A big reason there isn't more research on the health risks of RF radiation exposure is that the U.S. government stopped funding this research in the 1990s, with the exception of one $ 30 million rodent study published in 2018 by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

'National Toxicology Program, which found "clear evidence" for the carcinogenicity of cell phone radiation. In 1996, the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, adopted exposure guidelines that limited the intensity of exposure to radio frequency radiation.

These guidelines were designed to prevent significant tissue heating due to short-term exposure to radio frequency radiation, and not to protect us from the effects of long-term exposure to low levels of modulated or pulsed radio frequency radiation, which is produced by mobile phones, wireless. phones and other wireless devices, including Wi-Fi.

Yet the preponderance of research published since 1990 finds adverse biological and health effects from long-term exposure to radio frequency radiation, including DNA damage. More than 250 scientists, who have published more than 2,000 articles and letters in professional journals on the biological and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields produced by wireless devices, including cell phones, have signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for stricter health warnings and exposure limits.

Thus, many scientists agree that this radiation is harmful to our health. I first heard you talk about the health risks of cell phone radiation in Berkeley in 2019, but you've been doing this research since 2009. What prompted you to pursue this research? I entered this field by accident, actually. Over the past 40 years, most of my research has focused on the prevention of tobacco-related illnesses.

I first became interested in cell phone radiation in 2008, when Dr. Seung-Kwon Myung, a medical researcher at the National Cancer Center of South Korea, came to spend a year at the Family and Community Health Center. He was involved in our smoking cessation projects and we worked with him and his colleagues on two reviews of the literature, one of which looked at tumor risk from cell phone use.

At that time, I was skeptical that cell phone radiation could be harmful. However, since I doubted that cell phone radiation could cause cancer, I delved into the literature regarding the biological effects of low-intensity microwave radiation emitted by cell phones and other wireless devices. After reading numerous animal toxicology studies that found that this radiation can increase oxidative stress - free radicals, stress proteins, and DNA damage - I became more and more convinced that what we were seeing in our review human studies was indeed a real risk.

While Myung and her colleagues visited the Center for Family and Community Health, you reviewed case-control studies examining the association between cell phone use and tumor risk. What did you find? Our 2009 review, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, found that heavy cell phone use was associated with an increased incidence of brain cancer, especially in studies using better quality methods and studies without funding. of the telecommunications industry.

Last year, we updated our review, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, based on a meta-analysis of 46 case-control studies - twice as many studies as those used for our 2009 review - and found similar results. Our main takeaway from the current review is that approximately 1,000 hours of lifetime cell phone use, or approximately 17 minutes per day over a 10-year period, is associated with a statistically significant 60% increase in brain cancer.

Why has the government stopped funding this kind of research? The telecommunications industry has almost total control over the FCC, according to Captured Agency, a monograph written by reporter Norm Alster during his 2014-15 Fellowship at the Center for Ethics at Harvard University.