Some Northern California Cities Are Blocking Deployment of 5G Towers (techcrunch.com)

Hkibtimes tipped us off to some interesting news from TechCrunch: The Bay Area may be the center of the global technology industry, but that hasn't stopped one wealthy enclave from protecting itself from the future. The city council of Mill Valley, a small town located just a few miles north of San Francisco, voted unanimously late last week to effectively block deployments of small-cell 5G wireless towers in the city's residential areas. Through an urgency ordinance, which allows the city council to immediately enact regulations that affect the health and safety of the community, the restrictions and prohibitions will be put into force immediately for all future applications to site 5G telecommunications equipment in the city. Applications for commercial districts are permitted under the passed ordinance....

According to the city, it received 145 pieces of correspondence from citizens voicing opposition to the technology, compared to just five letters in support of it -- a ratio of 29 to 1. While that may not sound like much, the city's population is roughly 14,000, indicating that about 1% of the population had voiced an opinion on the matter. Blocks on 5G deployments are nothing new for Marin County, where other cities including San Anselmo and Ross have passed similar ordinances designed to thwart 5G expansion efforts over health concerns... The telecom industry has long vociferously denied a link between antennas and health outcomes, although California's Department of Public Health has issued warnings about potential health effects of personal cell phone antennas. Reduced radiation emissions from 5G antennas compared to 4G antennas would presumably further reduce any health effects of this technology.
The article concludes that restrictions like Mill Valley's "will make it nearly impossible to deploy 5G in a timely manner."

Comments

Summary is wrong, they didn't ban 5g entirely

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the Inverse square law, Einstein-san. Also - They didn't "ban" 5g, they said they don't want it on light poles in dense residential areas. They still allow it downtown on office buildings. TFS is wrong.

Re:Summary is wrong, they didn't ban 5g entirely

[Anonymous Coward]

Look up the Inverse square law,

The problem, if you are concerned with radiation, is moving the towers further away will cause the cell phones in peoples homes that are much much closer to crank up their transmit power.

Yes this is worse because your phone will be blasting out at max, about 2 watts, potentially right near you in the same room. Being much closer, a much larger amount of radiation intensity remains when it gets to your body.

The towers are normally pretty far away anyway, and due to the inverse square law the intensity remaining once it has traveled to your body is embarrassingly tiny in comparison.

Let's actually USE the inverse square law.
There are four values in the formula, the starting distance and intensity, and the ending distance and intensity. You need three of those values to find the forth as an unknown.

We know the transmit powers of cell phones and towers at their source, and we can estimate the distance you'd be to both, letting us solve for the intensity at the distance to you.

Cell phones, at max can transmit about 2 watts of power. If it is in the same room with you, say on your night stand charging, let's go with 20 feet away to be generous.

2 watt / 20 feet squared = 0.005 watts of power when it reaches you. Ok.

Towers, typically transmit at 10 watt with 4 and 5G.
Let's go with one mile away as the distance, at least that's typical around where I am.
1 mile is 5280 feet, to keep like-units.

10 watt / 5280 feet squared is 0.0000003587 watts by the time it reaches you.

That's 5 thousands of a watt your cell phone will be radiating you with at max power, which without a tower near by it will be doing.

Compared to zero thousands of a watt for the tower placed close by at a mile away.
You need to go down three whole decimal places to get the first non-zero number.
Three one-millionths of a watt, or four one-millions of a watt if you wish to round up (rule of 5s)

That's over a thousand times the radiation exposure now coming from your own cell phone next to you.

*golfclap* good job on reducing our radiation exposure california!

Re:Summary is wrong, they didn't ban 5g entirely

[meglon]

So you are unfamiliar with photosynthesis?

So you are unfamiliar with chemosynthesis? There are biomes on this planet that are not beholding to the sun's energy.

Re:Summary is wrong, they didn't ban 5g entirely

[meglon]

Your question is wrong.

....where the entirety of all life on the planet is fueled directly or indirectly by the suns output

This is not true.

There are biomes on this planet that are not beholding to the sun's energy.

This is true.

Regardless of which is more or less common (photosynthesis, or chemosynthesis biomes not supported by solar energy), the first statement is still not true; because photosynthesis is far more readily seen and available to us does not make it absolute....which is what the initial comment i was responding to stated.

I'd push for towers

[layabout]

inverse square law is your friend.

Re:Can you idiots in CA quit leaving?

[careysub]

Ah yes, the people fleeing California trope so ever so popular on the right and in the meme-hyping media. In the reality-based world however amazingly few Californians leave the state (the OC Register is a famously right-wing newspaper BTW). In the 2010-2015 period studied no state had a lower per-capita movement rate than California, with an out-migration rate of 1.55%. Since that time the rate has increased, and is currently slightly above the national average (which is 2.3%).

Of course with the largest population of any state (one in 8 Americans) even a low, or average, rate is a relatively large number of people, due to simple arithmetic. But California is a high-income state (8th, 5th if you take out low population resource extraction economy states) with a diverse high-tech economy, and even with the current out-migration its population is still growing (despite the fact that the undocumented population isn't - so that's not why), and the real dynamic is that young(ish) people are coming into California for the jobs and salaries, and retired people are leaving.

This is a very healthy dynamic for California. Let Florida be the place where people go to die, and vote against education and the environment since they don't care about the future. Enjoy that red tide Floridians.