A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

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

Same Advice Was Given in 2019

Saturday, April 13, 2024

Last updated November 5, 2024

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.

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U.S. NTP Quits RF

Promised Studies on Mechanisms Never Done

Friday, February 2, 2024

Last updated August 8, 2025

The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) has closed down its RF radiation research program. Indeed, it appears that work effectively stopped some time ago.

In September 2019, the NTP announced a new project designed to explain how RF radiation causes cancer. It was a year after the NTP made international headlines with its $30 million study showing “clear evidence” that RF caused malignant tumors in rats.

Now, close to four-and-a-half years later, it turns out that none of those experiments to explore mechanisms of cancer causation were ever carried out.

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IARC Will Soon Reassess RF Cancer Risk — Or Maybe Not

Director Sends Mixed Signals

Monday, December 12, 2022

Last updated April 13, 2024

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.

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ICNIRP Revamp:
Closer Ties to WHO EMF Project

Seven New Commissioners
Akimasa Hirata To Be New Leader

Monday, December 11, 2023

In November, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) elected a new chair, vice chair and seven new Commissioners to join the remaining five. The new lineup takes over in mid-July 2024.

Yet, despite all the changes, ICNIRP’s outlook and policies are expected to remain much the same. While two medical doctors will be joining the Commission —there are none now— the membership will continue to be dominated by physicists and electrical engineers. ICNIRP’s entrenched thermal dogma will most likely continue to hold sway with cancer risks, and other non-thermal effects downplayed, when not dismissed outright.

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Paul Brodeur
The Original Microwave Pioneer

Setting the Record Straight
A Personal Tribute

Sunday, October 8, 2023

Last updated October 9, 2023

In the summer of 2012, Paul Brodeur sent me an email that began, “Don’t forget that when I croak, you’re supposed to give some credit to me as the original microwave pioneer.” I came across it in my files after learning that Brodeur had died on August 2^nd at the age of 92. It was among his many letters, notes and clippings I had stashed away over the last 50 years.

The story begins on a rainy fall afternoon in 1977 at the New York office of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a public-interest environmental law firm, where I was working at the time. Brodeur, then a star investigative reporter at The New Yorker, came by with copies of his new book, The Zapping of America, an exposé on the dangers of microwave radiation and how they were being covered up. The previous December, the magazine had run two long articles by Brodeur which caused a national sensation and drew attention to the otherwise obscure world of electromagnetic health.

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Short Takes

NTP Lite: All Good in Korea Too

January 18, 2026

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.

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NTP Lite: No Cancer Risk Seen in Japan

January 13, 2026

Last updated January 18, 2026

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.

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ElektrosmogReport Now in English Too

February 9, 2025

Last updated March 28, 2025

One of the longest-running newsletters on the health and environmental impact of electromagnetic fields and radiation —the ElektrosmogReport— is now available in English.

Diagnose:Funk, the publisher, is translating the German-language original and making it available at no charge. Both versions come out quarterly. D:F is a consumer and environmental protection group with offices in Germany and Switzerland.

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NCI ‘Cancer Bioelectricity’ Conference

August 26, 2024

On September 12^th, the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) will host a conference on cancer bioelectricity via Zoom. Attendance is free, but registration is required.

Michael Levin, a professor of biology and biomedical engineering at Tufts University in Massachusetts, will be the keynote speaker.

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Another WHO RF Review Challenged

August 21, 2024

Last updated January 21, 2025

A third RF systematic review commissioned by the World Health Organization’s EMF Project is under fire. This one is on RF–induced oxidative stress.

Last month, two other WHO reviews —on pregnancy outcomes and on tinnitus— were both called into question as critics called for them to be retracted.

A team of 14 from six countries, led by Felix Meyer of the German Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), identified 11,599 studies on oxidative stress in the frequency range 800-2450 MHz. They then eliminated 11,543 of them as not meeting their criteria for inclusion.

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Italy’s 6 V/m RF Limit at Risk

March 14, 2024

The International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) has written to Italian government officials to support the country’s strict 6 V/m RF exposure limit.

