Yves here. It’s intriguing to see that some not-ideological outlets are treating some of RFK, Jr.’s hobbyhorses as potentially having merit. Recall that some studies have found a weak correlation between proximity of residence to electrical towers and childhood leukemia. While US cancer organizations pooh pooh the idea that carrying a cancer in a bra can cause cancer, a study in Taiwan found a correlation between excessive cell phone use and breast cancer, including having the phone near the breasts. So this topic is not as settled as some might think.
I wish RFJ, Jr. would add bees to his list of cell phone tower radiation concerns, since studies have linked it to colony collapse disorder.
By Margaret Manto, a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. Originally published at NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute; cross posted from UnDark
Do cell phones and 5G cause cancer? It’s a question that has plagued Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and if Kennedy is confirmed as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, it’s one he will have power to explore.
“The next-generation telecommunications network should be discontinued until it has been ‘sufficiently demonstrated that there are no real and serious health risks,’” Kennedy wrote on X in 2020. Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.
In a July 2024 episode of his podcast, Kennedy spoke at length about what he saw as the risks of cell phone radiationand how he believed research into the topic has been systematically suppressed by the telecommunications industry.
The amount of radiation produced by cell phones is regulated by two agencies: the Food and Drug Administration, which generates recommendations for reducing health risks, and the Federal Communications Commission, which turns those recommendations into regulations for manufacturers and cell phone service providers. Other agencies are also involved in cell phone radiation research, including the National Toxicology Program, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. Both the FDA and the NIH are part of HHS.
Many experts say that research has not shown a correlation between the kind of radiation produced by cell phones and the health issues that Kennedy has said they can cause, including cancer.
“There is no evidence that these radiation wavelengths cause cancer. They don’t cause DNA damage, they don’t sink in beyond the skin,” said Tim Rebbeck, a professor who studies cancer prevention at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Rebbeck added that the kinds of radiation that are known to cause cancer, like gamma rays and x-rays, are much shorter wavelengths than the radiation caused by cell phones — and longer wavelengths have never been shown to be associated with cancer risk.
“I think that if anybody’s cell phone got overheated to the point that it would cause DNA damage, you’d know that. This isn’t something that would be invisible to you,” Rebbeck said.
But some scientists say that more research is needed to know whether cell phones and wireless pose a risk to humans, citing studies conducted by the National Toxicology Program that found that high doses of the radiation emitted by 2G and 3G cell phone signals could cause tumors in rats and mice. These scientists say there has only been limited research on the newer forms of cell phone signals.
“We’re basically flying blind on 5G,” said Joel Moskowitz, director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, and a scientific adviser for a group of scientists advocating for greater research into cell phone radiation.
Some scientists, including Moskowitz, say the amount of research into cell phone risks has been limited in the U.S., in part due to the power of the telecommunications industry.
Other experts say research has been ongoing and thorough, pointing to recent epidemiological studies that have taken place outside the U.S. and have shown no correlation between cell phone use levels and cancer rates. These types of studies may be more indicative of actual risk levels to humans, said Jerrold Bushberg — a professor of nuclear sciences at the University of California, Davis, and a member of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements — calling epidemiological studies the “gold standard” for establishing potential hazards from environmental sources.
“Animals aren’t humans, so there’s going to be differences that we can’t account for directly. And the animal experiments are done at higher exposure levels than people are exposed to,” Bushberg said. “Even if we see something [like cancer in animals], that doesn’t mean it will happen in humans.”
The FCC’s regulations on cell phone radiation levels have gone largely unchanged since the mid-1990s. Kennedy has been involved with efforts to compel the FCC to update its regulations on cell phone radiation in the past. In 2020, Kennedy’s nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, sued the FCC after the agency declined to update its health and safety guidelines for 5G and wireless technology. In 2021, the courts sided with the nonprofit, stating in their decision that the FCC had “failed to provide a reasoned explanation for its determination that its guidelines adequately protect against the harmful effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation unrelated to cancer.”
“The wireless industry is rolling out thousands of new transmitters amid a growing body of research that calls cellphone safety into question. Federal regulators say there’s nothing to worry about — even as they rely on standards established in 1996,” Kennedy wrote on X in 2022.
David Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany and a petitioner in that lawsuit, said Kennedy would push for tighter regulations on cell phone radiation in addition to more research into the possible health effects.
