A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

Friday, January 7, 2005

The 4th International Seminar on EMFs and Biological Effects will be held in Kunming, China, September 12-16. The official language of the meeting is English. The third seminar was held in Guilin in October 2003.

Friday, January 7, 2005

Everyone else is doing it so we thought we would try too. Welcome to the Microwave News Blog. In the weeks and months ahead, we will try to give our readers some perspective on the news. As you can see below, we have posted some comments in the past, admittedly on a sporadic basis. We will now try to follow a more regular schedule. As always, comments are welcome.

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

Going through our collection of clips on the new Stewart report this afternoon, we came across the following quote by Paolo Vecchia, the chair of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP), in a press release issued by the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) on January 11:

“Because EMF exposure guidelines are based on worst-case hypotheses and include reduction factors providing safety margins for possible lack of data, the Commission does not need to create separate guidelines to protect special groups such as children.”

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

The final report of the REFLEX project is now available on the Web site of the Verum Foundation. The report summarizes the work of 12 research groups in seven European countries. The total cost of the project, which investigated the effects low-levels of RF radiation on cellular systems, was approximately $3 million.

Experimental data generated in a number of the labs showed that RF radiation could increase the number of DNA breaks in exposed cells, as well as activate a stress response —the production of heat shock proteins. Many of these effects have been reported at scientific conferences over the last few years (see, for example, MWN, J/A01, p.8; N/D01, p.1; and M/A03 p.7).

Friday, December 17, 2004

Epidemiologists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm have found no association between the use of cell phones and the risk of brain tumors.

“No increased risk was found for glioma or meningioma related to mobile phone use,” reports Stefan Lönn and coworkers at the Institute of Environmental Medicine. Lönn completed the study as part of his doctoral dissertation under the direction of Maria Feychting. This work is part of the Interphone study being coordinated by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France.

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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...