Densification of 5G: Risk to health and safety outside scope in Govt consultation

What fundamentally increases your risk from telecommunications devices and infrastructure?

Warning: This article may be a little strident for some.

It’s a question most of us only vaguely understand. Is it your phone, sitting idle in your pocket? That unassuming black box, in the form of a 5G small cell antenna perched on a lamppost? What defines risk, and how does it arise? These are the questions we need to ask — because only by understanding them can we begin to responsibly manage both the personal devices we carry and the infrastructure that powers our digital lives

A TECHY INTRO – GOVERNANCE INCLUDES RISK FROM FEEDBACK LOOPS

This has to be technical – because the only way a technology can be stewarded safely, is if the cumulative biological impact from the use of that technology is appreciated. The majority of potential risk from telecommunications technologies arises not from passive proximity to individual components such as cell towers or mobile devices in isolation. Risk arises from the interactive dynamics between them. Specifically, the continual two-way exchange of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs). This dynamic, often referred to in engineering terms as oscillation or bidirectional signalling, increases the intensity, variability, and complexity of exposure.

Exposure increases under conditions of high data transmission such as video streaming or mobile tethering (through USB, bluetooth and hotspotting). Your phone connects to the cellular network (e.g. 4G, 5G) to access data, and simultaneously transmits from the phone to the telecommunications infrastructure – and – from your phone and any interconnected device over Wi-Fi.

Phones effectively ramp up their transmission power output to maintain connectivity – to maintain a stable connection, especially when moving between cell towers. For children, teenagers, and adults travelling on a bus or in other mobile environments, frequent signal handovers and surges in device output increase exposure burden. Thousands of scientific papers show a pattern – exposures correlate with oxidative stress and inflammation (studies persistently cite hundreds of references). In bodies that are still developing — or in those lacking time for adequate biological recovery — the cumulative effects of chronic oxidative stress can increase risk for a range of disease conditions.

These interactions generate a cumulative burden of rapidly pulsed and modulated RF-EMFs. This cumulative burden (which occurs over time) is not typically reflected in regulatory assessments.

MBIE AND MoH: DISCRETELY DRAFTING OUT RISK

New Zealand government officials are entrusted with the responsibility to protect public health. The Resource Management (National Environmental Standards for Telecommunication Facilities) Regulations 2016 (hereafter the NES-TF Regs 2016) were established under the Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA). Section 5(2) of the RMA stipulates that any officials using powers under the RMA can only do so if they manage resources in such a way that provides for the health and safety of people and communities.

The Ministry of Health’s (MoH) powers are based on a key mandated function: to improve, promote, and protect public health. That’s their job under section 3A of the Health Act 1956.

Except I don’t think the government knows that. Let’s explore the related policy documents (for the infrastructure and telecommunications consultation) to find out how the government manages telecommunications equipment (as a physical resource) to provide for health and safety (as per the RMA), which necessitates making sure radio frequency exposure standards are best practice based on the current state of science.

Because here is the thing: If official documents repeatedly exclude any meaningful discussion of hazard and risk, they don’t just fail in duty, they erase the conditions that make protection possible. If the current governance framework systematically ignores the broader, interconnected operational environment that generates risk officials will have (over time) rendered themselves incapable of safeguarding public health. The result? MBIE and MoH cannot improve, promote, or protect the health of people and communities because risk has become atomised and fragmented. The capacity to coherently understand the systems that generate harm, and how this can change over time, is effectively scythed out and silenced.

A current proposal reveals how fragmented governance translates into real-world consequences.

CONSULTATION TO DEREGULATE ‘LOW IMPACT’ TELECOMMS INFRASTRUCTURE

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) has neatly tucked a deregulatory proposal into a current consultation, deadline July 27, in the Ministry for the Environment’s proposed RMA reforms. The proposal concerns amending the NES-TF Regs 2016 to deregulate ‘low impact’ infrastructure.

The Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS), the Discussion Document (Part 2.5) and info paper provide the background policy information. The Discussion Document outlines the policy problem:

The NES-TF has not kept pace with changes in the built environment

Towns and cities in New Zealand are continuing to intensify to accommodate housing growth, leading to taller, more compact buildings.

Greater numbers of residential buildings exceed the height of telecommunication poles, which increases the likelihood of black spots and connectivity disruptions. To work around the NES TF, providers must either build more, smaller poles to maintain coverage, pursue lease arrangements to place antennas on buildings, or obtain resource consents for telecommunications facilities that do not meet activity standards. The telecommunication sector has told the Government this situation is becoming uneconomic, expressing a need for changes to the permitted heights of telecommunication poles.

The policy problem – the NES-TF ‘is not keeping pace with changes in technology’. Therefore the policy objective (in the MBIE/MftE RIS) aims to:

update NES-TF so it supports efficient deployment of low impact telecommunication facilities that meet the needs of New Zealand households and businesses. The focus on enabling low impact telecommunication facilities aligns with the original policy intent of NES-TF and aims to ensure effects on the environment continue to be appropriately managed.(Page 3).  

Health and safety are not mentioned in policy documents. ‘Low impact’ infrastructure is not defined in relation to emissions risk and health and safety. ‘Low impact’, even though a central claim in the policy platform, is not defined at all.

A quick look at the costs and benefits in the MBIE/MftE RIS (page 5-7) helps the public to appreciate the problem is not connected to health and safety – rather, to ‘uncertainty, complexity, significant costs and delays for deploying telecommunications infrastructure and services’.

What rationale was of primary importance in the costs-benefits section of the policy?

[1] The proposal would result in small, one-off transitional costs to councils, but then councils ‘may need to spend more to monitor and enforce’ the new guidelines that would be controlled by MBIE. The RIS says that ‘Councils can recover these costs from ratepayers or directly from telecommunication providers (where permitted to do so under the RMA).’

[2] Downsides of possible visual effects – but officials were unable to quantify the scale. But it only concerns ‘low-impact’ telecommunications facilities (which MBIE forgot to define). Officials consider that ‘any minor visual effects would also be outweighed by the benefits of greater efficiency in deploying or upgrading telecommunication facilities’.

[3] Potential reduction in Māori iwi/hapū and community engagement as councils would not need to engage with iwi/hapū because they would no longer have powers.

[4] The telecommunications industry estimates that their monetised benefits would lead to reduced costs of between $50 and $100 million over the next decade.

[5] People would then theoretically pay less. But ‘it is not possible to accurately predict or measure this’.

[5] Reduced administrative costs for councils and therefore ratepayers. They wouldn’t have to update their RMA plans anymore. ‘We do not hold information estimating what these reduced costs are’.

[6] More efficient deployment of telecommunication services. ‘It is not possible to quantify these anticipated benefits as they vary according to the future network development.

Risk to health and safety is not of concern. The main risk discussed in the policy documents concerns the risk of black spots – for example on page 14:

The current limits on pole heights increase the risk of black spots and connectivity disruptions. Telecommunication providers have indicated that this is happening much more frequently now, particularly in and around residential areas. These disruptions have public health and safety implications, given the public’s need for connectivity.

MINISTRY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH STEWARDS REGULATIONS FOR RF-EMF

You may be confused, as I focus on MBIE, not the MftE. MBIE are responsible for the NES-TF Regs 2016. Responsibility transferred from the Ministry for the Environment to MBIE in 2016. To help appreciate this claim, the MBIE Minister for Media and Communications is briefed on telecommunications, not the Minister for the Environment, when they assume their roles.

There appears to be a pattern where MBIE secures the power to administer legislation concerned with human and environmental health stewardship of man-made technologies. Historically, the public has believed this role would be at arm’s length from the agencies who were concerned with economic growth and advancing patentable, innovative technologies.