“In my judgment, there just needs to be much more research here, and it’s not been high on the government’s list of priorities,” Carpenter said. “If Bobby Kennedy is confirmed as secretary of HHS, you can be very sure that that issue is going to get a lot more attention.”
Moskowitz said that he would like to see Kennedy prioritize research into cell phone radiation with the intention of updating the FCC’s regulations.
“We would like to see more systematic research that focuses on setting safe guidelines in the long term,” Moskowitz said. “This is a hard message to sell, given the economics and the demand for 24/7 wireless, but clearly the issue has gotten totally out of hand in terms of our exposures.”
But Rebbeck said there hasn’t been any research data that would suggest a reason to change the current policy, so “it would be unlikely that any proposed changes would be based on anything we’ve learned about the science of cell phones.”
“The best evidence is all pretty clear around cell phones right now, and I would make sure that the policy recommendations are not only based in science, but also don’t cause issues that are unnecessary,” Rebbeck said.
Moskowitz said that while he would like to think that Kennedy would be able to prioritize research into cell phone safety if confirmed as HHS secretary, he’s not optimistic about his chances.
“We’re talking about an industry that spends over 100 million dollars a year lobbying Congress,” Moskowitz said. “It’s hard to be terribly optimistic that one person can make a difference, even in positions of power in the administration, when up against one of the most powerful industries in the world.”
I wish RFJ, Jr. would add bees to his list of cell phone tower radiation concerns
Along the same line, I see many Twitter/X feeds with pictures of same specie of plant next to WiFi radiation and one in non WiFi environment, the former wilted and sickly, the latter healthy and thriving. Does this partially scale up to animals?
Putting my little neck out here…in 2023 I had the sudden onset of sleep problems and daytime anxiety. These are things that I had not experienced in the 10 years living in the same Boston suburb. Visiting my husbands parents in central Vermont in the fall of 2023, I noticed it all went away, only to return when we came home.
One morning in January of 2023 I noticed people working on the steeple or my Church, which I can see over the trees in my back yard from my bedroom, only a few hundred yards away. My husband zoomed his phone in and took a picture and he said there were cellular antennas in the steeple.
I went to the church and asked the parish Priest about it and he said they were installed in 2023 and the church was being paid by two cell companies for the privilege of leasing out the space. Apparently thi sis a thing!
https://www.celltowerleaseexperts.com/cell-tower-lease-news/5g-how-churches-can-benefit/
We moved to a smaller house in May of 2024, which was already in the works for a year, and since then I am back to my old self.
So I do believe these towers affect people beyond cancer, because it seems to be my lived experience. So I think they should expand the health effects of these towers well beyond just cancer.
I’ve mentioned it before, but when we lived down the street from a medium sized regional power grid trunk line, you could see that the plants following the centre of the lines grew visibly taller than those growing outside of the lines’ “effect zone.” It almost looked like a classic bell curve in green. There are effects on organic life forms resulting from exposure to electro-magnetic fields.
Is this effect observed consistently across all such trunk lines?
“Animals aren’t humans, so there’s going to be differences that we can’t account for directly. And the animal experiments are done at higher exposure levels than people are exposed to,” Bushberg said. “Even if we see something [like cancer in animals], that doesn’t mean it will happen in humans.”
Just a quip – Humans are animals but other animals used for experiment will naturally show different results.
humans are animals – animals have adapted and altered earth eco-systems
Will mass use of cell phone faraday bags or just leaving home without it conflict with $Tech Bros and .guv surveillance ?
If you are a typical citizen, both Big Tech and the government are more interested in your Internet browsing history than they are in your physical whereabouts at any given time. Since your phone can’t access the Internet while you’re carrying it in a conductive-mesh bag or while you’ve left it at home, they may very well shrug and decide not to worry about it.
If you’re the kind of person whose physical location is a matter of pressing interest to government agencies at all times, they are probably going to be willing to expend resources greater than “passively track the location of your cell phone” to find out that information.
Sorry, you are not correct about Faraday bags. The readers has a long debate over this when I got a text beep when my phone was in a Faraday bag. I have also gotten texts when in Airplane Mode. The explanation for the Faraday bag fail is that they attenuate, as opposed to block, signal.
And your location can be highly relevant on an ex post basis, such as in litigation or criminal suits. So I would not be so cavalier about location tracking. I would carry a dumb phone if that were an option (sadly I need a smartphone here since the only way to get a cab is to call one on an app), since (contrary to what people tout, and I presume those misleading reassurances come from surveillance state connected types), cell phone triangulation cannot place location accurately enough to be used in court as proof of where someone was.