The letter, dated March 13, expresses “great concern” that the standard might be weakened. It is signed by Ronald Melnick, the chair of ICBE-EMF, and by Elizabeth Kelley, its managing director.

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Hot new papers & articles

“Effects of ELF Magnetic Fields on Animal Cancer and DNA Damage: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, December 31, 2024. ELF magnetic fields “could increase the odds of developing leukemia in mice but not in rats,” and “could damage DNA of certain cell types like brain cells in rodents.” From Belgium.
“5G RF EMF Effects on the Human Sleep Electroencephalogram: A Randomized Controlled Study in CACNA1C Genotyped Healthy Volunteers,” medRxiv, December 26, 2024. An important new study from Switzerland which underscores “the need for further research into 5G effects on brain health.” A possible game changer for understanding RF radiation effects on sleep. Not peer reviewed. Open access.
“Gaps in Knowledge Relevant to the ‘ICNIRP Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to Time-Varying Electric, Magnetic and Electromagnetic Fields (100 kHz to 300 GHz)’,” Health Physics, December 13, 2024. ICNIRP Statement. “For biological outcomes where effects have not been substantiated, we did not find sufficient plausible evidence that RF EMF might cause harm below currently established thresholds.”
“Electromagnetic Field Bio-Medical Effects [Research] in Russia over 130 Years: The Main Stages of the Scientific Knowledge Grows,” Radiation Biology: Radioecology, Vol.64, No.3, 2024. 17-page review in Russian with an English abstract. Lead author is Oleg Grigoriev, a radiobiologist at Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow and the chair of RusCNIRP. In Russian with English abstract.
Sensory Processing Sensitivity, and Not Gender, Drives EM Hypersensitivity and Nature Connection,” Ecospsychology, November 28, 2024. “The present study provides the first empirical evidence that highly sensitive individuals are capable of perceiving electromagnetic radiation.”
“A Mechanistic Understanding of Human Magnetoreception Validates the Phenomenon of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS),” International Journal of Radiation Biology, December 9, 2024. To understand EM hypersensitivity (EHS), we must apply what has been learned from magnetoreception, say Denis Henshaw and Alasdair Philips. Open access.
“Frequency-Dependent Antioxidant Responses in HT-1080 Human Fibrosarcoma Cells Exposed to Weak Radio Frequency Fields,” AntiOxidants, October 15, 2024. Our conclusions align with a broader body of evidence suggesting that low-intensity [20 nT] EMFs [2-5 MHz] exert biological effects through non-thermal mechanisms. Such findings call attention to the importance of re-evaluating exposure standards.
“Relationship Between RF-EMR from Cellular Phones and Brain Tumor: Meta-Analyses Using Various Proxies for RF-EMR Exposure-Outcome Assessment,” Environmental Health, October 10, 2024. “In this meta-analysis, as the applied exposure subcategories became more concrete, the pooled ORs showed more increased values with statistical significance.”
“Occupational Exposure to RF EMFs and Brain Tumor Risk: Application of the INTEROCC Job-Exposure Matrix,” International Journal of Cancer, September 20, 2024. “We did not identify convincing associations between occupational RF-EMF exposure and risk of glioma or meningioma.” “The study underlines the applicability of the job-exposure matrix in occupational research and the need to further investigate the association between brain tumors and occupational RF-EMF exposure.”
“A Comprehensive Review of 5G NR RF-EMF Exposure Assessment Technologies: Fundamentals, Advancements, Challenges, Niches and Implications,” Environmental Research, November 2024. Sees need for “low-cost measurement devices” and “real-time, fast-sampling solutions to understand the highly irregular temporal variations EMF distribution in next-generation networks.” Open access.

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Same Advice Was Given in 2019

Promised Studies on Mechanisms Never Done

Director Sends Mixed Signals

Seven New CommissionersAkimasa Hirata To Be New Leader

Setting the Record StraightA Personal Tribute

Pages

Short Takes

Hot new papers & articles

Pages

Microwave News Reading

Microwave News is...

Seven New Commissioners
Akimasa Hirata To Be New Leader

Setting the Record Straight
A Personal Tribute