Title : The uncertain safety of telecommunications’ RF-EMF: are policy-makers “Dancing in the Dark?”

Background: Global scientific controversy has recently broken out concerning the potential health and environmental hazards of radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) from telecommunications equipment, especially mobile phones and transmission towers using 5G frequencies. The WHO and current regulatory authorities in most Western countries adhere to safety thresholds evidenced many years ago from limited animal studies, assuming that the only biological mechanism for such RF-EMF effects is heating. This is in spite of hundreds of peer-reviewed studies over recent decades documenting a much wider range of ill effects at the sub-cellular, cellular, tissue and whole-body level, including credible evidence of causation of two CNS tumours (acoustic neuroma and gliomas) in human populations, and suggestive evidence of both carcinogenic and reproductive harms in lab animals.  

Methods: This narrative review builds on a series of peer-reviewed critiques of a dozen systematic reviews of RF-EMF adverse biological and health effects, commissioned by WHO and published since 2023. Those strongly worded critiques were authored by members of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (of which the author, a physician-epidemiologist, is currently Chair), a global non-profit organisation dedicated to assessing and improving the scientific quality of primary studies and reviews of these hazards, and disseminating that information to policy-makers, professionals and the public. This presesentation lays out the history of this controversy and summarises the key arguments against accepting as scientifically sound the current regulatory exposure limits to RF-EMF, based entirely on thermal effects alone.

Conclusions: The author summarises the arguments for a new independent, international review of the all the relevant scientific evidence around this controversy, to inform regulatory policies globally,  to better protect both the environment and the health of the public. Critically, that review panel should be vetted to prevent any significant potential conflicts of interest, a problem which has plagued past expert inquiries into these matters.

Professor John W. Frank MD, CCFP, MSc, FRCPC, FCAHS, FFPH, FRSE, LLD: Currently Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh Medical School (2008- present). Previous academic and research leadership positions: Professor (now Emeritus) University of Toronto (1983-present); founding Director of Research, the Institute for Work & Health in Toronto (1991-1997); inaugural Scientific Director, Canadian Institutes of Health Research - Institute of Population and Public Health (2000-2008); founding Director, Edinburgh-based MRC Unit: Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy. Career publications: >300; h-factor: 63 (Google Scholar). Expertise: epidemiology of health inequalities, chronic disease prevention and environmental hazards (especially radio-frequency electromagnetic fields).