A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

Kurt Straif: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

April 27, 2025

WHO Review Finds Cancer Risk in RF-Exposed Animals

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.

September 30, 2024

New Clues on Colorectal Cancer Among Young Adults

It’s a long-running medical mystery: Why have so many people under 50 in affluent countries been developing colorectal cancer in recent decades?

Something new is triggering a jump in what’s known as early-onset colon and rectal cancer (EOCRC). The rates have been going up for the last 20 years and no one knows why it’s happening. The usual risk factors for CRC —obesity, smoking, bad diet and lack of exercise— don’t fully explain the increase.

Five years ago, De-Kun Li, a senior epidemiologist at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, CA, offered a new possibility: carrying a cell phone below the waist.

June 11, 2021

IARC on RF: What’s Next?

A new analysis from the radiation group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) calls into question the agency’s own classification of wireless radiation as a possible human carcinogen.

On May 27, IARC’s Isabelle Deltour presented the new analysis of the incidence of malignant brain tumors (glioma) in the Nordic countries —Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden— over the last several decades. She spoke at an online colloquium hosted by the German Federal Office of Radiation Protection, known as the BfS.

Deltour argued that the trends are mostly not “compatible” with those seen in the epidemiological studies —principally, Interphone and Lennart Hardell’s— that were the basis of IARC’s 2011 designation of RF radiation as a possible, or 2B, human carcinogen.

April 22, 2019

IARC Urged To Revisit RF Risk

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...

June 3, 2011

IARC: Cell Phone Radiation Is a Possible Human Carcinogen

It's not easy to reach unanimous agreement on anything to do with cell phone radiation. And when it comes to cell phones and cancer, forget about it. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) nearly pulled it off. On Tuesday, May 31, more than two dozen scientists and doctors from 14 countries —a group IARC Director Christopher Wild called “the world’s leading experts”— issued a joint statement that cell phone and other types of radiofrequency (RF) and microwave radiation might cause cancer.