A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Monday, October 29, 2007

The ability of mobile phone radiation to affect sleep is emerging as a robust low-level effect.

A team led by Bengt Arnetz has reported that a three-hour exposure to GSM radiation at 1.4 W/Kg an hour before bed can disrupt sleep. This supports the findings of Peter Achermann of the University of Zurich and Sarah Loughran of the Brain Sciences Institute at Australia's Swinburne University.

Friday, October 19, 2007

The five U.S. cell phones with the highest SARs are all made by Motorola, according to a list compiled by CNET. One Moto phone, the V195s for T-Mobile, has an SAR of 1.6 W/Kg, which is the maximum level allowed by the FCC (this model is not included on Motorola's SAR Web site). On the other hand, Moto's Razr V3x had the second lowest SAR (0.14 W/Kg) on CNET's list —though this model is not available in the U.S. Motorola's Web site gives the V3x as having a maximum SAR of 0.58 W/Kg.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Why is the Interphone study not finished yet? "The interpretation is not straightforward," Elisabeth Cardis told Microwave News in an interview from her office at IARC in Lyon, France. The data are "very difficult to interpret because of the potential problems of recall and selection bias," she explained.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Interphone 2.0 is underway. This second phase of the Interphone project is investigating the possible link between brain tumors and occupational exposures to various types of EMFs —not just those from mobile phones— as well as to chemicals.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Birds may actually be able to "see" a magnetic field. This is the fascinating and surprising conclusion of a group of German scientists who have been studying migratory birds. Not everyone is yet convinced that garden warblers can visualize the geomagnetic field (see today's news item on Nature.com), but the new German paper reminds us how little about we know about how living systems interact with electromagnetic signals.

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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 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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“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.

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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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