Many waiting for it, some may find it at the foot of the Christmas tree! Lucky or not, owners of 5G phones? That's the whole question. Admittedly, this technology, which has a speed 50 times faster than 4G, allows, among other things, to download movies in the blink of an eye or to play video games without latency. It will make our connected objects even more “intelligent”. But at what cost? Three researchers have been interviewed in that purpose. Their responses, published in the latest issue of Inserm magazine, do not appeal to associations that have asked for a moratorium on 5G ..."Human beings have been exposed to artificial electromagnetic radiation for a long time, in particular by radio," recalls Olivier Merckel, head of the Physical agents, new technologies and major development unit at ANSES (Maisons-Alfort). “But now, with the mobile phone, almost the entire population places the most intense source of electromagnetic radiation against his head or body. The agency was interested in possible consequences, including the risk of brain tumor in the biggest users of mobile phones. In the absence of conclusive studies, it has just set up a multidisciplinary working group (biology, toxicology, epidemiology, biophysics, etc.). "If 5G has its own biological effects, it will probably not be on the brain, but rather on surface tissues: the skin, the eye or the eardrum," said the researcher.
Finally, Brigitte Lacour, epidemiologist at the Sorbonne Paris Cité Epidemiology and Statistics Research Center (Inserm unit 1153, Paris) and director of the National Register of Solid Tumors in Children, is also cautious. Certainly, studies classify electromagnetic radiation as a possible carcinogen. Certainly, the arrival of 5G will push young users to expose themselves more, to download films or to play on the network. But “do they have an accumulated risk of brain tumor? ". These pathologies being extremely rare, the current studies sin by a too limited sample. As for the Mobi-Kids international epidemiological survey, which involves 900 patients with a brain tumor and 1,900 controls from 14 countries, its results have not yet been published. It is therefore impossible to pronounce today.
