Letter to The Guardian newspaper, UK, from Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Washington State University
July 30, 2019

 

Dear Guardian Editors

I would like to write an Op-Ed in response to the July 26 article entitled “How baseless fears over 5G rollout created a health scare” by Alex Hern.

I am attaching several documents for your information.

The first is a document which clearly shows that the so-called “safety guidelines” from ICNIRP, the EU, UK and Australian (which are identical to each other), as well as the similar US FCC and Canadian “safety guidelines” do not predict biological effects and therefore do not predict safety. These findings are based on eight different repeated findings, each of which show that the “safety guidelines” are deeply flawed. Six of the eight are shown to be flawed in multiple ways. Three of these flaws derive from the important role of pulsations and from the safety guidelines being based on average intensities over a 6- or 30-minute period. There is a substantial discussion on 5G towards the end of that document.

When we have, then, repeated studies of 8 different types, each of which falsify these “safety guidelines”, there are two individually important conclusions which must be drawn. All assurances of safety made by the industry that are based on these “safety guidelines” are, therefore, fraudulent. In addition, at the core of the scientific method is the principle that, when you have a theory that makes predictions and those predictions are tested and shown to be incorrect, then the theory must be thrown out—here we have literally many hundreds of such falsifications of the “safety guidelines.” And yet we have the industry and many regulatory agencies around the world ignoring all of these falsifications.

The second document, attached, is a list of 41 different statements written by scientists and/or physicians, each expressing high-level concern that the “safety guidelines” only consider thermal effects and do not take into account non-thermal effects. Please note the recent statements focused on 5G. What Mr. Hern needs to do to maintain his position is to explain why he disagrees with each of these 42 statements. What he does is to pretend none of these statements exists.

Before leaving this issue of “safety guideline” falsification, it should be noted that the first of these 8 types of evidence, in the first attachment, are review articles that document important health impacts of electromagnetic fields at levels well below safety guideline allowable exposures – a total of 9 different effects. These are as follows:

  • 25 different reviews on lowered fertility in humans and in animals;

  • 29 different reviews on neurological/neuropsychiatric effects;

  • 24 different reviews on three different effects on cellular DNA – effects known to produce mutations;

  • 15 different reviews on apoptosis (programmed cell death) – important for producing both infertility and neurodegeneration;

  • 25 different reviews on oxidative stress/free radical damage, important in causing most human chronic diseases;

  • 15 different reviews on endocrine (that is hormonal) effects

  •  16 different reviews on excessive intracellular calcium (thought to cause almost all of the other effects);

  • 39 different reviews on cancer causation;

  •  9 different reviews on cardiac effects on the electrical control of the heart.

We have here 197 published bodies of evidence, each of which argues strongly that Mr. Hern is wrong. What Mr. Hern must do, therefore, to maintain his position is to show that each of these published bodies of evidence is deeply flawed. What Mr. Hern has done is to pretend that none of these 197 bodies of evidence exists.

The third attachment is a copy of my 90-page, seven-chapter document. It has been translated into German and is being translated into Italian and Norwegian. A precursor of this was translated earlier into French. I will comment on those parts of this document that are most different from the first attachment:

    • Chapter 3 discusses the fact that some of the most concerning effects produced by EMFs act cumulatively, producing progressively more severe effects with time of exposure to a particular type and intensity of exposure and as the effects become more severe, they become apparently irreversible. The consequence of this is that false claims of safety inevitably cause hundreds of millions of people to become severely and irreversibly affected.

    • Chapter 4 discusses four reasons why children are much more severely impacted than are adults.

    • Chapters 5 and 6 together comprise over 60% of the text. They describe the corruption of the science, in both in Europe and the US. The reason for such long discussions in chapters 5 and 6 is that the corruption has been so large and so consequential. A careful reading of those two chapters is essential for an understanding of this corruption. It is, perhaps, not surprising that Mr. Hern has produced the latest extension of this corruption.

One of the important aspects of this corruption has been the personality assassination that has occurred where a multi-trillion dollar set of industries attack individual scientists who have contributed importantly to this area of research. The following important scientists have been attacked (listed more or less in terms of time):

Prof. Henry Lai
Dr. Alan Frey
Prof. Franz Adlkofer
Dr. William Rea
Dr. Jerry Philips
Dr. Devra Davis
Prof. Hugo Rudinger
Prof. Lennart Hardell
Prof. Om Gandhi
Prof. David Carpenter
Scientist Cindy Sage
Prof. Olle Johansson
Dr. Dimitris Panagopoulos

Each of these 15 people is a distinguished scientist who has contributed important findings to our understanding of the biological effects of EMFs, where their only “fault” comes from the fact that their findings threaten the telecom industry. It is not surprising that, having taken on these industries on 5G, I would be the target of such personality assassination. What is surprising is that The Guardian would be jeopardizing its reputation by participating in that process through the Hern article.

