[matthewh (OP)]

Paul has been radiating questions in our direction:

I am concerned about the dangers of additional radiation with the Internet of Things and 5G, if all of our gadgets are controlled remotely there must be more radiation about right?

If you have any ideas let us know below!

[evan_au]

Every time you go outside in the daytime, you are exposed to about 700 Watts per square meter of visible light from the Sun.
- This is non-ionising radiation
- This is going to be far higher than the radiation people on the ground would receive from a 5G cellphone or cell tower
- However, the relatively small amount of Ultraviolet light in sunlight does break chemical bonds, damaging DNA, and causing skin cancer. UV and higher frequency is "ionising" radiation.

Microwaves used in 5G are far below the frequency of ionising radiation - in fact, it is below the frequency of infra-red radiation.
- The only proven damage from non-ionising radiation is from heating effects
- The main risk is to sensitive tissues like eyeballs, which have a poor blood supply, and so can rise above 37C.
- The international standards governing non-ionising radiation are set well below the level that could cause damage from heating
- And if you look well up a cell tower, you will see a warning sign that says "radiation hazard", so don't climb any higher!

Read/Listen to some suggestions about where these concerns are coming from:
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/greatmomentsinscience/dr-karl-5g-hysteria-cancer-radiation/11164020
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/greatmomentsinscience/5g-hysteria-cancer-dr-karl-part-2/11186930

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation#Health_risks

The following is from a recently-erected cell tower near my home.

Cell_Tower_Warning_small.jpg (155.29 kB . 800x758 - viewed 2169 times)

[alancalverd]

Your house will take over your life, your car will go wherever it wants, and your eyeballs will be fried. These privileges will cost you a lot of money.

[Bored chemist]

One fine day I must get round to calculating whether I emit more  em radiation than my phone.
It probably depends on circumstances.
For the sake of discussion, imagine I'm lying on a well lagged bed, in a field, on a clear night night

[alancalverd]

Your phone emits about 5W when transmitting.

Your body needs to lose about 100 - 150 W (2400 kilocalories per day) when quiescent. Most of this is normally lost by convection and evaporation but in the absence of air or in an immediate ambient of still moist air at 35 deg C you would have to radiate to the universe. If you were a fully black body and spherical, you could indeed lose 150W to an absolute zero ambient but the emissivity of skin is only around 0.3 so you would probably die from heat stroke in an air ambient, or evaporative loss in vacuo.

[Bored chemist]

Thanks, that's just the sort of calculation I was looking for.

Your phone emits about 5W when transmitting.

What fraction of the day can it do that before the batteries die?
I can run roughly 100 Watts continuously, (peak might be 1 KW or so)

Also, my emissivity (in the relevant range of wavelengths) is, I suspect, near 1.
I'm mainly water.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/radiation-heat-emissivity-d_432.html

[syhprum]

I get annoyed by the misuse of the term radiation I was bought up to believe that radiation was the emission of energy in the form of electromagnetic waves but nowadays there seems to be a confusion between waves and particles emitted from radioactive sources.
I blame Einstein and his disciples   

[alancalverd]

BC: you are indeed mostly water, but hopefully held together by a layer of fairly dry epidermis with rather lower emissivity, and that value is wavelength-dependent. Conventional thermography tends to use near infrared and yields e ~ 0.9 but IIRC the value for longer wavelengths is lower, and as a gentleman of scientific standing I assume you also have a full beard and a hairy chest, which reduce e. However I will happily stand corrected if the spectrally weighted total is a lot more than my guess.

Your phone will have a "talk time" specification, or you could assess its total output from the battery mAh rating. 

Syphrum: Radiation is energy transmitted in the absence of a medium. In the radiation protection business it includes all subatomic particles as well as electromagnetic radiation, and with the gradual adoption of heavy ion radiotherapies, I guess it applies in principle to any projectile. Certainly at the mesoscopic end, the military talk about energy transfer by bullets and shrapnel!   

[evan_au]

What will be the radiation exposure from 5G networks?

