News Center: Short Takes Archive
Letters to the Editor Are in the Works
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.
NTP Lite is a scaled down version of the U.S. NTP RF–cancer animal study. For background, go here.
The Japanese and Korean papers have prompted a raft of criticism. A number of letters to the editor of the journal are being prepared, Microwave News has been told.
“It’s very obvious that the objective of the paper is to neutralize the results of the NTP study,” Henry Lai, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Seattle, said of the Japanese study. “The authors have lost their objectivity as scientists —and, sadly, they don’t seem to know much about RF science.”
The NTP Lite project, which got underway in 2019, is running far behind schedule. RF exposures were completed in 2022, followed by years of analysis.
One reason for the delay of the Korean experiment was the premature death of at least four of the RF-exposed rats. This led to the genotoxic component of the study being carried out separately. (See our report from June 2023.) The death of those rats remains unexplained.
The project was designed for the data from the two countries to be combined —to enhance statistical reliability. But, neither of the published papers addresses where that stands.
The full text of the Korean paper (abstract below) is open access, as is the Japanese paper.
Korean Findings Are Still Pending
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 NTP final report was released in 2018.
The Japanese results were published in the journal Toxicological Sciences yesterday, January 12. The paper is open access.
“This study performed in Japan, jointly planned and executed by Japan and Korea, provides strong evidence that long-term exposure to 900 MHz RF-EMFs did not produce reproducible carcinogenic or genotoxic effects in male rats,” states Katsumi Imaida of Japan’s Kagawa University, the leader of the Japanese study group.
“No statistically significant increases in the incidences of neoplastic or non-neoplastic lesions were found in any major organ, including the brain, heart, and adrenal glands. Genotoxicity assays revealed no evidence of DNA damage or chromosomal aberrations in RF-exposed rats,” according to the Japanese abstract.
The results of the parallel Korean experiment have not yet been released. The original plan was to combine the Japanese and Korean data to achieve greater statistical reliability. The leader of the Korean arm of the project is Young Hwan Ahn of Ajou University School of Medicine.
NTP Lite is years behind schedule. Work on the project began in 2018 and the RF exposures were scheduled to be completed over three years ago. Since then some partial reports have dribbled out (more here, here and here), leading some observers to suggest that the project would be unable to resolve the RF–cancer question.
For example, Microwave News was told last year that a group of animals were to be exposed to RF at 6 W/Kg in the Japanese experiment, but that part of the protocol was quietly abandoned. The new paper does not mention the 6 W/Kg animals, which were designed to serve as positive controls.
Joel Moskowitz of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, who runs the Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website, offered the following comment based on a preliminary reading of the new Japanese study: “A null result in the Japanese NTP Lite study should not be considered a refutation, because it is underpowered to see relatively low‑incidence tumors.”
Here is the abstract of the published paper:
This is a developing story and will be updated as further details emerge.
Korean Paper Published
January 18, 2026
The Korean team of NTP Lite has published its own paper, with results similar to those seen in Japan —no adverse effects. For he latest on both papers, go here.
A Newsletter Independent of Industry and Government
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.
“Our motivation is to help influence the international discussion on radiation risks,” Peter Hensinger, D:F’s vice chairman, wrote in an email from his office in Stuttgart. “The ElektrosmogReport is one of the few publications that evaluates the research independently of industry,” he noted, “and we do so in a country which is the home of ICNIRP.”
“We want to offer scientists and the public an unbiased view of what new research shows,” Hensinger told Microwave News.
The ElektrosmogReport has a distinguished history. It’s an offshoot of Strahlentelex (literally, Radiation Telex), an independent news service launched in 1987 after the Chernobyl accident.
Founded by Thomas Dersee, a science journalist, Strahlentelex began with detailed reports on radioactivity levels in foodstuffs and went on to cover many controversies over the health effects of ionizing radiation. Dersee continued to publish the newsletter for more than 30 years.
In 1995, Strahlentelex expanded to include coverage of non-ionizing radiation under the title, Strahlentelex mit ElektrosmogReport.
Dersee developed health problems leading to the closing of Strahlentelex in 2019. D:F took over the ElektrosmogReport. The same editorial team, led by Isabel Wilke, a biologist, stayed in place. She too has now retired.
Alain Thill, a life scientist, and Roman Heeren, a biologist, serve as the editors of the Report. Thill is the lead author of a 2023 systematic review on the biological effects of EMFs on insects.
