Unverified reports of harm from electromagnetic radiation have appeared for many decades. In some people, I think the word "radiation" is all it takes to trigger fear.
As far back as the late 1970s, I remember similar reports of unspecified harm from high voltage electricity transmission lines. They were studied & studied by scientists, without finding anything harmful. And yes, some of these studies were funded by the electric power industry. They wanted to know if they were liable for damages, so they publicly funded independent scientists at universities to do the work.
Compare that to the tobacco industry. Big Tobacco knew for decades that smoking caused lung cancer but kept it secret because the work was always done in house by their own employees.
Later, when cell phones appeared, the same fears emerged. It was widely rumored that frequent use of cell phones caused brain cancer. Now, fearful people could combine the word "radiation" with "cancer". Again, no research could find anything harmful about cell phone "radiation".
The same story was repeated with microwave ovens – with similar results. If there is any truth at all to harm from various forms of low level electromagnetic radiation, I think it would have come out by now.
And now we have 5G cell phone towers…
But like rumors of the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, or that Elvis Lives, these stories never seem to fade away.