The fourth document is a statement of my own professional qualifications in this area. I would urge you to examine it and compare this statement with Mr. Hern’s claims about those qualifications. I also want to state here something about the many requests that I have to give professional talks on EMFs in late 2019. I will be speaking on September 27 in London at a special BSEM meeting on 5G and Health: The Facts and the Risks. Following that, I will be speaking at a special meeting on Biological Effects of Wireless Radiation at the Electoral Palace in Mainz, Germany, October 4-6. I will also be the keynote speaker as the special meeting on EMFs in the Netherlands on October 5. Later that month, October 9-13, I will be giving a series of talks on EMFs in Finland. Following that, I will give a talk in Berlin on EMFs, including 5G, at the World Congress on Physics, October 17 & 18. In November, I will be a double keynote speaker at the“VIII Congresso Internacional de Ciências da Longevidade Humana” (Congress of the International Hormone Society and the Local Longevity Anti-Aging Society), which will be held in São Paulo, Brazil, November 15-17. My first talk will be on how EMFs act to produce health impacts. My second will be on why 5G will be much more dangerous than anything we have faced previously and can produce multiple imminent existential threats to our survival. Following that, I will fly to Europe to give another keynote address on EMFs and 5G and the autism epidemic at the SCON Paediatrics meeting in Amsterdam, Nov. 21 & 22.

These are not the only meetings where I have been asked to talk; there are several others. One of these is the19th Global Neuroscience and Neurology Conference (Neuroscience 2019) to be held in Frankfurt, Germany, November 7 & 8. I have been encouraged to organize a whole session there on EMFs.

If you feel that the characterization of my professional qualifications in this area that Mr. Hern provides is deeply flawed and amounts to personality assassination, then I ask you to agree for me to write an op-ed on this topic. If you feel that Mr. Hern’s description is accurate, you should, of course, turn down my request.

I am going to list my 5 largest concerns, both generally with regard to EMFs and specifically with regard to 5G:

  1. The 8 different types of repeated findings, each of which shows that the safety guidelines do not predict biological effects and do not, therefore, predict safety. Four of these are especially important for understanding 5G—three having to do with pulsations. The fourth is the primary mechanism of action of EMFs generally and pulsations in particular, namely the VGCC activation mechanism.

  2. 5G is designed to carry vast amounts of information per second (or per unit time), such that extraordinarily high pulsation is essential for 5G. The extraordinary 5G pulsations predict that 5G will be especially dangerous to living organisms.

  3. The VGCC mechanism, why it is extraordinarily sensitive to EMF electrical forces and how it generates each of the most documented (and important) 5G effects.

  4. 5G will have both extraordinarily high-level effects near the surface of the body, and deeply penetrating effects. Both of these are important for understanding 5G.

  5. 5G and artificial intelligence (AI). The main goal of the industry with 5G is to serve as the essential conduit for information transfer between high-powered computers capable of AI and diverse peripheral devices. The very high rates of information transfer with 5G will allow real-time control of such devices, despite important parameters changing with time. At the same time that 5G will enable such AI control, its radiation will be attacking our brain structure and function, such that there will be a major inevitable decline in human intelligence. This could well be the end of humanity as we know it. This is in addition to multiple 5G-generated additional existential threats to our survival.

I am attaching a file on 5G and AI – please read and consider.

I am also attaching a file in which Swiss Re, the second largest re-insurance company in the world, expresses concern about the dangers of, and therefore liability for, 5G effects. The positions of insurance companies more generally have made it impossible to get insurance for 5G liability and that should tell you very clearly the views of insurance companies on the dangers of 5G.

You are welcome to forward these as you wish.

Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus Washington State University

Attachments

  1. Eight Repeatedly Documented Findings Each Show that EMF Safety Guidelines Do Not Predict Biological Effects and are Therefore Fraudulent: The Consequences for Both Microwave Frequency Exposures and also 5G (Second Edition, May 23, 2019) (Link)

  2. 41 Expressions of High Level Concern Drafted by Scientists and/or Medical Doctors Regarding Health Impacts of Low Level EMF Exposures (Link)

  3. 5G: Great risk for EU, U.S. and International Health: Compelling Evidence for Eight Distinct Types of Great Harm Caused by Electromagnetic Field (EMF) Exposures and the Mechanism that Causes Them (Link)

  4. Professor Emeritus Martin Pall: Education and Research on EMFs and 5G, July 2019 (See Text Below)

  5. How the Telecommunications Industry 5G Strategy Will Use Artificial Intelligence to Replace Human Intelligence: The End of Mankind as We Know It (Link)

  6. SWISS RE Warns About 5G, 23 May 2019 (See Text Below)

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Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus,

Washington State University
Education and Research on EMFs and 5G
July 2019

Prof. Martin Pall received his BA degree in Physics at Johns Hopkins University, with honors, Phi Beta Kappa and his PhD degree in Biochemistry and Genetics at Caltech, two of the top institutions in the world. His PhD training focused on how to determine biological mechanisms. The PhD training and the physics have each been central to his groundbreaking recent work on how low intensity electromagnetic fields (EMFs) impact the cells of our bodies and the many health consequences produced by that mechanism. Pall’s Hirsch index is currently at 36 and has gone up rapidly since he “retired,” showing a high level of recognition for his research generally and his recent research in particular.

Pall’s first paper on EMFs, published in 2013, showed that low intensity EMFs act by activating voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). This was shown by findings that EMF effects can be blocked or greatly lowered by 5 types of calcium channel blockers, drugs specific for blocking the VGCCs. It was also shown by evidence of immediate increases in calcium signaling following EMF exposures and by further findings that the EMFs act through the voltage sensor that controls VGCC opening (discussed further below). Surprisingly, all of the EMFs ranging from the extremely high millimeter wave EMFs to be used with 5G through microwave frequencies, radiofrequencies, intermediate frequencies, extremely low frequencies including 50 Hz and 60 Hz from our power wiring through static electrical fields and static magnetic fields all act via VGCC activation.

Much of Pall’s subsequent work, in the 7 papers that have followed, has been to greatly expand our understanding of what EMF effects are produced via VGCC activation, how they are produced and why the VGCCs are so stunningly sensitive to activation by these weak EMFs. Before going into all of those important findings, let’s look at how the VGCC breakthrough has been treated by the biomedical research community.

The 2013 paper, the first paper Pall published on the VGCC mechanism, was placed onto the Global Medical Discovery website as one of the best medical papers of 2013. At this writing, July 2019, the paper has been cited 237 times, under 3 headings, according to the Google scholar database. This shows an unusual amount of interest from the scientific community, especially because that was Pall’s first paper on EMFs and it involves a new paradigm of EMF action, and such new paradigms usually face much inertia before they are widely accepted. Still, wide acceptance is not universal acceptance, even among the independent scientists working in this area. Pall has given 48 invited professional talks on EMFs over the past 6 1/2 years, again showing an unusual amount of interest. These include a talk at the French parliament on EHS, a talk at the Swedish parliament and a talk at the US National Institutes of Health. Two talks that are not included in the 48, because they were not invited talks, were given in September 2016 at one of the US Senate office buildings and at the US FCC. Essentially everything that is discussed below with regard to EMFs has been discussed in Pall’s invited professional talks. As of June 2019, Pall is scheduled to give four keynote addresses on EMFs at major international meetings: in November, one at the SCON Pediatrics meeting, a talk on EMFs and autism and two one-hour talks, both on EMFs, at the VIII International Congress of Human Physiology in Sao Paulo, Brazil and one at an important international meeting on EMFs in the Netherlands, October 5. In late September, Pall will be giving a major address on EMFs at a meeting in London and in early October he will be giving a talk at a major meeting on Biologische Wirkungen des Mobilfunks (Biological Effects of Mobile Communication) in Mainz, Germany. Talks in two other countries are being planned.

 

How the Physics Predicts the Very High Level VGCC Sensitivity to Low- Intensity EMFs

The VGCC protein molecule contains a four-domain structure, with each domain carrying an alpha helix containing 5 positive charges. Those four charged alpha helixes act together as what is called the voltage sensor, the structure that responds to electrical changes across the plasma membrane to open the channel. It has been shown that not only 4 distinct types of VGCCs, but also a voltage-gated sodium channel, potassium channel and chloride channel are all activated by EMFs, suggesting that the EMFs act on the voltage sensor. In plants, EMFs apparently act via activation of some other channels, known as TPC channels, which also contain a similar voltage sensor. The voltage-gated sodium, potassium and chloride channels apparently play only minor roles in producing EMF effects, so that to a first approximation, effects can be explained as being predominantly from VGCC activation.