The ElektrosmogReport has a similar format to the BERENIS newsletter, published by the Swiss Federal Office of the Environment’s Expert Group on EMFs. Each issue of the BERENIS newsletter, also published quarterly, reviews a select number of research papers. It too is available in German and English —as well as French. The list of members of the Swiss Expert Group is here.
Asked to compare the two newsletters, Hensinger said that the ElektrosmogReport offered a larger number of reviews, each in greater detail, than the BERENIS newsletter.
The English edition of the ElektrosmogReport may be downloaded here. The first issue (4/2024) is available now. The next (1/2025) will be posted next month. [Now available here.]
The full German-language archive —all issues of the Report since 1995— is also available at no cost.
Diagnose:Funk Financed by Its Members
Diagnose:Funk is a non-profit founded in 2009. Today it has five full-time employees and 1,200 members. Its annual budget of approximately $300,000 comes solely from membership fees and donations.
D:F is authorized by the German Ministry of the Environment to file lawsuits in the interest of environmental protection.
Michael Levin of Tufts University Will Be Keynote Speaker
On September 12th, the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) will host a conference on cancer bioelectricity via Zoom.
Michael Levin, a professor of biology and biomedical engineering at Tufts University in Massachusetts, will be the keynote speaker. The meeting begins at 8:30 am (U.S. Eastern Time) and ends at 4 pm. Attendance is free, but registration is required.
In an email announcement, NCI states:
“Bioelectricity regulates many life functions, and cancer cells have altered electrical properties which can disrupt the normal cellular signaling pathways leading to carcinogenic processes including tumor initiation, promotion and progression. Understanding cancer bioelectricity can lead to the development of novel approaches to cancer detection, diagnosis and therapy. The conference will address the fundamental aspects of cancer bioelectricity.”
The program:
In her book, We Are Electric, published last year, Sally Adee describes Levin as “among those who have found evidence to suggest that the electrical dimensions of life can exert control over genes, providing a way to hack other systems we previously thought were too complex to precisely control.”
Some background reading on Levin’s work:
- “The Biologist Blowing Our Minds,” Nautilus, June 28, 2023.
- “Brainless Embryos Suggest Bioelectricity Guides Growth,” Quanta Magazine, March 13, 2018.
- “This Scientist Re-Wires Frogs To Grow Extra Limbs. Could It Work in Humans?” Popular Science, December 26, 2016.
- “It’s Electric: Biologists Seek to Crack Cell’s Bioelectric Code,” Scientific American, March 23, 2013.
- “Voltage Change Forms Eyes in Head —or Wherever,” Science, December 9, 2011.
There’s also Robert Becker’s classic The Body Electric, still in print 40 years after it was first published.
More than 99% of Studies on Oxidative Stress Discarded
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. Of the remaining 56, there are 45 animal studies and 11 cellular studies.
Meyer and colleagues concluded:
“Overall, the effects were inconsistent across studies and there may be or may not be an effect of RF-EMF exposure, but the certainty of the evidence is very low.”
The review has been met with skepticism —at least by those not connected to the WHO, ICNIRP or the BfS.
“The authors of this ‘systematic review’ systematically excluded most of the relevant research,” Joel Moskowitz of the UC Berkeley School of Public Health said in an interview. “A strong case can be made that the Meyer review should be retracted.” Moskowitz runs the Electromagnetic Radiation Safety website.
Henry Lai, a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, Seattle, spelled out where Meyer and his team went wrong in the following statement he provided Microwave News:
The basic problem with this systematic review is that they ignored the dynamic nature of oxidative responses.
Proof of oxidative effects (possible oxidative stress) comes from different considerations:
1. Oxidative molecular reactions
2. Concentration of cellular free radicals
3. Changes in enzymes involved in free radical metabolism
4. Expression of genes involved in cellular oxidative processes, and
5. Inhibition by free radical scavengers (antioxidants).
These cellular responses, like most biological processes, have feedback loops — that is, they can compensate to maintain homeostasis. Overcompensation can lead to oscillations. Thus, it’s possible to see an increase, decrease or no effect depending on when the measurement is made. It is not obvious how this dynamic might affect the outcome of Meyer’s SR.