No matter what the RMA 1991 tells us, MBIE’s consultation suggests that we don’t have to worry about human and health, because the National Environmental Standards for Telecommunication Facilities 2016 regulations simply does not require risk to health or safety to be considered. In this current consultation, health and safety concerns are explicitly out of scope:

47. Changes to radio frequency exposure standards are out of scope. Under NES-TF, telecommunications providers need to comply with the New Zealand radio exposure standard NZS 2772.1:1999 by reference, which is administered and reviewed by the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora). The protections for radio frequency exposures will be maintained with no changes. The Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand advised that the references to NZS 2772.1:1999 align with international best practice and remain fit for purpose.

Where is the bit on health and safety then?

The purpose of the NES-TF Regs 2016 (s.3) advise that the standards are simply to be complied with. There’s no overarching obligation to protect health in MBIE’s regulations. Instead, there’s a tidy little regulation, section 55(6) which explicitly states that:

In this regulation,—

AS/NZS 2772.2 means AS/NZS 2772.2:2016 Radiofrequency fields – Part 2: Principles and methods of measurement and computation – 3 kHz to 300 GHz

NZS 2772.1 means NZS 2772.1:1999 Radiofrequency fields – Maximum exposure levels – 3 kHz to 300 GHz.

Effectively, the health and safety’ bit are tucked inside the NZS 2772.1:1999 standards which are tucked inside the NES-TF Regs 2016. Mysteriously you cannot access the standards to read them, unless you stump up $147.60 to get beyond the paywall.

Who knew?!

If you search (and I have) on the MftE or MBIE website to find documents discussing risk to health and safety (and I have), you will find that no such documents exist because that role is proxied out to the Ministry of Health.

However, policy justifications that frame the expansion of telecommunication infrastructure (e.g., small cell towers or antennas) solely in terms of reducing device-level risk present an incomplete and potentially misleading account. By focusing only on emissions from the infrastructure, such arguments ignore the biological implications of increased data throughput between mobile devices and the network — including growing evidence of oxidative stress, calcium ion dysregulation, and endocrine disruption associated with time-varying and cumulative RF-EMF exposures.

Current proposals to deregulate aspects of telecommunications infrastructure, including those related to the NES-TF Regs 2016, are grounded largely in the aim of reducing regulatory burdens on industry. This occurs despite widespread agreement that New Zealand’s long-term economic and connectivity benefits are best served through the expansion of fibre optic broadband — a passive infrastructure that does not emit RF-EMF. There is no demonstrated need to further deregulate wireless infrastructure at the expense of public safeguards when safer, non-radiative alternatives already exist.

Significant literature indicates there is no universally agreed-upon threshold below which RF-EMF exposure can be deemed entirely without biological effect, particularly in sensitive populations. Children, adolescents, pregnant individuals, and those with heightened physiological sensitivity may be more vulnerable to RF-EMF exposures, especially in high-density urban or institutional settings. Moreover, the latency and unpredictability of emerging symptoms in electrosensitive individuals raise fundamental questions about the adequacy of existing population-wide standards — and about the ethical obligations of policy-makers in maintaining precautionary oversight.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH CONTROLS STANDARDS FOR RF-EMG

To confirm, as MftE and MBIE RIS noted (p.21-22, s.47), the NZS 2772.1:1999 standards are administered and reviewed by the Ministry of Health and Health New Zealand. Section 47 advises us that ‘the references to NZS 2772.1:1999 align with international best practice and remain fit for purpose.’

It’s interesting to consider that when these guidelines were established in 1998 there was relatively little RF-EMF radiation in the environment. As Health New Zealand advises:

The current 1999 standard was adopted when 2G was the primary telecommunications network. New Zealand’s 3G roll-out in New Zealand commenced in 2004, 4G in 2013 and 5G commenced roll-out in 2019.

The public are to understand that the standard hasn’t needed to be updated because every few years the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) releases discussions and standards. There has been no need to update our standards because ICNIRP Reports are used by the Ministry of Health (MoH) to confirm that current standards are safe.

MoH believe that the ICNIRP reports reflect ‘international best practice’.

BEST PRACTICE – IGNORING NON-THERMAL EFFECTS.