How then can these very weak EMFs activate the voltage sensor? Pall has analyzed the known structure and location of the voltage sensor in the plasma membrane based on two laws of physics: Coulomb’s law and Ohm’s law. The forces on the voltage sensor are calculated to be approximately 7.2 million times stronger than the forces on singly electrically charged groups in the aqueous parts of our cells and bodies. This means that the forces of these weak EMFs are stunningly strong and are therefore, more than sufficient to activate the VGCCs. Because heating is the basis of the current safety guidelines and heating is mainly produced by the forces on singly charged groups in the aqueous parts of our cells and bodies, this predicts that the current safety guidelines may allow us to be exposed to EMFs that are approximately 7.2 million times too strong. The biology tells us that the VGCCs are the main targets of the EMFs. The physics tells us that the voltage sensor is the direct target and why it is so sensitive to these very weak EMFs. The industry has been telling us for years that the electrical forces of these weak EMFs are too weak to do anything, and these calculations tell us why the industry has been completely wrong about this.

 

What Are the Biomedical Consequences of EMFs Activating the VGCCs?

The immediate consequence of VGCC activation is that one gets a very large influx of calcium ions into the cell through the plasma membrane that surrounds our cells, leading to very large increases in intracellular calcium [Ca2+]i. [Ca2+]i increases produce in turn, different downstream effects that, individually or collectively produce each of the extremely well- documented effects following EMF exposures. These explained effects include:

  1. Neurological neuropsychiatric effects, including insomnia, fatigue, depression, anxiety, loss of concentration, memory dysfunction, headache and other pain, stress, agitation and sensory dysfunction. These are all extremely common in our societies around the world and we know they can be caused by EMF exposures.

  2. Reproductive effects, including disruption of the structure of the testis and ovaries, lowered sperm count, lowered sperm motility and other measures of lowered sperm quality; lowered female fertility including lowered numbers of oocytes; increased spontaneous abortion; lowered levels of each of the three sex hormones; lowered libido. We have reason to think that these are already far advanced in every single technologically advanced country on earth.

  3. DNA effects, including single-strand and double-strand breaks in cellular DNA and oxidized bases in the cellular DNA. These have important roles in producing germ line mutation (producing mutant babies) and in causing cancer.

  4. Oxidative stress and free radical damage. These have important roles in causing essentially all common and many not so common chronic diseases.

  5. Increased levels of apoptosis (programmed cell death), which has particularly important roles in causing the reproductive effects and also the neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s.

  6. Excessive [Ca2+]i, which is the cause of everything else.

  7. Hormonal (that is endocrine) effects in all or almost all hormone systems.

  8. Cancer, which is caused by the DNA effects and other effects, leading to increases in not only initiation of cancer, but also increased tumor promotion and progression, including tissue invasion and metastasis.

  9. Therapeutic effects.

  10. Life-threatening cardiac effects producing aberrant electrical control of the heart beat. We are having an epidemic of young, apparently healthy athletes dying in the middle of an athletic competition, due to sudden cardiac death. Are these deaths caused by EMF exposures?

  11. Breakdown of the blood-brain barrier.

  12. Stress responses, including heat shock responses (without heating) and AMPK activation.There are other effects, but where the primary role of EMFs in causation can still be questioned. These include:

    1.  Very early onset Alzheimer’s dementias and other dementias. We are seeing people aged 30 coming down with Alzheimer’s disease and young people said to be addicted to Wi-Fi internet connections coming down with what are called digital dementias.

    2. & 3. Autism and ADHD, where late prenatal and early postnatal exposures seem to be the most important. The excessive [Ca2+]i caused by such early exposures is thought to disrupt the formation of synapses in the developing brain.

    3. 4.  Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). While the mechanism of EHS is still somewhat uncertain, it is clear that excessive [Ca2+]i produces sensitivity syndromes and that oxidative stress and sensitivity in the brain each have important roles in EHS.

Each of these 16 different important EMF effects and apparent effects can be caused by downstream effects of VGCC activation.

Several of these effects are found to start slowly following most types of exposure but the EMFs act cumulatively to produce more and more severe effects. The slow onsets are the types that are most difficult for us to perceive when we are experiencing them. As effects become more severe, they become apparently irreversible. Effects that show this pattern include the neurological/neuropsychiatric effects, the reproductive effects and the cardiac effects. The mutational consequences of the DNA effects are inherently cumulative and irreversible. Other effects that show this cumulative nature and apparent irreversibility are some of the hormonal effects, Alzheimer’s and other dementias and the perinatal exposures involved in producing autism and ADHD.