The Meyer review essentially only considered the first of the five possibilities above. These reactions include lipid peroxidation, protein oxidation and carboxylation, as well as DNA oxidation. Lipid and protein oxidation are relatively easy to measure. In RF studies, oxidative DNA damage is usually studied using a type of comet assay or measurement of oxidized DNA bases. If the normal comet assay is used, the damage caused by free radicals would lead to single- and double-strand DNA breaks. There are many RF studies using the comet assay showing DNA strand breaks. I suspect most of these are caused by free radicals, because they can be blocked by antioxidants.
In addition, only two hydrogen peroxide studies were included. There are, however, many other types of cellular free radicals —for instance, reactive nitrogen species. It would have been more meaningful to look at the total oxidant status (TOS) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC). There are many studies reporting effects of RF radiation on TOS and TAC.
Finally, Meyer should have also considered studies of ELF-EMFs on cellular oxidative processes since most environmental RF is ELF-modulated. There are at least 320 published papers on oxidative effects of ELF/static-EMFs.
In sum, the Meyer review left out a large portion of RF-oxidative effect studies.
Lai compiles his own bibliography of RF-oxidative stress papers. As of mid-August, his list includes 367 studies, published beween 1997 and 2024. By his count, 89% showed significant effects.
In a 2019 review, Lai described some of the many biological impacts which may be caused by changes in the concentration of free radicals brought about by oxidative stress. These include “many physiological functions such as DNA damage; immune response; inflammatory response; cell proliferation and differentiation; wound healing; neural electrical activities; and behavior.”
The WHO systematic reviews are part of a more than a decade-long process to update its summary document on RF health effects. The project has been mired in delays and controversy. Details here.
Fourth Review Questioned
August 23, 2024
Today, Environment International posted a letter to the editor in response to another WHO RF systematic review —this one on “self-reported symptoms,” which was originally published in early April.
In his critique, Michael Bevington, the chair trustee of Electrosensitivity UK, a charity based in London, states:
The review’s Interpretation is invalidated in three ways. Firstly, its parameters excluded much available evidence showing positive effects; secondly, the use of averaging hides individual cases which provide positive evidence; and, thirdly, its negative claim is contradicted by positive proof from other sources, including practical, judicial, legal and underwriting.
The lead author of the review is Xavier Bosch-Capblanch, a medical doctor at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Switzerland, who also has an appointment at the University of Basel. His team includes members from Nigeria, the U.K. and the U.S. —as well as Martin Röösli, a colleague of Bosch-Capblanch in Basel. Until recently, Röösli was a member of ICNIRP.
Bevington concludes:
“The claim that ‘available evidence’ suggests that acute non-thermal RF-EMF ‘does not cause symptoms’ is not substantiated by all the evidence available, including evidence from 1932 onwards when the condition of Radio Wave Sickness was first described...”
Note also: Bosch-Capblanch’s group has published a correction to the original paper to clean up “a few inconsistencies detected in the article after its publication, due to some dysfunctionalities in the proofreading process.” The published Corrigendum runs ten pages.
September 3, 2024
Environment International has posted Bosch-Capblanch’s three-point response to Bevington. The group argues that “Bevington seems to overlook the scientific approach of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.”
In a August 30 Tweet (X) noting the exchange, Röösli states: “The main purpose of a systematic review is to prevent confirmation bias.”
Jim Lin Offers Sharp Takedown of WHO Reviews
December 13, 2024
James Lin, a former ICNIRP Commissioner, raises what he calls “significant concerns” over the reliabaility of four of the WHO systematic reviews in his long-running column in the IEEE Microwave Magazine.
Among his many criticsms, Lin cites the reviews’ “lack of concerns for conflicts of interest.”
Correction to Pregnancy & Birth Outcomes Review
January 21, 2025
The authors of the WHO systematic review on RF effects on pregancy and birth outcomes in animals have issued a correction.
They report finding “a few inconsistencies” due to “errors” in the “extraction of the original data.” But, they “stress” that “none of these issues has produced any significant change in the quantitative outputs of the effects estimates or in the interpretation and conclusions of the systematic review.”
Industry Sees Strict Standard as Barrier to 5G Development
Seeks To Bring It into Line with ICNIRP
This is a continuing story —with the most recent updates on top.
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. Before his retirement, Melnick was a senior toxicologist at the U.S. NTP. He designed the NTP RF–cancer animal study.