There is a short problem I give my first year physics students. AC power lines have a 60 Hz (US) or 50 Hz (most elsewhere) frequency. They therefore overwhelmingly emit photons with that frequency, which corresponds to an energy of 2.5 times 10^-13 eV. Chemical bond energies are typically around 1 eV. It is absurd, therefore, to suggest that radiation from power lines have any biological effect other than heating. And the intensity of the radiation from the power lines is very low (it represents a loss, after all); the heating effect is also completely negligible.
Cell phone frequencies can be around 10^9 Hz. But all that means that instead of being 13 orders of magnitude too weak to break chemical bonds, photons with that energy are merely 5 orders of magnitude too weak.
There is no remotely plausible mechanism through which radiation emitted by power lines or by cell phones can cause cancer or do anything at all that is biologically noticeable. Yes, you have a few epidemiological studies that crank out their statistics to suggest something might be happening. But there are always studies like that out there. Do you trust well-established physics, or the sorts of methodologies that have bequeathed us with a “replication crisis” in many fields that depend on attempting to establish statistical patterns while ignoring underlying causal structures?
Just because power or cell phone waves do not have an energy level known to break these particular bonds, does not mean there is no risk. At one time, X-rays were thought to be perfectly benign, since there was no known or immediate visible damage. There is a huge association of cell phone use and mental health disorders, considered over intermediate and longer time frames (The Anxious Generation, Haidt).
The example you give about X-rays come from way before we knew the relevant physics. And Haidt and others may well be right, but they’re not arguing that cell phone radiation is causing the disorders in question.
Exactly my point. We still do not understand everything about physics, biology, neuropsychiatry and complex interactions in vivo. Precaution is not unreasonable, and we could well learn something if we look.
Exactly my point. We still do not understand everything about physics, biology, neuropsychiatry and complex interactions in vivo. Precaution is not unreasonable, and we could well learn something if we look. We do not yet know the precise mechanism for mental health correlation with cell phones.
Anyone here remember these? / ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope
There is a correlation in time in modern society between rising cancer rates and rising cell phone ownership, but I’m not at all sure which way the correlation runs. You see, the cancer rates started going up first… Is it possible that cancer causes cell phones?
https://xkcd.com/925/
Likewise, a connection between cell phone use and mental illness is entirely plausible, but Occam’s Razor suggests a much simpler link than “the cell phone signal itself is somehow making the brain go haywire.” For most of the past twenty years we have been using our cell phones to play certain games and browse social media. It seems more likely that the danger comes not from the phones themselves, but from the messages and applications we receive via the phones.
You say that there’s no plausible way that these signals could break chemical bonds. Doesn’t that beg the question: must one break directly a chemical bond to give rise to cancer in a system as complex and chaotic as the human body? Could not these signals have an influence otherwise that causes harm?
For example, a man can cause another harm by merely speaking to him: say by threatening to blackmail him. I mean physical harm, resulting in a stroke or heart attack from the stress. Now, I doubt blackmailer’s words were powerful enough to break a chemical bond physically, and yet they sent into motion a series of events leading to the blackmailee’s death.
Nature outwits dogmas, which is why science can be so surprising to scientists. I’m not saying that 5G signals cause harm–what you asserts sounds rational to my unschooled ear–but why not, given these statistical signals hinting otherwise, allow for further investigation? We may find that wily nature has slipped the leash of our expectations once again.
The human body manufactures electricity for its own use.
https://www.snexplores.org/article/electric-body-brain-heart-bone
Is it possible than some people’s innate “electrical system” is extra sensitive to G4 and/or G5 radiation?
“There are more things in heaven and earth, …”
And, well, if you’re one who thinks the art goes before the event, there is this 19th Century American poet Walt Whitman’s poem I Sing the Body Electric. But this is just my fancy.
Do you worry about collisions with dust particles causing fatal wounds? No, not unless you’re in outer space traveling close to the speed of light. We know exactly what is happening with dust in ordinary conditions, and don’t need to waste resources asking whether we should address dust collisions. Worrying about power line and cell phone radiation is much like that.
Now, dust can cause all sorts of problems, but not due to collisions. Cell phones and power lines might also cause problems, by being an environmental blight or through some such means. But not through the radiation emitted!
