A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

NTP Lite: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

January 28, 2026

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been trying to manipulate its long-running assessment of RF–cancer risks, according to a prominent Swiss toxicologist.

Meike Mevissen, who was commissioned by the WHO to lead a systematic review on RF and cancer in animals six years ago, is charging that her study team had to defend itself from interference.

“They tried to tell us how to do our work,” she said in an interview with Infosperber, a Swiss online news service, published in mid-January.

“Research is very political,” she told Pascal Sigg, a freelance reporter working with Infosperber. “We are constantly confronted with the attitude that there cannot be any health risks.”

January 18, 2026

NTP Lite: All Good in Korea Too

Korean researchers working on NTP Lite have joined their Japanese collaborators in reporting no evidence of adverse effects among rats chronically exposed to cell phone radiation.

“Long-term exposure to CDMA-modulated 900 MHz RF was neither carcinogenic or genotoxic at an SAR of 4 W/Kg in male rats,” Young Hwan Ahn and coworkers write in Toxicological Sciences, the same journal that published the Japanese results a few days ago. The Korean paper was posted on January 16.

January 13, 2026

NTP Lite: No Cancer Risk Seen in Japan

The Japanese team working on a partial repeat of the NTP RF–animal cancer study has reported seeing no “reproducible” effects on cancer or genotoxicity in RF-exposed male rats.

The project —nicknamed NTP Lite— is a scaled-down version of the $30+ million project carried out by the U.S. National Toxicology Program which found “clear evidence” that RF radiation can cause cancer in rats.

The Japanese results were published in the journal Toxicological Sciences yesterday, January 12. The paper is open access.

June 16, 2025

Waiting for “NTP Lite”

The Japanese/Korean partial repeat of the U.S. National Toxicology Project’s (NTP) RF–animal cancer study has been hit by delays. The project is two years behind schedule, with results now not expected before the middle of next year.

“We hope we will present our data” next summer at the BioEM 2026 conference in Australia, Professor Katsumi Imaida of Kagawa University, the leader of the Japanese team, told Microwave News via email. The international NTP validation project —nicknamed “NTP Lite”— is in its “final stages,” he wrote.

The project was launched in 2019 to confirm or counter the $30+ million NTP animal study, which showed “clear evidence” that RF radiation can cause cancer in rats.

April 13, 2024

IARC Again Asked to Review RF Cancer Risk, Just Not Right Away

An advisory group to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has —once again— recommended a new assessment of the cancer risk posed by RF radiation. RF is one of about a hundred agents listed as “high priority” for evaluation over the next five years, 2025-2029.

The panel, made up of 28 independent scientists from 22 countries, met last month in Lyon, France (IARC’s hometown), to consider more than 200 agents that had been nominated for evaluation or reevaluation. The panel’s recommendations were announced yesterday in the news section of Lancet Oncology and an IARC press release.

March 12, 2024

“NTP Lite”: Update from Japan

The Japanese group running a partial repeat of the NTP RF cancer study has not observed genotoxic effects among male rats exposed to 900 MHz CDMA radiation at 4 W/Kg, according to a paper to be presented tomorrow at the annual meeting of the Society of Toxicology in Salt Lake City, UT (SOT2024).

The analysis of the cancer data is ongoing and will not be reported.

June 16, 2023

Korean NTP Lite: Progress Report

A Korean RF genotoxicology study —part of a joint project with Japan— has been delayed due to the unexpected death of four of the RF–exposed rats early in the accompanying two-year cancer experiment, according to Young Hwan Ahn of Ajou University medical school.

Ahn presented a progress report on the Korean arm of the project in Geneva last week at a meeting of the WHO EMF Project’s International Advisory Committee. Microwave News has obtained a copy of Ahn’s PowerPoint presentation.

December 12, 2022

IARC Will Soon Reassess RF Cancer Risk — Or Maybe Not

On November 23, 2002, Elisabete Weiderpass, the Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), revealed that a new assessment of the evidence linking radiofrequency (RF) radiation to cancer would likely take place in early 2024. A formal decision could come within a few months.

Calls for a new IARC evaluation have been mounting for some years following the release of two large animal studies showing elevated tumor counts after lifelong exposure to RF radiation.

May 6, 2019

Advisors for Japan, Korea NTP Repeat

The Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is circulating a report on the partial replication of the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s RF–animal study, planned by Korean and Japanese officials. It includes the proposed candidates for the project’s International Steering Committee.

They are:
• Alexander Lerchl, Jacobs University, Germany
• ...

October 23, 2018

Japan and Korea Planning Their Own Cell Phone Animal Studies

Japanese and Korean officials are working on a partial replication of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) animal study on cancer risks from cell phone radiation. The project is expected to be approved and get underway late next year.

Though collaborating on a common experimental design, each country will carry out its own exposures with animals from the same breeder. If the designs are similar enough, the two sets of data will be combined in a joint analysis.

“We have been discussing this issue in Japan,” said Masao Taki of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University, who was a member of ICNIRP from 1996 to 2008.