Bill Attempting to Ban 5G in Santa Catarina State is Shelved

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A bill intended to prohibit the testing and implementation of 5G in Santa Catarina State was shelved after being unanimously rejected by a committee of the Legislative Assembly of the State of Santa Catarina (ALESC).

The bill’s justification used a false news article and a video by “renowned cardiologist and nutrologist Dr. Lair Ribeiro”.

Bill 0241.5/2019 was proposed in July by state deputy Marcius Machado of the Liberal Party. It prohibited the tests and implementation of 5G in Santa Catarina under penalty of a R$100,000 (US$25,000) fine, or R$200,000 in case of recurrence.

Deputy Colonel Mocellin, rapporteur of the Committee on Constitution and Justice (CCJ), asked in September to call the union of operators Sinditelebrasil, the National Telecommunications Agency (ANATEL) and experts in electrical engineering and cellular biology to discuss 5G.

The goal was to determine whether there is “any objective evidence based on scientific studies that this technology is undoubtedly harmful to human health and the environment”.

However, Mocellin admitted in the same document that a state could not legislate on telecommunications, where jurisdiction is restricted to the federal government. “I consider that the State would exceed its legislative role if it were to deal with telecommunications and impose restrictions on the regulation of the National Telecommunications Agency – ANATEL”, wrote the deputy.

In early October, Mocellin’s request was rejected by the CCJ; then, he proposed that the bill be shelved. Bill ‘PL 0241.5/2019’ was unanimously rejected by the committee, ending in ALESC.

Bill cited false news and “5G Space Appeal”

Initially, the justification of the Liberal Party had only one page, in which deputy Marcius Machado said that “the radiation of 5G is very strong, and the 2G, 3G, and 4G technology fluctuate from 790 MHz to 2.6 GHz while the 5G technology comes to 3.5 GHz”. Wi-Fi routers have been using the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands for years, and light vibrates at an even higher frequency of 430 thousand GHz to 770 thousand GHz.

In the text, the deputy listed as a source the video “5G is worse than you could imagine| Dr. Lair Ribeiro” on YouTube, and mentioned fake news that “about 500 birds died in 2 minutes” after a 5G test in Holland.

5G Space Appeal

Then, in August, Machado added a new 36-page justification for the bill, of which 29 are copied from 5G Space Appeal, including a manifesto entitled “International Appeal: Stop 5G on Earth and in Space”. In an alarmist tone, the document claims that “the implementation of 5G represents an experiment on humankind and the environment that is described as a crime under international law”.

5G Appeal was analyzed by Eufactcheck.eu, a project of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) that checks the accuracy of news. The site mentions some 7,000 scientific studies to prove that 5G can be harmful to health, but 5,000 of them were carried out over 20 years ago.

Some of the studies date back to the 1970s when Motorola launched the world’s first mobile phone. In addition, part of the research was conducted by activist groups, which may result in conflicting interests.