John Frank, MD: The Safety of 5G Wireless Technology

“Hello, my name is Professor John Frank. I’m a physician, epidemiologist, and expert in public health based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland but historically at the University of Toronto for a quarter century.” With that introduction, Professor Frank, now Chairperson of ICBE-EMF,  begins a talk on why he has become concerned about safety issues related to 5G and cell tower radiation. 

He explains that his involvement began only in 2019, when “a Scottish public health activist with no vested interest did some reading and said there’s something ‘fishy’ going on with the rollout of 5G telecommunications… I think you should have a look at it.” What followed was years of independent investigation: “I read hundreds of scientific papers and policy documents, and this is really what I found.”

Professor John Frank MD is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and University of Toronto. He has 47 years of primary care/public health experience and was founding Director of Research at the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto; inaugural Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research – Institute of Population and Public Health. 

Silence on Research Investigating Cell Tower Health Effects

What shocked Frank most at the outset was not just the science, but the silence. “When I spoke to my Scottish, English, and Canadian public health research colleagues, they had never heard of this controversy either. Somehow it had just never got discussed. Indeed you will not find virtually any coverage of it in the media on an average British day.” Meanwhile, “very dense networks all over the Western world and increasingly in middle countries are being put up to support 5G.”

The rollout of 5G and wireless infrastructure has raised urgent questions about cell tower health effects and the long-term impact of EMF exposure on communities.

“Phone users wanted new technology, especially high bandwidth that would provide continuous connectivity everywhere all at once.” He notes that demand is not just about faster streaming, but also “driverless cars and the internet of things… speaking to your appliances and home heating system from a distance and having them all interconnect.”

Yet, after extensive study, Frank says: “I’m very much concerned about the world sleepwalking into a potential health and environmental disaster related to the poorly documented adverse effects of 5G EMFs.” He calls it “sleepwalking because most health professionals know nothing about it.” These concerns reflect growing unease worldwide about 5G health risks and possible links to cancer and other delayed illnesses.

Five Core Concerns

1. Lack of Safety Studies
   “If you look for human studies or even animal studies in the lab of the related to the safety of the electromagnetic fields from these systems, there’s almost no studies and certainly virtually none at all of the newer types of quite different 5G telecommunications electromagnetic fields.”

2. Emerging Health Effects
   “There is an emerging body of research of high quality suggesting that even the earlier generations of telecoms Technology had subtle but sometimes quite delayed health effects… cancers, two brain cancers one typically fatal… another quite disabling acoustic neuroma… each year that passes more and more evidence accumulates.”

3. Regulatory Capture
   “Many Global and many national regulatory agencies for these exposures that are supposed to regulate our population’s exposures to electromagnetic fields have been captured by vested interests in the form of big telecommunications corporations. So much so that current safety exposure limits in much of the Western world are outdated, ignore recent research and are inadequate for public safety.”

4. Preempted Local Authority
   “At the federal level in the UK… much of the EU, USA, and Canada there is legislation or regulation in place which preempts local planning processes from even considering health and environmental concerns of local citizens… local citizens concerned about these issues are restricted typically to expressing aesthetic concerns about the appearance of the transmission tower and nothing more.”

5. Satellite Proliferation
   “Many thousands of low altitude satellites for global 5G transmission are being launched by private corporations such as SpaceX and its competitors… the most worrisome thing is that the numbers being launched are far in excess of what is needed globally because it’s a competitive market model with several firms each launching their own fleets of satellites.”

A Call for Caution

Because of these issues, Frank and “many other experts internationally have called for a moratorium on the 5G rollout pending the completion of high-quality independent research into safety and the potential adverse effects on other species and on the environment itself.”

Until regulatory systems are updated with a stronger scientific foundation, Frank fears regulators “are in fact, to borrow Bruce Springsteen’s song title, ‘dancing in the dark.’”