The letter begins:
A full copy of the four-page letter is available in English and in Italian. See also the scientists’ appeal to keep the Italian limit, issued last August.
The ICBE-EMF was set up in March 2021, as a counterweight to ICNIRP, more here.
December 31, 2023
As the year comes to a close, the 6 V/m appears, once again, very vulnerable. Stay tuned as the situation plays out over the coming months.
August 9, 2023
The Italian government has signaled that it intends to keep its strict 6 V/m RF radiation exposure limit.
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Below is our original story, posted more than two years ago, when the limit was first under pressure.
May 3, 2021
Italy’s 6 V/m RF exposure standard, one of the strictest in the world, may soon fall victim to 5G.
The Italian limit, adopted more than 20 years ago, is widely perceived as standing in the way of the build-out of 5G infrastructure, which will require the installation of many more RF antennas. The proposed solution is to make the standard ten times weaker and bring it in line with ICNIRP’s 61 V/m guideline.*
The standard is a target of Italy’s post-pandemic national recovery plan (known as the Next Generation Italia or PNRR). The plan allocates over €40 billion (~US$48 billion) to advance the digitization of the country, including promoting 5G technology and increasing broadband speeds nationwide, currently among the slowest in Europe.
All the major political parties, except one, favor loosening the 6 V/m limit, according to La Repubblica, the second most widely read (non-sport) newspaper in Italy. The one holdout is the Fratelli d’Italia party (Brothers of Italy), a far-right, neo-fascist group —and even it is on record as wanting to make the siting of antennas easier for telecom operators.
The proposal has galvanized a coalition of Italian environmental researchers and activists, as well as members of the international RF research community. They have appealed to the government to save the 6 V/m limit. (See Tweets below.)
One appeal, sent to Mario Draghi, the recently installed prime minister, on April 26, had been signed by more than 8,700 supporters within a couple of days, according to Fiorella Belpoggi. She is the scientific director of the Ramazzini Institute in Bologna and is helping coordinate the campaign.
Italy has long been a hotbed of anti-5G activism. A petition calling for a moratorium on 5G, launched two years ago, has garnered more than 63,000 signatures. The Italian Stop 5G Alliance has been a major force in promoting this petition.
The protests —including a hunger strike by over 150 people— appears to have softened the government’s approach. When the lower house of the Parliament approved the recovery plan at the end of April, the proposal to eliminate the 6 V/m limit had been dropped and replaced by a call to review the standard.‡ But, Belpoggi told Microwave News, “the door for a change remains open.”
All Eyes on Vittorio Colao
Much of the public furor at the potential weakening of the exposure limit has been directed at Vittorio Colao, the Harvard-educated minister for innovation, technology and digitization in the new Draghi government.
Colao was the chief executive of Vodafone, the largest telecommunications company in Europe, for ten years, ending in late 2018. The following year he became a director of Verizon, the second biggest telecom in the world (after AT&T) and, like Colao himself, a major promoter of 5G technology. Colao has now stepped down from the Verizon board. He has been praised as a “strategic visionary.”
Colao played a major role in designing the PNRR. He was commissioned by the previous Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, to devise a post-COVID recovery strategy, which became known as the Colao plan. It included investments in infrastructure.
That plan, delivered to Conte last June, proposed raising Italy’s exposure limits to those recommended by the EC† (that is, the ICNIRP limits), according to Livio Giuliani, the former director of research at Italy’s National Institute for Prevention and Occupational Safety (ISPESL, now INAIL). The 2020 plan‡ also favored giving national authorities the right to veto local ordinances that block antennas.§ (This would be similar to the federal preemption of local laws in the U.S.)
The new digitization initiative, which Colao would most likely implement, accounts for about 20% of the total outlays under the €200 billion PNRR.
In a meeting with legislators in April, Colao acknowledged that a weakening of the 6 V/m limit is “unpopular.” He committed to striking a balance between the number of antennas and the health and welfare of the citizenry, pledging that, “the scientific evidence would be evaluated,” according to La Repubblica.
When the 6 V/m standard took effect in 1999, Italy had the most restrictive standard in Europe. A year later, Switzerland adopted a 4 V/m limit for cell tower radiation and a 3 V/m limit for radio and TV transmitters (details here).
The 6 V/m limit is approximately the same as the Soviet/Russian exposure standard of 10 μW/cm2.
It is not clear what impact the Italian standard may have had on the build-out of the mobile phone network or would have on 5G antennas.