The two cumulative effects that are of most concern to Prof. Pall are the neurological/neuropsychiatric and the reproductive effects, both of which have high prevalence in our societies. Either of these alone can produce extinction. We can estimate how long this is likely to take based on a combination of human epidemiological studies and rodent studies (where most things go approximately 15 times faster than they do in humans). Those rough estimates suggest that the neurological/neuropsychiatric effects could well lead to a disastrous crash in our collective brain function within 5 to 7 years in technologically advanced countries, simply based on the exposures we already have. Somewhat similarly, we could well see a reproductive crash essentially to zero within about 5 years based on our current exposures with some countries crashing much more rapidly. In either of these cases we will have no future. Of course, increasing exposures beyond our current exposures from 5G, further expansion of 4G increased radar usage in cars and other exposures may be expected to produce much faster demise.

 

The Crash of Our Safety Guidelines: It Gets Even Worse

Our current safety guidelines are currently based on average intensities, usually averaged over 6 or 30 minutes, and the estimated heating produced by these intensities in the tissues of our bodies. They do not take into consideration non-thermal effects including, of course, those produced via VGCC activation. However, there are multiple, additional types of evidence that each show that the safety guidelines are deeply flawed, not only because of the cut-off levels used to claim safety of the exposures below that level, but equally or more importantly, the average intensities we are using are almost completely unpredictive of biological effects. How do we know this?

There are 13 reviews that have shown that pulsed EMFs are in most cases much more biologically active than are non-pulsed EMFs of the same average intensity. This is very important for two distinct reasons. Each of our wireless communication devices communicates in part or in whole via pulsations. These devices are therefore potentially—and Pall believes actually—much more dangerous. Secondly, these findings also show that average intensities tell us very little about biological effects. It follows from the second of these consequences that the safety guidelines are not measuring the right thing. What should we be measuring?

There is also a large, related literature showing that nanosecond pulses, defined as individual pulses that are between 1 nanosecond and 1 microsecond long, produce substantial biological effects. When these are averaged over 6 minutes, the intensities are so low that they are many orders of magnitude below the cut-off levels used in our safety guidelines. This is, then, another situation where safety guidelines fail to predict biological effects. It should be added that there are studies where the effects produced by both nanosecond pulses and pulsed EMFs (described in the previous paragraph) have each been shown to be blocked by calcium channel blockers, showing that each of these act via VGCC activation.

There is, in addition, a large literature showing that there are intensity windows, that is, specific ranges in intensities where EMFs produce maximum biological effects, but where intensities that are either lower or higher produce than those within the window produce much lower effects. What these findings show is that dose-response curves are neither linear nor monotone (non- monotone means that effects do not always increase with increasing exposures nor do they always decrease with decreasing exposures). This contradicts the assumptions of the industry and regulatory agencies that dose response curves are linear, or at least monotone. Some of these intensity windows have been shown to occur at average intensities 3, 4 or 5 or more orders of magnitude below the safety guideline cut-offs. So again, the industry and regulatory agency assumptions that there is an average intensity below which we are always safe and above which we are at substantial risk of effects is shown to be false, such that the whole structure of the regulatory system is deeply flawed.

There is also a large literature where specific research groups have examined multiple cell types using identical methodologies and found that different cell types differ widely in how susceptible they are to microwave or other frequency radiation. This means that any regulatory scheme that just uses physics to predict biological effects, as is the case with our current safety guidelines, is inherently deeply flawed. It also means that biological safety testing, which is the only reliable way to test for safety or lack thereof, should focus on using cells in culture that are known to be highly sensitive to EMFs and are grown in a way that maintains that high level sensitivity. Pall has published two papers providing information on how such testing can be done.

There are two other issues that are each important, but possibly only in certain contexts. There are studies that have shown that certain very specific EMF frequencies are frequency windows producing maximum effects at extremely low intensities, but shifting the frequency by only a very tiny amount produces vastly lower effects. These have been interpreted in terms of resonance effects with a target. In recent years, Dr. Belyaev has been the most active scientist in this area of research. There have been no studies done, to Pall’s knowledge, on whether the voltage sensor may be the target of such resonance effects. It is not clear that most of the exposures we have are greatly influenced by these frequency windows. However, it has been argued that the 2450 MHz frequency used for Wi-Fi is close enough to such a frequency window to be of concern. Pall has, however, another concern. These very specific frequency windows can be used to make microwave weapons vastly more biologically active. Currently, human populations are completely undefended, either physically or legally from such microwave weapons and military or diplomatic personnel may also have little or no defense.