The MoH delegates responsibility for assessment of RF-EMF health and safety to the Interagency Committee on the Health Effects of Non-ionising Fields. The people who sit on this committee are anonymous. We don’t know how many people there are, what their expertise is, nor who they have worked for historically. That Interagency Committee then produces white papers, Reports to Ministers, in short succession after the ICNIRP group releases their latest evaluation.

Non-thermal effects where the mitochondria or cells are harmed from the RF-EMF without being heated have been ignored and dismissed by ICNIRP for years. ICNIRP has faced increasing criticism concerning its tight control over the ‘science’ and the way ICNIRP members self-reference their own studies and exclude other data. The group is tightly interconnected with membership in other groups that set standards. Members develop guidelines, making sure the telecommunications industry (which includes military, phones) feeds back into proposed guidelines. Academics have been attempting to draw attention to the conflicts of interest and unscientific secrecy for years – the problem of conflicts of interest threads all the way to the World Health Organization.

The effect is that ‘harmonising’ standards, inevitably rules out contradictory information.

In 2018 major findings were published on opposite sides of the world in the U.S. and Italy – the independent findings essentially corroborated each other. ICNIRP quickly rolled out a response, and the anonymous Interagency Committee followed soon after.

Then in 2021 ICNIRP released another major paper, and the Ministry of Health’s secretive group published a quick follow up in 2022, to keep us informed. According to these papers, non-thermal effects from telecommunications devices don’t count.

What happens is that there is never enough evidence – it is too uncertain. But what you can see from the MoH 2018, 2019 and 2022 Reports by the secretive Committee, is that they do not accord with good scientific practice and they’re broadly ignoring a massive and compelling body of mechanistic data.

Scientists refute ICNIRP findings. ICNIRP-associated scientists consistently produce scientific studies (here, here and here) to support the no brain-cancer-risk effects claim. Non-ICNIRP scientists draw attention to the anomalies and get grumpy. ICNIRP-associated scientists respond, and independent scientists respond back.

How much RF-EMF radiation is your child or student exposed to in their school classroom on a daily basis? The cultural perspective is wrapped up in how we steward risk. But we only know what we know.

This is a long game, and it always has been, and of course, it would be out of scope to discuss how ICNIRP quietly checks that proposed guidelines are OK with industry representatives. Meanwhile, scientists who publish studies contradicting ICNIRP, aren’t invited onto the ICNIRP panels.

FRONT AND CENTRE: MECHANISTIC DATA

In drug development, no corporation in their right mind would ignore mechanistic data. Regulators charged with protecting health, shouldn’t either.

Mechanistic data is essential to understanding the underlying aetiology — the ladder of harm — that connects exposure to biological outcome. In the context of RF-EMF, mechanistic studies include investigations into oxidative stress, calcium signalling disruption, DNA damage, and epigenetic alteration. When integrated with case reports, cohort studies, and population-level data, they form a coherent picture of risk. This aint done, folks.

Excluding this evidence is ethically indefensible, because biological variability means each person responds differently to environmental stressors. What triggers Parkinson’s in one may predispose another to glioblastoma, or contribute to developmental disruption in a child. Public health policy must account for these differences, not erase them.

Mechanistic data is key. Front and centre.

But the MoH’s Interagency Committee do not carry out methodically and rigorously structured reviews – as would be fit for purpose for policy development. The anonymous Interagency Committee Report (2022) instead downplays mechanistic data – such as risk from oxidative stress, which can set the stage for an incredible amount of health effects. Brain risk from oxidative stress has been recognised for decades.

It is that old trick – its sciencing. It’s approximating science. And they delegate authority to ICNIRP.

There is an ethical choice and challenge. Risk is easily framed out and without methodical approaches to the literature government agencies are at risk of being accused of cherry-picking. Scientists, when they conduct a review, must necessarily establish boundaries on their research parameters. For example this Japanese review limited evaluated data to mobile phones and excluded acute effects from RF-EMF exposures; this Korean review assessed impacts from epidemiological studies; while the inclusion criteria for this German review demanded that precise knowledge of exposure levels per child were understood.

