A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

NTP: Microwave News Article Archive (2004 - )

March 12, 2024

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 analysis of the cancer data is ongoing and will not be reported.

February 2, 2024

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.

January 19, 2024

UPDATE 2
IARC has announced that the agency will evaluate the cancer risks of “automotive gasoline and some oxygenated additives” from February 25 to March 4, 2025. The reassesssment of RF radiation will have to wait.

October 25, 2023
UPDATE 1
Other Monograph meetings have now been scheduled for March, June and November 2024. The next possible slot for RF radiation is in early 2025.

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. 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.

October 8, 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 2nd 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.

September 14, 2023

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.

June 16, 2023

A Korean RF genotoxicology study —part of a joint project with Japan— has been delayed due to the unexpected death of four of the RF–exposed rats early in the accompanying two-year cancer experiment, according to Young Hwan Ahn of Ajou University medical school.

Ahn presented a progress report on the Korean arm of the project in Geneva last week at a meeting of the WHO EMF Project’s International Advisory Committee. Microwave News has obtained a copy of Ahn’s PowerPoint presentation.

February 28, 2023

The precautionary principle should be applied to public exposures to RF radiation. So say four senior academic scientists —including the former director of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP)— in a strongly worded appeal, published today.

Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research, Paul Ben Ishai, Linda Birnbaum, Devra Davis and Hugh Taylor point to a “plethora of both experimental and epidemiological evidence establishing a causal relationship between EMF and cancer and other adverse health effects.”

July 20, 2022

My wife and I spent a few days in Basel, Switzerland, earlier this month. One afternoon as we were walking through town, I spotted a carefully crafted warning on the side of an otherwise unremarkable building. “The Odious Smell of Truth,” it called out.

With a little Googling, I learned that the expression comes from the title of an exhibition held at the Royal College of Art in London in the spring of 2017. The show was organized by Peter Kennard, a noted British political artist, and his students. They called themselves the Rage Collective. What does it mean, they wanted to know, to tell the truth in a world of false news and social media misinformation.

As it happens, a few days later, I received an email from Peter Hensinger, the scientific director of Diagnose:Funk, with a commentary he had just published which was sharply critical of Martin Röösli, an associate professor at the University of Basel.

July 18, 2021

“Development of Health-Based Exposure Limits for RFR from Wireless Devices Using a Benchmark Dose Approach,” Environmental Health, posted July 17, 2021. From the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “The analysis presented here supports a whole-body SAR limit of 2-4 mW/Kg for adults... and 0.2-0.4 mW/Kg for young children.” Open access.

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.”

March 12, 2021

Expert Report by Christopher J. Portier, March 1, 2021, filed with the Superior Court for the District of Columbia (Civil Division) on March 3, 2021 in the case of Murray (et al.) v. Motorola (et al.) (2001 CA 008479 B). “In my opinion, RF exposure probably causes gliomas and neuromas and, given the human and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes gliomas and neuromas is high.”

February 8, 2021

A German court of appeals has ordered Alexander Lerchl to stop smearing the authors of two papers which show that mobile phone radiation can break DNA and possibly cause cancer. For more than a decade, Lerchl, a professor of biology at Jacobs University in Bremen, has charged, without evidence, that the experimental data from Hugo Rüdiger’s lab at the Medical University of Vienna (MUV) were fabricated.

In its long-awaited decision, dated December 11, 2020, and released at the end of January, the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court of Bremen threatened Lerchl with a fine of up to €250,000 (~US$300,000), or six months in prison, if he continues to falsely disparage the Rüdiger papers. The penalties would apply each time Lerchl violates the court order. Lerchl must also pay €20,000 in court costs.

November 23, 2020

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.

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.

January 17, 2020

NTP scientists have decided to follow the science.

In a recent revision to the information it offers the public on cell phone radiation, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) revealed that its scientists are now taking precautions by spending less time on cell phones and, when on a call, increasing the distance between their heads and the phones. ...

December 6, 2019

Simply saying that more health research is needed on 5G —the latest generation of cell phone technology— can be hazardous to your reputation.

Last May, the New York Times tried to take down David Carpenter, a public health physician and the country’s most prominent 5G critic. Veteran science writer William Broad painted Carpenter as a willing tool of a disinformation campaign promoted by RT America, a Russian TV network. Two months later, Broad was back for another hit on Carpenter. Much of what Broad wrote was fiction.

Now Scientific American has ambushed Joel Moskowitz, one of the few other academics willing to state the obvious: No one knows whether 5G is safe.

October 22, 2019

“Evaluation of the Genotoxicity of Cell Phone RFR in Male and Female Rats and Mice following Subchronic Exposure,” Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis, posted October 21, 2019.

From the NTP: "[S]ignificant increases in the levels of DNA damage measured by the comet assay were seen in several tissues from rats and mice, indicating that RFR may be capable of causing increases in DNA damage.” More here and here.

September 17, 2019

The U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) will soon embark on a new phase of its long-running RF project. Last year, the NTP concluded that RF radiation causes cancer; now it will begin a systematic search for mechanisms to explain how and why the tumors developed. Work is expected to begin by the end of the year.

The research plan is wide-ranging. It will include studies on gene expression, oxidative stress and DNA damage and repair, as well as on the possible role played by heat. Other priorities on the NTP agenda are studies on behavior and stress.

July 22, 2019

Last Tuesday, July 16, the New York Times devoted most of the front page of its science section to William Broad’s latest attack on those who challenge the dogma that wireless radiation is absolutely safe.

“The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t” is the catchy headline of the Web version of his article. It is followed by “How one scientist and his inaccurate chart led to unwarranted fears of wireless technology.”

Broad focuses on two letters* written about 20 years ago by Bill Curry, a consulting physicist, who openly disapproved of putting Wi-Fi in classrooms.

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