The last area of concern here is that artificial EMFs are all polarized, whereas most natural EMFs are non-polarized. Polarized EMFs have the property that the forces they produce on electrically charged groups are much greater than those produced by non-polarized EMFs. It follows from this that the voltage sensor will be much more sensitive to activation by polarized EMFs. Pall’s main concern about this is not with regard to the regulatory scheme, but rather with regard to the apparent corruption of the scientific literature. Since about 2003, most if not all industry- sponsored experimental studies have used reverberation exposure chambers to expose rodents or cell in culture to EMFs in order to assess possible effects. However, these exposure chambers greatly decrease polarization and some of them may also produce substantial amounts of destructive interference, with both of these, greatly lowering any effects seen. When such studies have been touted either by the industry or by regulatory agencies, this will have the effect of corrupting their assessment of the literature.

 

Why 5G will be vastly worse

5G is designed to use very high frequency millimeter wave EMFs that are extraordinarily highly pulsed in order to carry vastly greater amounts of information per second. However, these millimeter wave frequencies are much more absorbed by materials in buildings, as well as by the materials in our bodies, presumably because of high-level interactions with electrically charged groups. One consequence of this is that extraordinarily high numbers of antennae will be used, in close proximity to our houses, workplaces, schools and almost any other building, making it virtually impossible to avoid these exposures. Pall predicts that the extraordinarily high numbers and intensities of these EMFs, together with the inherent dangers of the millimeter-wave frequencies and extraordinarily high pulsations will mean that the VGCC voltage sensor will be hyperactivated by 5G. The industry predicts the effects will be limited to the outer millimeter of the body. However, the industry prediction has been shown to be false for non-pulsed millimeter wave frequency studies translated and released by the CIA, where effects at least 20 times deeper than the industry claims is possible are found both in animals and in humans. It seems inevitable that the highly pulsed 5G will be vastly worse. It is essential, therefore, that we do biological safety testing of genuine 5G radiation with all of its planned pulsations, but that is exactly what the industry and the regulatory agencies are avoiding doing.

 

Dr. Pall’s final statement

Healthy skepticism is always the basis of the best science. I know that many of you will be skeptical, as you should be. It is the skeptics that most need to hear my talk and I welcome you to raise your most challenging questions.

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SWISS RE Warns About 5G

Concerns about possible adverse health effects of electromagnetic fields The insurer assures that 5G is not safe and therefore not insurable

English translation of the German statement available at https://www.diagnose-funk.org/publikationen/artikel/detail&newsid=1412
23 May 2019

 

SWISS RE, one of the world’s largest reinsurers, warns in its press release dated 22 May 2019: “The annual SONAR report of the Swiss Re Institute presents 15 new risk topics and 5 new trending topics that the reinsurance industry must have on the radar” before the risks of 5G:
“Digital technology is impacting on existing infrastructure, with new risks posed by the proliferation of 5G mobile networks, increasingly limited fiscal and
monetary flexibility, and genetic testing and its impact on the insurance industry are potentially high-impact challenges ….”.

 

Out of control (off the leash): The spread of 5G technology

5G will enable real-time wireless connectivity for any Internet of Things (IoT) device, such as autonomous cars or sensor-controlled factories. Current concerns about possible adverse health effects of electromagnetic fields are likely to increase. In addition, hackers can also use the speed and volume of 5G to capture (or steal) more data faster. The biggest concerns include potential privacy and security breaches and espionage.” (1) Source: https://www.swissre.com/media/news-releases/nr-20190522-sonar2019.html
(1) Original text: “Swiss Re Institute’s annual SONAR report features 15 emerging risk themes and 5 emerging trend spotlights the re-insurance industry needs to have on its radar.”
Digital technology’s clash with legacy infrastructure, new risks emerging from the spread of 5G mobile networks, increasingly limited and monetary policy flexibility, and genetic testing and its implications for the insurance industry.

 

Off the leash: The spread of 5G technology

5G wants to enable wireless connectivity in real time for any device of the Internet of Things (IoT), such as autonomous cars or sensor-steered factories. The current and potential negative health effects are likely to increase. In addition, hackers can exploit 5G speed and volume to acquire (or steal) more data faster. Major concerns are possible privacy and security breaches, as well as espionage.