Electrosmog and 5G: what the science says

You are lying in bed in the evening. Your mobile is glowing on the bedside table, the router in the hall is blinking green, and outside the window there is a mast with antennas that you probably stopped noticing years ago. All day long we are surrounded by electromagnetic fields that we can neither see nor hear. People call them electrosmog, and the word caught on because it sounds like smog in the air: it is everywhere around us and hard to get away from.

How the original site wrote about electrosmog

The first version of this site, written in 2016, put electrosmog alongside the ordinary things we do to look after ourselves. We think about clean air, clean water and good food, and we put on a hat when the sun is strong. In the same way, the author argued, it is worth giving some thought to the fields we live with at home and at work. He wrote that most of us hardly realise how much time we spend next to devices that create these fields, and that the whole thing arrived together with modern technology, quietly, one gadget at a time.

He also wrote about the tachyonized materials made by ATTI (Advanced Tachyon Technologies), a company that by his count had been around for more than twenty years even then. Who is behind the company is described in the article ATTI and David Wagner.

What Tachyon says about its materials

Tachyon's materials talk about order and balance. David Wagner, the founder of ATTI, describes tachyonized material as an antenna for tachyon energy. In his theory, that energy is an organising force that helps a living system keep its inner order, much as a conductor keeps an orchestra playing together. That is why the small disks and the pendant are made to be kept close, on a bedside table, in a pocket or around the neck.

How people actually live with their phones day to day, and how Cousens' idea of entropy fits into the picture, is the subject of two longer pieces: Living with mobile phones, part 1 and part 2.

The e-book the author once offered

Back then, the author came across a book that went much deeper into electrosmog and offered it to readers as a free e-book download. He picked one idea from it to share on the site: that anyone who spends around 500 minutes a month on the phone may be raising their risk of serious illness.

Sentences like that were all over books and websites at the time. A great deal of research has been published since, so it is worth looking at where the knowledge has moved in the last ten years. The 500-minute idea is a good test case, because it is exactly the kind of question large studies were later designed to answer.

What the science says

Radiofrequency fields are followed by several scientific bodies. IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which belongs to the World Health Organization, placed them in Group 2B in 2011, "possibly carcinogenic to humans". This group is for things where the evidence at the time of the assessment was limited and where further research makes sense. The same group contains, for example, aloe vera extract and vegetables pickled the traditional Asian way. The label sounds alarming, but it says more about how much was known in 2011 than about any danger that had been found.

In 2024 the journal Environment International published a large systematic review commissioned by the WHO. Ken Karipidis and his team went through dozens of studies from around the world and found no link between using a mobile phone and cancers of the brain or head, including in people who had used their phones heavily for many years. Mobiles have meanwhile reached almost every adult in Europe, and the rate of these cancers in the population has not risen with them. For the 500-minute claim from the old e-book, this is the clearest answer we have.

The exposure limits are set by ICNIRP, the international commission that sets the exposure guidelines for non-ionising radiation. In 2020 it updated them for frequencies from 100 kHz to 300 GHz, so they cover 5G as well. The EU Council Recommendation 1999/519/EC and the national limits that operators keep to are based on its work, and they apply to older networks in the same way as to 5G. Research goes on, and scientists will keep coming back to the subject, because the technology changes quickly and every new generation of networks raises the same questions again.

What you can do at home

Distance makes the biggest difference, because the strength of a field drops quickly as you move away from its source. For long calls, use earphones or the speakerphone, which also leaves your hands free for a cup of tea. A phone sends a stronger signal when reception is weak, so save longer conversations for a place with good coverage. At night your mobile can sit on a chest of drawers by the door instead of under your pillow. You will sleep better for it, and the morning starts with you getting up to switch off the alarm instead of scrolling in bed.

If you would like something from Tachyon in your bedroom or living room as an aid for calm, the site has the 24 mm micro-disk and the Tachyon Pendant, which is worn close to the body. The full range is on the products page.

Sources

• IARC Monographs Volume 102, Non-Ionizing Radiation, Part 2: Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields (assessment from 2011, published 2013).
• K. Karipidis et al.: systematic review of the effect of exposure to radiofrequency fields on cancer risk in the general and working population, commissioned by the WHO, Environment International 191 (2024).
• ICNIRP Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields (100 kHz to 300 GHz), Health Physics (2020).
• Council Recommendation 1999/519/EC on the limitation of exposure of the general public to electromagnetic fields.