A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Japan: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

December 12, 2022

IARC Will Soon Reassess RF Cancer Risk — Or Maybe Not

On November 23, 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. Many believe that the animal experiments leave the Agency little choice but to increase the cancer risk classification at least one notch to “probable” from the current “possible,” or perhaps to its highest classification, a known human carcinogen.

But, as Weiderpass made clear on making the announcement at a conference in Paris, the RF–cancer risk might instead be downgraded and the “possible” classification removed.

The stakes are high.

January 8, 2021

“Cellular Autofluorescence Is Magnetic Field Sensitive,” PNAS, January 19, 2021. A big step forward for the radical pair mechanism to explain biological interactions with magnetic fields.

November 23, 2020

Public Shut Out of GlobalRF Health Briefing

An international briefing on RF health research, known as GLORE 2020, was held online, November 9-12, featuring updates on the second phase of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) project and the Japanese-Korean partial repeat. The WHO presented a status report on ten ongoing systematic reviews of RF health effects.

Government and industry representatives from Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and the U.S. participated, as did an assortment of academics. The public was not invited.

Everything about GLORE 2020 is being kept secret.

June 10, 2020

“Propagation of THz Irradiation Energy Through Aqueous Layers: Demolition of Actin Filaments in Living Cells,” Scientific Reports, June 2, 2020.

“The potential of THz waves as an invasive method to alter protein structure in the living cells is demonstrated.” From Japan; open access.

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.

May 31, 2008

Interphone News Notes

Some news notes on the Interphone study:

• Those who say there are no long-term cell phone risks often point to the Interphone study from Japan, published earlier this year, for support. As we have previously reported, the Japanese researchers said there was no association between cell phones and brain tumors, even though they found a close to sixfold increase in glioma among heavily-exposed users after ten or more years (see our February 15 post). That link was based on a small number of cases and was not statistically significant; the Japanese attributed the increase to recall bias. Bruce Hocking, an occupational and environmental health physician in Melbourne, Australia, suggests otherwise. In a letter published this week in the British Journal of Cancer, Hocking points out that the risk of meningioma (another type of brain tumor) is hardly raised at all (OR=1.14). He writes: "If recall bias is the true explanation for the increased risk of glioma, it should similarly have affected the meningioma group, but it has not. Therefore, the increased risk in the glioma group may be a true finding."

February 15, 2008

Japanese Discount Brain Tumor Risk

If anyone is still not convinced that the completed Interphone study should be released as soon as possible (see our January 30 post), they need look no further than how the Interphone results from Japan were handled last week.

November 29, 2006

Japan: No Increased Risk of Acoustic Neuroma

Japanese researchers do not see an increase in acoustic neuroma among users of mobile phones. In a paper appearing in the December issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a team led by Naohito Yamaguchi of the Tokyo Women's Medical University reports that the "risk of acoustic neuroma did not increase with the duration of mobile phone use, nor with the total call time."

July 11, 2006

EMF–Childhood Leukemia Link Seen in Japan

Magnetic fields have been linked to childhood cancer in many countries and now it's also been shown in Japan. Michinori Kabuto, of the National Institute of Environmental Studies in Ibaraki, along with a number of collaborators have found that children exposed to 4 mG (0.4 µT) or more in their bedrooms had close to five times more leukemia than those living in low-exposure homes. This statistically significant finding appears in the August 1st issue of the International Journal of Cancer.