One reason I’m concerned is that corporate-friendly science denialists have a long history of dismissing concerns based on scientific mistakes incorporated into public criticism: “oh look, the tree-hugger doesn’t know their science; clearly their opposition to Progress must be due to some unserious quasi-religious belief.” I don’t know what to do about that. But I’m fairly sure it would help if critics were more careful about their science.
*Much like that* leaves a lot to be desired. You’re making assertions here that aren’t being sourced, but are rather appeals to authority.
I read The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs which was much better sourced. One of the concerns about this radiation isnt that it breaks the DNA, but rather that it “excites” your cells. There are very few studies on the effects of your cells moving and jumping around in excess of what they would naturally. This, combined with the precautionary principle means we should be a little open-minded and consider the effects of EMF sources before placing them everywhere
Some time ago I saw mention of a study on the effect of time-varying electric fields on cellular and intracellular transmembrane transport processes. A quick search does not find the article I think I recall, but there are others on related subjects.
> There is no remotely plausible mechanism through which radiation emitted by power lines or by cell phones can cause cancer or do anything at all that is biologically noticeable.
I think this is not true.
Here’s a recent study that finds potential therapeutic effects of RF exposure:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39456490/
here’s another on therapeutic potential:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39231899/
I am reminded of an old medical saying, “the dose makes the poison.”
When we start seeing reliably replicated studies on radio-frequency electromagnetism affecting living tissue, it will be time to sit up and take notice. My understanding is that the field still has a replication crisis in that regard. That’s not to say there isn’t more than one study that’s found it; the question is out of how many. Two studies out of every three finding a statistically significant effect is one thing; two studies out of every thirty doing the same thing is less so.
Who are doing these studies? If we are counting on industry funding — when there’s a history of industry discontinuing studies that would negatively affect their bottom line — I dont think you can just dismiss a lack of replication. How long did it take to establish smoking was dangerous?
Everyone’s familiar with “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Let’s add a new one; ” when all you see is a hammer, you think a knife is harmless”. For example, consider an infrasonic sound at 150 decibels. If you’re subjected to that for an extended period, it won’t only be your ears that end up damaged, yet that sound creates minimal heat, and, except for ears, an almost indetectable compressive force.
I find this hard to accept. Not only from my experience, but I did some searching today and found this:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09553002.2022.2026516
I do not understand much of it but the conclusion is no where as certain as you are.
And this as well:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9665755
Thank you. It’s too early for me to opine yea or nay. But this flat out “no” does remind me of the case of Ignaz Semmelweis.
The dirt on handwashing: the tragic death behind a life-saving act
“The so-called “Semmelweis Reflex” refers to the propensity to reject new ideas if they challenge established ones — no matter how compelling the evidence is for the new ideas.”
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-dirt-on-handwashing-the-tragic-death-behind-a-life-saving-act-1.5587319
Again, not saying yea or nay. Just not sure we know all the variables involved in the question at this time. / my 2 cents
Ignaz Semmelweis, per wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
No correlation between cell phone use levels and cancer
We know RF causes some cellular damage, and the higher frequency and the more power the higher the cell damage. As we found on Hugh power high frequency radar . The we have not round correlation depends on the amount and form of testing.
Visible light will also cause cellular damage if you focus enough of it onto a small enough patch, as demonstrated by the famous example of burning up ants with a magnifying glass on a sunny day- I’ve never done it myself, but we’ve all heard of it being done.
Differences in the exact amount and exact type of “electromagnetic radiation” that are being used to do something are extremely important to the question of what thing the “radiation” can and cannot do.
RFK Jr. – broken clock, twice a day etc.?
I’m old enough to remember concerns about the correlation between cancer clusters at public schools and their proximity to high tension power lines. Hmm.
When I was a Ham Radio Operator, I had to compute radiation density and avoid dangerous levels in living spaces. It was required and most hams complied.
Another rule is that no source of RF radiation will be closer than 18″ to the head. That’s why I use the speaker on my phone and why hams use corded microphones on HTs (walkie talkies). Cops were getting testicular cancer from radar guns in their laps. You don’t want that phone next to your brain.
These are reasonable guidelines. A lot of hysteria about microwaves and yes, they can mess you up but so can all sources of Radio emissions, even low frequencies if you get too close. You don’t need microwaves to cook food. You can cook at 100 khz.
Unfortunately we may never know the real truth about the effect of microwaves because science in the US is perverted by money and politics. The downfall of it’s credibility has left a vacuum for fear mongering and manipulation of the narrative. Any untainted study will be drowned out with propaganda.