The April 26 appeal to Draghi concludes:
“Italy has led the world for the last 20 years in demonstrating that their lower and more health protective exposure limits for RFR can be reached by the Italian Telecommunications industry without significant economic or technical barriers to their expansion into 4 and 5G systems.”
___________________
Here’s a thread of Microwave News Tweets, posted last week as some of this story played out:
Link to press release
Link to letter
Link to letter
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* How much weaker is the ICNIRP standard than Italy’s 6 V/m limit? It depends on whether you are looking at the electric field or power density. The 6 V/m electric field standard is approximately ten times stricter than ICNIRP’s 61 V/m. In terms of power density, the Italian limit is about a hundred times stricter than ICNIRP (10 μW/cm2 v. 1 mW/cm2). The reason: Power density is proportional to the square of the electric field strength.
† In 1999, the EC recommended that member states follow the ICNIRP guidelines. From the Italian Parliament on March 24, 2021: “Consider adjusting the current Italian limits on electromagnetic emissions to the European ones.” (Item #15 on p.76.)
‡ See also the July 2020 report on 5G from a committee of the Italian Parliament.
§ See item #27 on p.22 of the June 2020 Colao plan. Some 500 municipalities have policies that make it hard to site antennas, La Repubblica reported last year.
Prof. Katsumi Imaida To Present at Tox Meeting in Utah
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 genotox studies were carried out following 14 weeks of RF exposure.
The analysis of the cancer data is ongoing and will not be reported.
Among the long-term results reported by the Japanese team:
• Body weights and food consumption of the exposed rats were significantly different from the controls.
• After two years, more of both the exposed and control rats in Japan had survived than in the NTP experiment. This was “especially” noteworthy for the controls.
Professor Katsumi Imaida of Kagawa University in Takamatsu, the lead author of the paper, is scheduled to present these results at the SOT meeting. They are essentially the same as those he presented at the BioEM2023 meeting last June in Oxford, England.
A parallel project is also ongoing in Korea and the data from each will be pooled to improve the statistical reliability of the results. The Japanese/Korean animal study is a scaled-down repeat of the $30 million study by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which found clear evidence that RF radiation can cause cancer. The Asian study has been dubbed “NTP Lite”. The project is being called a “validation” study.
In contrast to the Japanese findings, the NTP team did see DNA breaks (NTP paper here). Both U.S. and the Japanese groups used the comet assay, developed by N.P. Singh.
Last June, Young Hwan Ahn, the leader of the Korean project team, presented his own status report at a private briefing for the WHO EMF Project in Geneva. At the time, he revealed that the Korean genotox experiments had to be delayed due to the unexpected death of four RF-exposed rats early in the two-year experiment.
For more on the joint Japanese/Korean project, see Ahn and Imaida’s 2022 paper in Bioelectromagnetics (open access).
Members of the project’s international advisory committee are: Alexander Lerchl, Michael Repacholi, Emilie van Deventer, Eric van Rongen, Vijayalaxmi, Joe Wiart and Michael Wyde.
_____________________________
Prof. K. Imaida’s Poster Paper at SOT 2024 in Utah, March 13, 2024
Click to enlarge.
Did Cell Phone in Trouser Pocket Lead to a Tumor in the Thigh?
Three medical doctors have published a case report of a 40-year-old Italian man who developed a tumor in his thigh, near where he “habitually” kept his smartphone in a trouser pocket.
The case was published at the end of August in Radiology Case Reports, a peer-reviewed, open access journal.
The tumor, a painless mass, gradually expanded in the man’s left thigh over a period of six months, they wrote. It grew in his Schwann cells and is known as a schwannoma. It was benign.
Schwann cells play an important role in the functioning of the peripheral nervous system. They make up the myelin sheath, which insulates nerve fibers and helps speed the conduction of electrical impulses. They are present in most organs of the body —whether of mice, rats or humans.
The authors —two Italians and one Moroccan— acknowledge that they “cannot establish a definitive causal relationship” between the tumor and the placement of the phone in the trouser pocket, but they state that the case underscores the “need for further research.”
Second Report in Preparation
Microwave News has learned of a second, similar case, as yet unpublished, also in Italy. It deals with a schwannoma that developed in a woman’s forearm, close to a pocket where she put a cell phone while doing sports for about one hour a day, every day for more than ten years.