A government that looked at these studies could say that, based on these reviews the body of evidence for risk of harm or impaired brain performance is low to inadequate, there is no consistent effect and no change in standards are required. A government that weighted mechanistic data might appreciate uncertainty and risk differently, particularly if they weighted infant and childhood risks.

Despite government intransigence, globally, insurance companies generally recognise the potential for adverse health effects.

DENSIFICATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE NOT REQUIRED – WE HAVE FIBRE!

Risks are not going away – scientists found increased risks of childhood leukemia in the under 5 age group who lived close to transformer stations. From scientists to independent researchers, the spectrum of tin-foil hat wearers, seems to grow by the day. In New Zealand the Safer EMR Technology Aotearoa NZ (STANZ) and Safe ICT New Zealand groups have been following this issue for much longer than I have. The Australian-based Oceania Scientific Radiofrequency Advisory Association maintains a massive database on electromagnetic bioeffects. Pretty cool.

Plugging in sounds a lot wiser – for all of us, than hotspotting.

What our government agencies fail to honestly evaluate, is that the risk of adverse harm comes from close proximity to infrastructure and devices including mobile phones and computers, but risk is significantly enhanced from the device-infrastructure feedback loop – from the pulsation between towers and antennas. This is a radically different mechanism from environmental EMF exposure patterns.

Use fundamentally increases risk and New Zealand’s fibre broadband roll-out addresses broadband requirements for business and household use. Increasing densification of cell towers and antennas does not advance health and the central business case for densification, as the RIS argues, is for the telecommunications company profit margin.

New Zealand has excellent access to fibre and satellite broadband. That is where the big economic growth is – because it enhances industry and household productivity. Everyone on a budget knows that you download everything before you leave home and so do not require continuous streaming from antennas and towers placed every 200-500 metres. The irony is, many who don’t currently uptake broadband can’t even afford it at home. So, they’re not likely to have the latest Iphone and Netflix access that can stream movies on the bus to school.

The MBIE Consultation documents (neither the RIS nor the Discussion Document) did not discuss how broadly kiwis and our businesses are connected to fibre optic broadband. The life of my rural family members have had their world transformed by satellite connects, which enable broadband through the home.

More cell towers and antennas are not essential. The evidence suggests that densification might be a net benefit to telecommunications industry, but it would be a net loss to health and wellbeing.

What is stark and unethical, is the casual approach of the Ministry of Health to risk from conception, throughout infancy and childhood – and the risk to a growing group – people that are sensitive (or hypersensitive) to RF-EMF emissions. Here, here, here, here, here, here. I can go on.

We can change New Zealand NES-TF Regs 2016 and NZS 2772.1:1999 standards, we can lower maximum levels as scientists recommend and make extra special allowances for pregnant mothers, babies, children and adolescents.

We recently listed examples of countries on the Physicians and Scientists for Global Responsibility (PSGRNZ) Substack of countries that have started to do this. Meanwhile, scientists continue to publish papers to reason why lower levels are important.

I believe that the New Zealand public can help MBIE and MoH realise that their current actions do not provide for the health and safety of people and communities and cannot improve, promote, and protect public health.

It painfully evident that they do not want to do this. The Ministry for the Environment and MBIE have explicitly drafted concerns out of the scope of the current consultation. The public are faced with the damning evidence that officials simply do not want to do this:  they do not want to consider the risks to health and safety that would arise as a consequence of their own (human) actions.

5G is enabled via fibre broadband. Scientists are not publishing thousands of papers on the risks of fibre broadband. It’s safer – and enables us to put devices on airplane mode, to turn it off at night.

Human health is drafted out of regulations – but so is good, transparent scientifically robust process.

Please send in your comments to the Consultation (deadline July 27). Please take a little time to personally consider the appropriateness of MBIE holding these powers, and implications of MoH consistently failing to conduct an impartial, methods based, scientifically robust, review of the literature.