With the higher frequencies used by the more advanced implementations of 5G (25GHz+, millimeter wavelengths), antenna design changes significantly.
- Attenuation through the air (and water vapour) is far higher at higher frequencies, and is blocked quite strongly by walls and windows. This means that base stations must be located much closer together, including inside your home and business.
- At lower frequencies (<1GHz), you often see a cell tower covering 3 segments (120° apart), with 3 antennas facing each segment (perhaps 0.5-1m apart). This allows very coarse aiming of the radiation beams, so a lot of radiation misses the target phone, "illuminating" a region perhaps 100-200m in diameter.
- At high frequencies, one cell tower antenna panel may contain perhaps 64-256 antennas (millimeters apart). This allows very precise aiming of the transmit power, so that the available power is used most efficiently (including bouncing signals off buildings, if that provides the best communication path).
- At this stage, it is not clear how many antennas can be practically fitted into a cellphone (without being blocked by head and hands). But the transmit power is allocated to the antennas that can transmit most effectively given the user's current position.
- Exposure of an individual will be dominated by power emitted by their own phone.
- And the closer you are to the base station, the lower the transmit power from your phone, so the lower the exposure. This is the opposite of what people expect: They think that a closer base station = greater exposure.
- Of course, the amount of exposure you get is proportional to how much you use your own phone, so it's under your control.

A side-effect of this improved "channel estimation" is that the authorities will be able to track individual users within 1-2 meters, compared to 100m for 3G and 4G cellphone standards. What form of authorisation is needed to track individuals depends on legislation in each country - whether a court order or mere suspicion.

[Bored chemist]

but hopefully held together by a layer of fairly dry epidermis with rather lower emissivity, and that value is wavelength-dependent.

Here's the data for the IR,
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Spectral-emissivity-of-the-human-skin_fig1_226154398
And this covers part the microwave region
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Simulations-of-the-emissivity-of-human-skin-for-the-half-space-and-three-layer-model-show_fig2_319763529
And
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Millimeter%E2%80%90wave-emissivity-as-a-metric-for-the-of-Owda-Salmon/df1636b4e77964fb38829bcda5c75e8a244658e5

In general, a rough surface is a better absorber of radiation than a smooth one.
And consequently, a rough surface is a better emitter.
It's likely that hair has two effects- it's a better emitter due to the shape, but it traps a layer of air and reduces the temperature of the outermost layers that are doing the emitting.

My phone's nominal battery life is roughly half a day and I only charge it daily so that's a factor of two in favour of me emitting more than my phone.

What form of authorisation is needed to track individuals depends on legislation in each country - whether a court order or mere suspicion.

It's likely that a court order would be granted on little more than suspicion, so that distinction is moot.

In my case, it's more likely that tracking me by my phone will be to my benefit (for example if I am trapped in a falling building) than to my detriment- so what if "the authorities" know where I am?
If I plan to go out committing  a crime I will lend my phone to a friend who can then "vouch" for the fact that I round at their place playing chess and definitely not stealing the crown jewels.
The authorities won't believe my friend, but they will believe the phone record. :-)

[Janus]

I get annoyed by the misuse of the term radiation I was bought up to believe that radiation was the emission of energy in the form of electromagnetic waves but nowadays there seems to be a confusion between waves and particles emitted from radioactive sources.
I blame Einstein and his disciples   

The use of the word "radiation" to refer to many types of emission predates Einstein, and was never limited to just EMR.
X-rays when discovered, were called a radiation( of an unknown type, thus the "X"). And while it turned out that they were a apart of the electromagnetic spectrum, this wasn't learned until later.  Cathode rays, another discovery predating Einstein, were another radiation, one that was later discovered to be electrons. 

If you were taught that radiation ever only referred to the electromagnetic spectrum, then you were taught wrong.

[Bored chemist]

I get annoyed by the misuse of the term radiation I was bought up to believe that radiation was the emission of energy in the form of electromagnetic waves but nowadays there seems to be a confusion between waves and particles emitted from radioactive sources.

It doesn't make much sense to blame Einstein, because  the use of the word "radiation" for radioactivity is as old as the records of the existence of radioactivity.
You can blame Becquerel if you like but everyone seems to have gone along with it.

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k30780/f422.chemindefer

[syhprum]

I guess I was either learnt wrong or was not paying enough attention, same as in the English lesions.

[Rasull]

According to research 5G radiation causes oxidative damage which leads to tissue deterioration and premature ageing disruption of cell metabolism. Increased blood-brain barrier permeability. Melatonin reduction leading to insomnia and increasing cancer risks.

[syhprum]

Leads to pedestrians getting into traffic accidents as well because they are peering at their machines instead of looking where they are going. 

[Bored chemist]

According to research...

https://xkcd.com/285/

[alancalverd]

tissue deterioration and premature ageing disruption of cell metabolism. Increased blood-brain barrier permeability. Melatonin reduction leading to insomnia and increasing cancer risks.

Just like life.