This latter case is being written up by Fiorella Belpoggi, the former scientific director of the Ramazzini Institute outside Bologna. She retired in 2019 but continues to be one of the institute’s scientific advisors. Belpoggi ran Ramazzini’s long-term RF exposure study, which found schwannoma of the heart among exposed rats (more here).
The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) saw malignant schwannoma of the heart among its RF–exposed rats. This is what led to the now well-known conclusion that there is “clear evidence” of cancer following RF exposure.
The NTP found schwannomas in a variety of glands (pituitary, salivary and thymus), as well as the trigeminal (cranial) nerve and the eye. The NTP saw schwannomas in the uterus, ovary and vagina of female rats.
The fact that both Ramazzini and the NTP bioassays showed the same type of obscure tumor led some observers to opine that “more than a coincidence” was at work (more here).
Acoustic Neuroma Is a Type of Schwannoma
An acoustic neuroma is a tumor on the nerve connecting the ear to the brain. It too is a schwannoma. It has long been associated with cell phone use. A link was first reported by Sweden’s Lennart Hardell in 2002, and supported by Maria Feychting of the Karolinska Institute and other members of the Interphone project. (More about this history here). Feychting later changed her mind and became an outspoken critic of any cell phone tumor risk.
In 2012, the Supreme Court of Italy affirmed a workers’ compensation award to a businessman who developed a tumor of the trigeminal nerve after using a cell phone for 12 years. (A similar award, also in Italy, here.)
So Are Gliomas
What is not widely recognized is that the brain’s glial cells are related to Schwann cells, as explained by the NTP in its final report of its RF project:
“Schwann cells are similar to glial cells in the brain in that they are specialized supportive cells whose functions include maintaining homeostasis, forming myelin and providing support and protection for neurons of the peripheral nervous system.”
Glial cells are in the central nervous system; Schwann cells are in the peripheral nervous system. They serve similar functions.
Gliomas, tumors of glial cells, are the other type of tumor most often associated with cell phone use.
Schwannoma in Muscle Tissue
A schwannoma “can occur anywhere in your body, at any age,” according to the Mayo Clinic: In an arm or leg, it manifests as a slow-growing, painless lump. It is rarely cancerous, but can lead to nerve damage and loss of muscle control.
The Cleveland Clinic states that schwannomas are usually found among people between the ages of 50 and 60 years —and rarely in children. They are uncommon, affecting fewer than 200,000 people each year in the U.S.; about 60% of benign schwannomas are vestibular schwannomas (acoustic neuromas).
In most cases, according to the Cleveland Clinic, schwannomas “happen randomly for unknown reasons.”
A team from Korea presented a case report of a schwannoma in the muscles of a 79-year-old man’s back in the journal Nerve in 2020. The tumor, when removed, measured 2.0 × 2.0 × 3.5 cm. The report is open access.
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For other reasons to keep a phone out of your pocket, see:
Colorectal Cancer Soaring in Young Adults; Are Smartphones in the Mix?
Briefing at WHO RF Meeting in Geneva
A Korean RF genotoxicology study —part of a joint project with Japan— has been delayed due to the unexpected death of four RF–exposed rats early in the accompanying two-year cancer experiment, according to Young Hwan Ahn of Korea’s Ajou University medical school.
Ahn presented a progress report on the Korean arm of the project in Geneva last week at a by-invitation-only meeting of the WHO EMF Project’s International Advisory Committee.
Microwave News has obtained a copy of Ahn’s PowerPoint presentation.
There were 70 RF-exposed rats in the two-year cancer study and an additional five for the genotox experiment. Three rats died in the RF–exposure chamber on the 87th day of the experiment, and another died the next day. The team decided to combine the two sets of rats to maintain the statistical power of the cancer bioassay. The cause of the four deaths, if known, was not disclosed.
Exposures in the cancer studies in both countries ended last December. The animals have been sacrificed and the analyses are now under way. Exposures in the delayed genotox experiment are scheduled to be completed in September.
The cancer results are expected in 2024. The director of IARC, Elisabete Weiderpass, has said that she is waiting for them before assembling a new panel to evaluate RF–cancer risks.
The Japanese/Korean animal study is a scaled-down repeat of the $30 million study by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) which found clear evidence that RF radiation can cause cancer. The Asian study has been called “NTP Lite.”
