A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

cancer: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

March 14, 2026

“Exposure Limits to Radiofrequency EMF Do Not Account for Cancer Risk or Reproductive Toxicity Assessed from Data in Experimental Animals,” Environmental Health, March 14, 2026. By Ron Melnick and Joel Moskowitz. Open access. “For the general public, current regulatory limits to RF-EMF are 15- to 900-fold higher than our estimates of exposure levels associated with cancer risk of 1 × 10–5 (depending on the duration of daily exposure), and 8- to 24-fold higher than levels that are protective of male reproductive health.”

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

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

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. 

April 27, 2025

A major review of animal studies has found reliable evidence that RF radiation increases the risk of cancer.

The new systematic review was commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO) EMF office in Geneva as part of its ongoing assessment of RF health effects.

It concludes: “[T]here is evidence that RF EMF exposure increases the incidence of cancer in experimental animals with the [certainty of evidence] being strongest for malignant heart schwannomas and gliomas” (brain tumors).

This finding runs counter to the views of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) and the WHO itself, as well those of most national health agencies.

January 3, 2025

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.

September 11, 2024

An international team of researchers, many with close ties to ICNIRP, is trying to put to rest the very possibility that RF radiation can lead to brain cancer —and, by extension, any type of cancer.

On August 30, they published a detailed systematic review of RF and cell phone epidemiological studies, which concludes that there is little evidence to justify continued concern over a possible cancer link.

“We can now be more confident that exposure to radio waves from mobile phones or wireless technologies is not associated with an increased risk of brain cancer,” declares Ken Karipidis in the press release. He is an assistant director of the ARPANSA, Australia’s radiation protection agency, and the vice chair of ICNIRP.

April 13, 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.

December 12, 2022

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.

October 19, 2022

Two influential health agencies, both based in France, will host a one-day meeting on RF–health research, November 23 in Paris. The public is invited to attend in person or online. Registration is free.

The conference, organized by ANSES, the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety, and IARC, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, will focus on potential effects of RF radiation on the brain and on cancer risks. The theme is “Research in a Fast-Moving Environment.”

February 16, 2022

David Robert Grimes is a “got lemons, make lemonade” kind of guy. Or as his famous Irish countryman Oscar Wilde quipped more than 100 years ago, “a grapefruit is just a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it.”

Well, actually, though that line is attributed to Wilde on countless websites, he never said or wrote it. The first documented use was more than a decade after he died in Paris in 1900. But given so, it seems all the more appropriate to mention it in the context of the Grimes affair.

I bring all this up because I’m still trying to understand why JAMA Oncology would have commissioned or accepted a manuscript on a hotly controversial subject —a review of radiofrequency (RF) radiation and cancer— by a junior Irish academic-cum-columnist without any relevant qualifications, David Robert Grimes, at the time of Dublin City University.

January 25, 2022

Senior environmental health scientists are calling for JAMA Oncology to retract a review of RF radiation and cancer by David Robert Grimes, a physicist at Dublin City University.*

Grimes’s paper, which was posted on the journal’s website on December 9th, has prompted a barrage of letters of protest to Nora Disis, the editor of JAMA Oncology.

Among those calling for retraction is Linda Birnbaum, who, for ten years, 2009-2019, was the director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP). Ronald Melnick, who led the team that designed the NTP RF–cancer study, is another harsh critic.

April 13, 2021

“Science, Politics, and Groupthink,” by James Lin, IEEE Microwave Magazine, May 2021.

Lin faults ICNIRP for preferring to “quibble” over the 2018 NTP and Ramazzini RF–animal studies rather than concluding that they point to a cancer risk. He writes: “The simultaneous penchant to dismiss and criticize positive results and the fondness for and eager acceptance of negative findings are palpable and concerning.”

April 9, 2020

We’re all frazzled and anxious. The world has changed, seemingly overnight, and we don’t know when and how we will ever go back to normal —whatever that means. One thing we don’t have to worry about is whether 5G radiation is responsible for COVID-19. It’s not. There’s no credible evidence to suggest otherwise.

Yet, there is at least one important parallel between how we’ve been struggling with COVID-19 over the last few months and how we have been dealing with electromagnetic radiation for the last few decades. In each case, science has taken a back seat to politics.

December 1, 2019

“If Jet Radars Don’t Raise Cancer Risk, Why Did the Navy Coat Some Cockpits in Gold?” McClatchy News, November 27, 2019.

An investigation has found a cluster of cancer cases among U.S. Navy pilots of E-2 Hawkeye early warning aircraft exposed to radar radiation.

April 22, 2019

An advisory committee has recommended that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reassess the cancer risks associated with RF radiation. This should be a “high priority,” according to the panel’s report, which was issued last week.

The group, with 29 members from 18 countries, suggests that the new evaluation take place between 2022 and 2024.

In May 2011, an IARC expert committee classified RF radiation...

November 17, 2018

“Evaluation of the NTP and Ramazzini Studies,” BERENIS Newsletter, November 2018.

This expert group on EMF/NIR, which advises the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, states that these two animal cancer studies are “the most comprehensive” to date. Despite their methodological differences, they both showed “relatively consistent results in schwannomas and gliomas, as well as a dose-dependent trend to an increase in the carcinogenicity of these tumors.” Based on these findings, BERENIS favors a precautionary approach for RF/EMF exposures.

August 30, 2017

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) will release the “complete results” of its $25 million project on cell phone cancer risks early next year, according to a statement posted on its Web site yesterday.

“The complete results from all the rats and mice studies will be available for peer review and public comment by early 2018,” the NTP states. The animals were exposed to GSM or CDMA radiation for two years before they were sacrificed and...

May 25, 2016

The cell phone cancer controversy will never be the same again.

The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) is expected to issue a public announcement that cell phone radiation presents a cancer risk for humans. The move comes soon after its recently completed study showed statistically significant increases in cancer among rats that had been exposed to GSM or CDMA signals for two-years.

Discussions are currently underway among federal agencies on how to inform the public about the new findings. NTP senior managers believe that these results should be released as soon as possible because just about everyone is exposed to wireless radiation all the time and therefore everyone is potentially at risk.

April 16, 2015

“Inhibition of Cancer Cell Growth by Exposure to a Specific Time-Varying EMF Involves T-Type Calcium Channels,” PLOS One, posted online April 14, 2015.

“These observations are consistent with the idea that exposure to specific EMF patterns can affect biological systems by a mechanism consistent with molecular resonance. In this case, … to allow an inappropriate influx of Ca2+ which was able to disrupt proliferation of malignant cells.” From Sudbury, Canada. Open access.

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