A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

RadioBio: DARPA To Explore Cell-to-Cell Communications

Investigating “Natural Antennas” Sending and Receiving Messages at kHz to THz Frequencies

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Last updated May 17, 2022

The Pentagon wants to know more about how cells use electromagnetic radiation to talk to each other.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA or ARPA, is embarking on a new program, called RadioBio, to determine whether cells are able to exchange information with EM signals and, if so, what the cells are saying and how they do it.

Continues

Making It Up As He Goes Along

Paolo Boffetta, Italian Epidemiologist,
Distorts Power Line Health Risks

Monday, January 9, 2017

Facts don’t seem to mean much anymore. We live in a “post-truth” time. So much so that post-truth was recently named the international word of the year. As 2017 opened for business, a stark example of the new reality came to our attention courtesy of Paolo Boffetta, an Italian epidemiologist now at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.

In an interview with Fox News, Boffetta said that the link between power lines and childhood leukemia had been debunked. In response to a question as to whether it was safe for a pregnant woman to live next to a “huge power line,” Boffetta advised that there was no reason for concern.

According to Boffetta, the 1979 classic study by Nancy Wertheimer and Ed Leeper pointing to higher rates of leukemia among children living near high-current power lines had been contradicted by “newer and better” studies, carried out with improved methodology. Boffetta sent a clear message that “very high exposures” to power line EMFs are safe for pregnant women and children.

Boffetta has lost his truth compass.

Continues

Getting It Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

New Book Dismisses Cell Phone Cancer Risks

Monday, December 5, 2016

Last updated December 9, 2016

Geoffrey Kabat offers a remarkably apt critique of his own writings with his answer to the question, “Do Cell Phones Cause Brain Cancer?”:

“The problem with research in this area is not that it is worthless but that all too frequently it is interpreted naively and uncritically and used for partisan rather than scientific purposes.”

That’s from his new book, Getting Risk Right. It may be the only thing he gets right in the whole book. Hard to say because after reading the chapter on cell phone radiation, we couldn’t slog on much further.

Continues

NTP: Cell Phone RF Breaks DNA

Consistent with Higher Tumor Counts
20 Years After Landmark Lai-Singh Study

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Last updated October 22, 2019

In May, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) announced that male rats exposed to cell phone radiation developed higher rates of cancer. Soon, the NTP will explain how that might have happened.

The same RF/microwave radiation that led male rats to develop brain tumors also caused DNA breaks in their brains. Female rats —which did not have significant elevated tumor counts— had fewer DNA breaks.

All these findings are part of the same $25 million NTP project.

The NTP results provide “strong evidence for the genotoxicity of cell phone radiation,” Ron Melnick told Microwave News.

Continues

Stephen Cleary
(1936-2016)

An Insider Unafraid To Challenge the Microwave Orthodoxy

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Last updated July 17, 2016

Steve Cleary, whose career in microwave research spanned from the military’s Tri-Service program in the late 1950s to the cell phone industry’s sham project in the 1990s, died at home on June 7 of a heart attack. He leaves his wife, Fran, four daughters and ten grandchildren. He was 79.

Cleary was a professor of biophysics at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond from 1964 to 2002. Like many other radiobiologists of his generation, he was trained at the University of Rochester. He later got his PhD at New York University under Merril Eisenbud, a former senior health official at the Atomic Energy Commission. Cleary’s doctoral thesis was the first epidemiological study of the impact of microwaves on the eyes. He detected a significant increase in the incidence of defects in the lenses of military personnel who had long-term exposure, a rare published report of an adverse finding.

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Short Takes

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 12^th, 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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“NTP Lite”: Update from Japan

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.

Continues

Schwannoma Puzzle

September 14, 2023

Last updated September 16, 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.

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“An Assessment of Illness in U.S. Government Employees and Their Families at Overseas Embassies,” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Released December 5, 2020. “Overall, directed pulsed RF energy, especially in those with the distinct early manifestations, appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these case.” See also this thread of nine tweets.
“Effects of Different Mobile Phone UMTS Signals on DNA, Apoptosis and Oxidative Stress in Human Lymphocytes,” Environmental Pollution, December 2020. “Our data support a notion that each specific signal used in mobile communication should be tested in specially designed experiments.”
“Effect of Intermittent ELF MF on Umbilical Cord Blood Lymphocytes,” Bioelectromagnetics, posted November 15, 2020. Among the findings: A stronger effect at lower field strengths. Also: “[O]ur results provide a new example of the biological relevance of the first Schumann resonance frequency (7.8 Hz).”
“Human EMF Exposure in 5G at 28 GHz,” IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, Nov/Dec 2020. Compares skin penetration and SARs for 3G, 4G and 5G phone exposures.
“Cellular Phone Use and Risk of Tumors: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, posted November 2, 2020. “This comprehensive meta-analysis of case-control studies found evidence that linked cellular phone use to increased tumor risk.” An update to a 2009 meta-analysis by the same group.
“An Overview of Potential Novel Mechanisms of Action Underlying Tumor Treating Fields-induced Cancer Cell Death and Their Clinical Implications,” International Journal of Radiation Biology, posted October 21, 2020. “Recent findings implicate TTFields’ role in different important pathways such as DNA damage response and replication stress, ER stress, membrane permeability, autophagy, and immune response.”
“Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Occupational Exposure to ELF Magnetic Fields and Electric Shocks: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” Reviews on Environmental Health, posted September 18, 2020. “This review of 27 epidemiological studies on the association of occupational exposure to ELF-MF as well as electric shocks and the risk of ALS suggests a risk increase of 20% for ELF-MF exposed workers but no increased risk for workers who experienced electric shocks on their job.” But, just a few days later, a New Zealand team reaches the opposite conclusion.
“Pilot Study on the Therapeutic Potential of RF Magnetic Fields: Growth Inhibition of Implanted Tumors,” British Journal of Cancer, September 2020. “Although the limited number of animals used in the experiments restricts definite conclusions, the results of this pilot study indicate consistently that a 2 µT 10 MHz RF inhibits tumor growth in mouse models.” … “[T]there is no clear understanding on the mechanism behind the observed effect.”
“Effects of RFR on Gene Expression: A Study of Gene Expressions of Human Keratinocytes from Different Origins,” Bioelectromagnetics, October 2020. “Our data demonstrate that in the four keratinocyte [skin] cell types, three different expression patterns (downregulation, upregulation, and no effect) were observed, despite their exposure having been the same in all regards.” See also this string of six tweets.
“Association Between Outdoor Light-at-Night Exposure and Colorectal Cancer in Spain,” Epidemiology, September 2020. “Outdoor blue light spectrum exposure that is increasingly prevalent in recent years may be associated with colorectal cancer risk.” An earlier paper linked blue light to breast and prostate cancer.

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Investigating “Natural Antennas” Sending and Receiving Messages at kHz to THz Frequencies

Paolo Boffetta, Italian Epidemiologist, Distorts Power Line Health Risks

New Book Dismisses Cell Phone Cancer Risks

Consistent with Higher Tumor Counts20 Years After Landmark Lai-Singh Study

An Insider Unafraid To Challenge the Microwave Orthodoxy

Pages

Short Takes

Hot new papers & articles

Pages

Microwave News Reading

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Paolo Boffetta, Italian Epidemiologist,
Distorts Power Line Health Risks

Consistent with Higher Tumor Counts
20 Years After Landmark Lai-Singh Study