule out any effects caused by heat, throwing cold water on the idea that there are spooky, non-thermal 5G dangers lurking in the air.
Now, all of this scientific research that aims to get at the bottom of conspiracies to debunk them, in this case, down to a cellular level, is probably useless. Conspiracy theorists are rarely, if ever, swayed by factual evidence. It’s too easy to wave it off and claim it’s just part of the vast conspiracy to suppress information, man.
People have even created chatbots with the express intent of debunking conspiracy theories, but even that requires a willingness to engage with the possibility of having your entire worldview crumble before your eyes. That’s something that I fear conspiracy theorists simply do not want to do. The conspiracies are a warm blanket that makes them feel comfortable in a world they don’t understand, a world they don’t even want to understand. They’d rather live in a fantasy than engage the world on its truest terms.
At least we can take heart in knowing that there are people out there doing the work to debunk these ideas with real science so the rest of us can be armed with the information required to either embrace or completely write off people based on their willingness to believe bullshit.
The post Does 5G Actually Damage Human Cells? Science Has an Answer. appeared first on VICE.
