A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Tuesday, July 5, 2005

Now we know what Mike Repacholi has been doing since the infamous Mike-and-Leeka flip-flop of 2003. Back then Repacholi and his assistant Leeka Kheifets decided that there was no need to apply the precautionary principle to EMFs—soon after telling everyone that the time for action had finally arrived.

It appears that for the last two-and-a-half years, when not shuttling from one meeting to another, Mike has been cataloguing ways the WHO can avoid taking precautionary steps to reduce EMF exposures.

Mike’s apologia will be presented next week at a three-day workshop in Ottawa, July 11-13. He calls it a policy framework. We call it a sham. Mike has assembled a list of reasons for doing nothing. Electric utilities and telecom companies could have written the WHO plan. They may well have played a leading role.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Could cell phone radiation actually protect against brain cancer? Could it provide “vitamins for the brain”, as one irreverent epidemiologist suggested recently? Such a possibility, however improbable, is not as far fetched as it may sound.

Radar Gun Parallels

Friday, April 8, 2005

Fire fighters want to know if placing cell phone towers on fire stations puts them at risk. Until a study can provide some reassurance that there is no radiation hazard, the International Association of Fire Fighters wants to ban antennas from fire stations.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Bill Guy says that he didn’t do it, that he didn’t call NIH, that he didn’t try to shut down Henry Lai’s work on microwave-induced DNA breaks. (See “Wake-Up Call.”)

In a letter to Microwave News, Guy wrote: “I most vehemently and unequivocally deny that I, or anybody that I am aware of, made any calls to NIH...”

Friday, March 11, 2005

The March issue of the University of Washington alumni magazine, Columns, features a well-deserved tribute to Henry Lai and his colleague, N.P. Singh, who have demonstrated that low-level microwave radiation can lead to an increase in DNA breaks in the brain cells of rats (available online). The headline of the piece tells the story: “Wake-Up Call: Can Radiation from Cell Phones Damage DNA in Our Brains? When a UW Researcher Found Disturbing Data, Funding Became Tight and One Industry Leader Threatened Legal Action.”

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Short Takes

NTP Lite: All Good in Korea Too

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. 

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NTP Lite: No Cancer Risk Seen in Japan

January 13, 2026
Last updated January 18, 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. 

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ElektrosmogReport Now in English Too

February 9, 2025
Last updated March 28, 2025

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.

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NCI ‘Cancer Bioelectricity’ Conference

August 26, 2024

On September 12th, the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) will host a conference on cancer bioelectricity via Zoom. Attendance is free, but registration is required.

Michael Levin, a professor of biology and biomedical engineering at Tufts University in Massachusetts, will be the keynote speaker.

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Another WHO RF Review Challenged

August 21, 2024
Last updated January 21, 2025

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.

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Italy’s 6 V/m RF Limit at Risk

March 14, 2024

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.

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All Short Takes...