Summary: <br> I talked to <a href="https://twitter.com/CSOIreland" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">Cormac Halpin</a>, chief statistician with the <a href="https://www.cso.ie/en/index.html" data-wpel-link="external" target="_blank" rel="external noopener noreferrer">CSO</a> about the upcoming census.<br> <br> <br> <br> *****<br> <br> <br> <br> Let’s do a bit of science. <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Maybe, like me, you have had various social<br> media invaded by people making all sorts of complaints about something called<br> 5G. That’s the newest mobile data standard. Unless you are really special, that<br> doesn’t work on your phone yet, but the networks are being installed, and newer<br> handsets using them will be available soon, probably starting at the top end of<br> the price range.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> 5G just means the fifth generation, the<br> first was basic mobile phones, the second was text messaging, 4G allows<br> internet, and 5G will allow you to control the space shuttle, or something. If<br> you click too far into Facebook or YouTube, you’d be forgiven for thinking that<br> an apocalypse was planned, something between the worst nightmares of the<br> antivaxxers and those people who say that their thoughts are controlled by the<br> CIA via a chip in their brain. So I really just want to give the basic<br> scientific information here.<br> <br> <br> <br> 5G is data transmitted over radio waves.<br> Just like any other form of data transmitted through the air, mobile phone<br> voice or data signals, FM radio, broadcast TV or your home wifi. All of them<br> are, technically, radiation. So is light – by which I mean the light that your<br> eyes use to see things around you, and so are magnetic waves, the ones that<br> spin the needle on a compass.<br> <br> <br> <br> Some conspiracy theorists have been saying<br> vague things that imply that 5G uses some weird special type of radiation that<br> is dangerous or untested. In reality, 5G uses frequencies that are already in<br> use by home wifi systems and digital TV broadcasts. Sure, the content of that<br> signal is new technology, but the content of the signal has no relevance to the<br> frequency it’s broadcast on.<br> <br> <br> <br> So where does that all collide with radiation that we know can kill us? Basically, the electromagnetic spectrum is split in two halves – ionizing radiation and non-ionizing radiation. Non-ionizing radiation is too weak to strip the electrons off atoms, so it doesn’t create ions. Ionizing radiation is the dangerous stuff. It can knock electrons off atoms and break molecules, like your DNA, which can trigger cancer.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> All radiation fits on a spectrum, the<br> electromagnetic spectrum, with lower and higher frequencies. Imagine if you<br> could turn the dial on your radio, and keep turning it. If you turned down and<br> down, you would eventually be picking up the earth’s magnetic waves, the ones<br> that turn the compass needle.<br> <br> <br> <br> If you could turn it up and up, you would<br> eventually pick up light waves, first blue light then the higher frequency of<br> red light. Turn it further and you would get UV rays from the sun, x-rays, and<br> so on. But there is a breakpoint that it is important to know about. It exists<br> at a frequency just above what we can see as visible light; light doesn’t hurt<br> us, but UV rays – radiation from the sun – can give us sunburn. This is<br> literally radiation damage. UV rays, and anything with a higher frequency,<br> x-rays, gamma rays, they’re bad news. That’s why anyone giving you an x-ray<br> wears a lead apron; and gamma rays, that’s Chernobyl territory, you don’t want<br> to know.<br> <br> <br> <br> But, the 5G conspiracy theorists say,<br> there’s so much radiation about these days, surely that can’t be good for us.<br> They’re wrong for two reasons.