Katsumi Imaida will present a progress report on the Japanese arm of the joint project at the annual BioEM meeting in Oxford next week (his abstract).
The three slides below compare the Japanese/Korean studies to the original NTP project:
The next few slides give details on the study protocol, with some preliminary results on animal weights and food consumption.
Ahn closed his talk with this summary:
A pdf of Ahn’s complete ppt is available here.
Members of the project’s international advisory committee are: Alexander Lerchl, Michael Repacholi, Emilie van Deventer, Eric van Rongen, Vijayalaxmi, Joe Wiart and Michael Wyde.
Last year, Ahn’s and Imaida’s teams described the joint animal project in a paper published in Bioelectromagnetics. It’s open access.
Briefing in Geneva This Week
Japanese-Korean ‘NTP Lite’ on the Agenda
ICNIRP continues to dominate EMF policies at the WHO, according to documents made available to Microwave News. The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection is a private, self-perpetuating, secretive group whose exposure limits are used around the world.
The documents were recently distributed by Emilie van Deventer, who leads the WHO’s radiation program, as she prepared to host a briefing this week in Geneva for the EMF International Advisory Committee (IAC).
The meeting, which has not been publicized, will offer fresh details on a Japanese-Korean animal study, the slimmed down version of the NTP’s $30 million rat study with “clear evidence” of cancer (the repeat has been called “NTP Lite”). The results of the joint study have been highly anticipated since last November, when the director of IARC said that she is waiting for them before scheduling a new assessment of RF cancer risks.
Young Hwan Ahn of Korea’s Ajou University medical school will provide the update tomorrow, June 6, on the first day of the IAC meeting. Unlike many of the speakers attending remotely, Ahn will be in Geneva, according to a leaked copy of the draft agenda.
The complete draft agenda is here.
Surprisingly, the agenda does not mention the decade-long effort to update the WHO’s RF Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) document. There was an extended discussion of the EHC at last year’s IAC meeting, according to the draft minutes, which were also leaked (the full text of the minutes are here).
Last December, WHO announced the formation of an RF Working Group to help guide the RF EHC to completion. The working group held its first meeting in March. This too was not publicized, and van Deventer has yet to disclose how the working group was assembled. (For a history of the RF EHC, see our detailed report.)
ICNIRP, ICNIRP, ICNIRP
The 2022 IAC meeting, held online, was run by Eric van Rongen, the former chair and current vice chair of ICNIRP. This year’s session also features strong ICNIRP participation, including that of three Australians: Rodney Croft, the current chair, Ken Karipidis, a commissioner, and Sarah Loughran, Croft’s right-hand aide, who serves as an ICNIRP scientific expert. Only Loughran plans to attend the meeting in person.
Among the other scheduled speakers this week are David Sliney, a former ICNIRP commissioner who is now an ICNIRP expert, and Maria Scarfi who served as an expert from 2006 to 2012. Gunde Ziegelberger, the Commission’s scientific secretary, will also speak.
Scarfi and Isabelle Deltour, Joachim Schüz’s protégée at IARC, will review recent health studies. Deltour has spent the last decade challenging IARC’s 2011 designation of RF as a possible human carcinogen.
Contributions from Five Countries
At last year’s IAC meeting, van Deventer disclosed that only five countries had provided financial support for the WHO EMF Project in the previous year: Australia, Ireland, Israel, New Zealand and Switzerland. She noted that others had contributed staff time, helped host meetings and provided translation services. The combined population of the five countries is about 50 million; half are Australians.
The WHO EMF project, like ICNIRP, rarely offers information about its sources of funding.
Providing Oversight
One of your objectives is to provide “oversight on the conduct of the [EMF] Project,” van Deventer has told Committee members (see slide below). And last year she committed to “increasing emphasis on transparency in all areas of its work, including funding, data and partnerships, and making WHO information available to everyone.”
This was reported in the minutes of the meeting by Martin Gledhill, New Zealand’s representative on the IAC —without a trace of irony.
A slide from Emilie van Deventer’s presentation at 2019 IAC meeting.
She is fourth from the left in the front row.
Van Deventer runs a closed shop with essentially no public outreach. She and her staff have declined to share the most basic information or documents on WHO’s EMF work and, on most occasions, they do not respond to email inquiries.
The IAC meeting will also address other types of non-ionizing radiation, including UV and optical frequencies.