The Action Against 5G mobile group, which holds to a widely debunked conspiracy Theorist that “radio-frequency radiation from masts and wireless devices puts health and life at risk“, has crowd-funded £105K to hire barrister Michael Mansfield QC in order to take legal action against the UK Government to stop the roll-out.
Sadly, the outbreak of COVID-19 brought with it a bizarre new conspiracy Theorist, which saw supporters ignore accepted science in the mistaken belief that the new generation of ultrafast 5G based mobile broadband signals had either helped to create or directly transmit the virus. Both ideas lacked any credible scientific foundation (we’ve covered this before in our 5G fact check).
Leaving aside the fact that a biological virus couldn’t be more different from electromagnetic radio waves, or that COVID-19 is spreading just as fast in countries and areas with no 5G or even mobile signals at all.
The one sure way to actually hurt people during a very real global pandemic is by spreading fear about a vital communications network, which resulted in various arson attacks and assaults against telecoms engineers (both in the mobile and fixed line sectors).
However, anti-5G health fears have also been circling since long before COVID-19 and we suspect that this (i.e. more general health fears) is the angle likely to be pursued by Michael Mansfield QC of lawyers at Nexus Chambers.
The move (here) is quite to coup for AA5G since Mansfield has previously been involved in a number of high-profile cases, such as over the fire at Grenfell Tower, the Lockerbie bombing and various others.
AA5G Statement
“The government has thus far failed to take into account the extensive evidence showing that radiofrequency radiation from masts and wireless devices puts health and life at risk, carry out a full and independent examination of the risks [or] properly inform the public of the dangers so we can decide how to protect ourselves.
[Instead] the government continues to adopt guidelines which the independent scientific research shows is unsafe for humans, animals, and the environment.”
By “independent scientific research” we assume they mean those reports that have been debunked by thousands of actual peer reviewed scientific studies – the latter have been used to set the current industry standards and guidelines (see Ofcom and the ICNIRP).
So far, the only known health impact from radio signals in current low power mobile networks is a minuscule amount of heating (your body experiences massively more heating from the natural EM environment, such as via the Sun).
Meanwhile the group hopes that their legal action will result in “proper independent reviews of all research into the health risks,” as well as an “informed debate on the consequences of imposing 5G technology on humans and the environment,” a “comprehensive environmental risk assessment” and “guidance on, and regulation and monitoring of, the levels necessary to protect the public and biological life.”
All of this sounds quite sensible except, as above, most or all of it already seems to exist and has largely found nothing to worry about.
As it stands the group has already issued a letter before action to the Government. The next step after that for them is to apply to the High Court for permission to argue the case in full (oh to be a fly on the wall).
Overall, we think this could be a positive development as it’s difficult to see how the UK courts could reasonably overturn the masses of accepted scientific research that has been done on this topic.
But for now it could be argued that this is not a case about whether 5G is safe or not, but rather a case about the administrative procedures of the government.
Assuming permission to review is even granted then at most there might be another call for more research or clearer guidelines, which seems unlikely to change the fundamental understandings of the credible science that already exists, or even the views of those pushing this case.
Originally published at Isp review