Independent Scientists Call for Retraction of Flawed Review of Science on Wireless Radiation
The International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) called for the retraction of a new World Health Organization (WHO) study, alleging the authors of the WHO study reached the wrong conclusion about possible health impacts of wireless radiation.
The ICBE-EMF is a “consortium of scientists, doctors and related professionals” who study radiofrequency-electromagnetic radiation (RF-EMF) and make recommendations for RF-EMF exposure guidelines “based on the best peer-reviewed scientific research publications.”
The WHO-commissioned study — published Dec. 6, 2023, in Environmental International — systematically reviewed studies that looked at whether longer-term exposure to RF-EMF was linked with negative health impacts, including migraines, tinnitus and sleep disturbances.
In their July 15 critical appraisal of the study, ICBE-EMF researchers said the WHO study “appears to conclude unequivocally” that the best current scientific evidence suggests that current RF-EMF guidelines — or limits — are enough to keep people safe.
“On the contrary,” the ICBE-EMF researchers wrote, “this body of evidence is not adequate to either support or refute the safety of current exposure limits.”
The ICBE-EMF researchers also called for an “impartial international investigation, by unconflicted experts.”
The WHO study authors — led by Martin Röösli, Ph.D., head of the Environmental Exposure and Health Unit at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute — only partially disclosed their affiliations and funding sources, the ICBE-EMF researchers said.
An earlier report — not mentioned in the WHO’s study — showed the authors had relationships with telecommunications companies. “These potential conflicts of interest are of great concern,” the ICBE-EMF researchers said.
Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless program, told The Defender she is well aware of the WHO’s bias when it comes to RF-EMF research.
“Like our domestic regulatory agencies, the WHO has been captured by industry,” Eckenfels-Garcia said. CHD urges people to demand that the WHO end its bias in wireless radiation research, she said.
Eckenfels-Garcia said it’s critically important to consider a study’s funding sources when evaluating its conclusions. “It is no coincidence that roughly two-thirds of independently-funded studies show harm of RF-EMF radiation while two-thirds of industry-funded studies say there is nothing to worry about.”
Review included only one study on kids, teens
In their critique, the ICBE-EMF explained that Röösli and his co-authors’ study was part of a project WHO initially launched in 2012 to investigate research on the health effects of RF-EMF exposure.
After temporarily abandoning the project, the WHO in 2019 restarted it by commissioning 10 systematic reviews of the research on RF-EMF exposure and adverse biological and health outcomes in laboratory animals, cell cultures and human populations.
Röösli’s study, published Dec. 6, 2023, is the second of the systematic reviews, the ICBE-EMF said in a press release.
The first WHO-commissioned systematic review, published Aug. 30, 2023, looked at RF-EMF’s impact on pregnancy and birth outcomes. Protocols for some of the other systematic reviews have also been published.
The ICBE-EMF researchers used criteria developed by the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine to assess the scientific quality of the systematic review.
The ICBE-EMF researchers concluded it was unlikely that Röösli and his co-authors missed relevant studies in their review. “However,” they wrote, “we are concerned by the omission of both interrupted time-series studies and human experimental (provocation) studies of RF-EMF exposures.”
The ICBE-EMF researchers also said they were concerned that only one study mentioned on the WHO study’s final analysis list focused on children and adolescents.
“There are published accounts of significant burdens of illness in these age-groups, such as headaches, attributed by study subjects to cellphone use,” they said.
WHO study authors claim results ‘underpin safety’ of RF-EMF limits
The WHO study authors summarized their findings this way:
“This is currently the best available evidence to underpin safety of RF-EMF. There is no indication that RF-EMF below guideline values causes symptoms. However, inherent limitations of the research results in substantial uncertainty.”
The ICBE-EMF researchers credited the Röösli and his co-authors for acknowledging there is “substantial uncertainty” about the health impacts of RF-EMF exposure.
However, they said their main conclusion — “There is no indication that RF-EMF below guideline values causes symptoms” — was misleading and scientifically inaccurate.
According to the ICBE-EMF researchers, Röösli and his co-authors should have concluded: “Overall, the quantity and quality of evidence available from the primary studies reviewed is insufficient to draw any valid conclusions about whether or not RF-EMF exposures below guideline values cause the symptoms studied.”
Otherwise, any “epidemiologically unsophisticated reader is likely to be misled” into thinking that the body of scientific evidence the authors reviewed supports the safety of current RF-EMR guidelines, they added.
Experts without conflicts of interest, the ICBE-EMR researchers said, should review the current scientific literature.
Those experts also need to develop improved methods of accurately measuring RF-EMF exposure that could be used in large human observational studies in the general population.
That’s “the Achilles heel” of the current literature, the ICBE-EMR researchers said. They wrote:
“We have a specific concern regarding the extrapolation of this SR’s [systematic review’s] results to the current challenges of protecting the public from the rapidly evolving RF-EMF exposures now occurring in many countries, such as those related to the rollout of 5G telecommunications technologies.
“That concern is that all of the specific exposures studied in the literature reviewed by Röösli et al. … are not representative of the very diverse emerging RF-EMF exposures now affecting human populations (and the environment more generally) in the real world.”
Overcoming the lag between real-world technological changes and the available research literature on their safety for the public will require a “substantial reorganization” of international studies, they said.
It’ll also likely require increased funding so that high-quality impartial researchers can study the current impacts of real-life RF-EMF radiation.
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