#although ftr if i am picking an urban environmental danger to investigate/mitigate it's air pollution not cell phones. no contest not close

[girderednerve]

obviously the russell brand (also john tavares? lmao?) 'protection' amulet is a huge horrible scam, but i do sort of wonder about the EMF exposure stuff. most of it is absolutely crackpot nonsense, but the general understanding that sensitivity to e.g. 5G is a horseshit conservative thing does kind of prevent us from investigating further, i think? and while i have no particular belief that cellphone radiation is deadly or whatever the story is, i do think that blasting increasingly high-frequency radiation in populated areas is deserving of robust safety investigation. when you say stuff like this, the studies cited in response are mostly from, like, the LTE era, and we are using different hardware, way more people are using cellular data constantly, and 5G towers need to be placed more densely to work well (there's something of a speed/range trade-off). meanwhile, network providers & cell phone manufacturers are planning already for 6G, with an expected rollout in 2030. i swear to god i am not trying to be a luddite here OR agree with a regular patron at a previous library where i worked, who insisted that other people having cell phones in the library caused her physical pain & would shout at staff & other library users about it. but i don't have a great deal of trust in american regulators (consider, for example, that the 5G frequency ranges that the FCC licensed out included frequencies that interfere with some altimeters and weather satellites), and i have no trust whatsoever in the large companies who are driving this change. i mean, i also have questions about whether any of these improvements are warranted, but then i am still cheerfully using my 4G potato phone with no complaints