No More Research on Cellphone Radiation and Human Health, Government Says

The National Toxicology Program said it no longer plans to study the effects of cellphone…

Children's Health Defense

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has no plans to further study the effects of cellphone radiofrequency radiation (RFR) on human health — even though the program’s own $30 million study that took about 10 years to complete in 2018 reported evidence of cancer and DNA damage.

The NTP said in an updated January 2024 fact sheet that it was abandoning further investigation because “the research was technically challenging and more resource-intensive than expected.”

For decades, the NTP has been the premier governmental testing program for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and radiation, according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, a toxicologist and epidemiologist who served on the board of scientific counselors for the NTP when it was launched in the 1980s.

Commenting on the news, Davis said, “It is the ultimate arrogance and folly to stop doing research on this major growing environmental pollutant, precisely when we have ample evidence of harm.”

Davis has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in books and journals, ranging from The Lancet to the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In February 2023, she and her colleagues published a review of more than 200 studies that linked wireless radiation to negative biological effects including oxidative stress and DNA damage, cardiomyopathy, carcinogenicity, sperm damage, memory damage and other neurological effects.

They will soon publish a “major new article” in Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development journal about “new science” on RFR and call for precaution, she said.

Davis — who also is the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences and the founder and president of Environmental Health Trust — called out the U.S. government for failing to ensure that wireless radiation is safe:

“The government’s decision to stop funding research on cellphone radiation is consistent with the Chinese proverb ‘If you don’t want to know, don’t ask.’

“The US government has a variation of that in the policy of, ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ If you don’t want to know whether cell tower radiation is having a biological impact, stop doing the research!”

Miriam Eckenfels-Garcia, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) and Wireless program, told The Defender:

“Discontinuing government-funded research because it is ‘technically challenging’ and ‘resource-intensive’ is not what we expect from government agencies that are supposed to protect people from the harms of big industry…