A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

The Precarious Case
Against Precaution

A Deep Dive into the Swedish Cancer Registry

Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Last updated March 30, 2019

It has been nearly eight years since an expert panel of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. Since then, neither the World Health Organization (WHO) nor the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) has recommended precautionary policies to limit potential health risks.

No U.S. health agency has yet advised the public to reduce RF exposures.

Even after two large animal studies —by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and Italy’s Ramazzini Institute— presented clear evidence of a cancer link last year, the WHO has remained silent; ICNIRP responded by calling both animal studies unconvincing.

Now comes the Annual Review of Public Health, which on January 11 posted a paper by five leading epidemiologists who posit that, after a systematic review of all the human studies, they don’t see an elevated cancer risk. The takeaway is that the IARC classification was a mistake.

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Aussies Claim No Brain Tumor Link; Skepticism Abounds

Why Were Older People Excluded?
No One Wants To Talk About It

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

Last updated January 10, 2019

The incidence of brain tumors in Australia did not increase between 2003 and 2013, according to a new analysis by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) and the Australian Centre for Electromagnetic Bioeffects Research (ACEBR). This means that there can be no link between the use of mobile phones and brain cancer, they claim.

If such an association were true, “then the brain tumor rates would be higher than those that are observed,” states an ARPANSA press release that accompanies the new paper published in BMJ Open.

“People say mobile phones can cause cancer but our study showed this was not the case,” said ARPANSA’s Ken Karipidis, the lead author.

Others are skeptical. The work is incomplete and misleading —or worse, they say.

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Defending the Indefensible

Deconstructing a New York Times Headline

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

How does a New York Times reporter justify a grossly misleading headline on a story of major importance?

Usually we could only speculate, but in one recent case, thanks to a health advocate’s persistence, we have a peek at the rationalizations and distortions in play.

The headline sits at the top of a story by William Broad, a staff writer, reporting the release of the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) final report on its $30 million, ten-year animal study of the cancer risks associated with cell phone radiation.

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How NTP Controlled Coverage
of Cell Phone Cancer Story

Did New York Times Have an Inside Track?

Friday, November 9, 2018

Much of the press coverage of the final NTP cell phone/cancer report was lousy. This time, the NTP seems to have wanted it that way.

Reporters were given very little notice to join the NTP teleconference on the release of the report. Nor was there much time to prepare a story for publication.

I received an email at 10:45 am on October 31 for a teleconference at 2 pm that same day. Many reporters missed the advisory and the call. Editors had little time to assign the story.

Attendance on the teleconference was spotty.

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Cell Phone Radiation Leads to Cancer, Says U.S. NTP in Final Report

Rats Developed Rare Heart Tumor
Cancer Link Was Once Thought Impossible

Thursday, November 1, 2018

“We believe that the link between radiofrequency (RF) radiation and tumors in male rats is real,” says John Bucher, the former associate director of the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP).

The announcement accompanies this morning’s release of the NTP final reports of studies on cancer in rats and mice exposed to cell phone radiation. Bucher’s project, the largest in NTP history, cost $30 million and took more than ten years to complete.

The NTP found what it calls “clear evidence” that two different types of cell phone signals, GSM and CDMA, increased the incidence of malignant tumors in the hearts of male rats over the course of the two-year study.

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Short Takes

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 September 6, 2024

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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Korean NTP Lite: Progress Report

June 16, 2023

Last updated June 17, 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.

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Hot new papers & articles

“Radiofrequency Radiation and Cancer: A Review,” by David Grimes, JAMA Onclology, December 9, 2021. Incomplete and inaccurate. Astonishing that this was published by an AMA journal. [More here]
“Health Safety Guidelines and 5G Wireless Radiation” by James Lin, IEEE Microwave Magazine, January 2022. “Some of the updated [IEEE and ICNIRP] safety recommendations are marginal, questionable, and lack scientific justification from the perspective of safety protection.”
“Computational Modeling Investigation of Pulsed High Peak Power Microwaves and the Potential for Traumatic Brain Injury,” Science Advances, October 29, 2021. Open access. “For sufficiently high incident power densities, a single [1 GHz, 5 µs] pulse could potentially result in biologically meaningful pressures.”
“The Ecology of Electricity and Electroreception,” Biological Reviews, October 12, 2021. A major effort, 31 pages. Open access.
“Effect of Radiation Emitted by Wireless Devices on Male Reproductive Hormones: A Systematic Review,” Frontiers in Physiology: Reproduction, September 24, 2021. Open access. “[A]voiding long-term and excessive use of mobile phone is advisable to reduce the detrimental effect of RF-EMR.”
“RF Exposure of the Yellow Fever Mosquito (A. aegypti) from 2 to 240 GHz,” PLoS Computational Biology, October 28, 2021. “For a given incident RF power, the absorption increases with increasing frequency between 2 and 90 GHz with a maximum between 90 and 240 GHz.” Open access.
“Mobile Phone Use and Time Trend of Brain Cancer Incidence Rate in Korea,” Bioelectromagnetics, September 20, 2021. Lots to chew over here.
Auditory Effects of Microwave Radiation, a new 348-page book by James Lin, published by Nature Springer. Lin, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, is the editor-in-chief of Bioelectromagnetics. From 2004 to 2016, he was a member of ICNIRP.
“Threshold of RF EMF Effect on Human Brain,” International Journal of Radiation Biology, posted August 23, 2021. Lowest SAR threshold for effect on EEG is more than a 1,000 times lower than level deemed safe by ICNIRP and the U.S. FCC. Also the changes in EEG are similar to those seen in depression.
“Effects of Mobile Phone Usage on Sperm Quality — No Time-Dependent Relationship on Usage: A Systematic Review and Updated Meta-Analysis,” Environmental Research, November 2021. Long-term use of a cell phone “is a factor that must be considered as a cause of sperm quality reduction.”

A Report on Non-Ionizing Radiation

News & Comment

A Deep Dive into the Swedish Cancer Registry

Why Were Older People Excluded?No One Wants To Talk About It

Deconstructing a New York Times Headline

Did New York Times Have an Inside Track?

Rats Developed Rare Heart TumorCancer Link Was Once Thought Impossible

Pages

Short Takes

Hot new papers & articles

Pages

Microwave News Reading

Microwave News is...

Why Were Older People Excluded?
No One Wants To Talk About It

Rats Developed Rare Heart Tumor
Cancer Link Was Once Thought Impossible