Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is turning his attention to the potential health effects of electromagnetic fields and radio frequency radiation—stoking a controversial theory that digital devices are doing untold damage to human health.
Last week the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services put out a call for information on the subject that included a request for stories from people who believe they have been harmed by mobile phones, Wi-Fi, wearables or other digital devices.
That will likely lead to a lot of alarming personal anecdotes, says Kenneth Foster, a professor emeritus of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania—but these will almost certainly shed little light on whether connected devices carry hidden harms.
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“The way that any health agency would manage this is to have a systematic, careful review looking at all the evidence, considering the strengths and weaknesses and trying to put together some kind of consensus or holistic picture,” Foster says. “That process is very different than the process of soliciting opinions from various people about what they think happened to them.”
Kennedy announced the initiative at a conference for Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit he once headed up that has also spread unsubstantiated claims about vaccines, geoengineering and fluoride. At the event, Kennedy also said HHS would investigate “chemtrails”—lines of water condensation, or contrails, from airplanes that some people believe, without evidence, spread secret biological or chemical agents.
But while chemtrails are firmly in the realm of conspiracy theory, electromagnetic fields and radio frequency radiation exposure have been studied for decades. In a recent effort commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO), 12 systematic reviews assessed the effects of exposure to frequencies of zero to 300 gigahertz—a range that includes the typical level of exposure from a cell phone. Such low-energy radiation is not strong enough to break DNA bonds—that is how x-rays or other forms of high-energy radiation that are known to cause cancer do damage.
The reviews found that exposures below preexisting safety thresholds had no or very small effects on risk of cancers such as lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system) or glioma (a type of brain cancer), as well as no or very little evidence for symptoms caused by radio frequency exposure and highly variable results on oxidative stress and fertility in lab animals.
Other large-scale studies are equally reassuring, such as a 2024 prospective study that looked at cell phone use and brain cancer in more than 250,000 people and found no increased risk of disease.
“Numerous epidemiological studies, including large-cohort and case-control studies, have not found evidence that mobile phone use increases the risk of brain cancer or other cancers,” says a spokesperson for ARPANSA, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. ARPANSA associate professor Ken Karipidis was part of the WHO-sponsored review effort that concluded that these devices, which are most people’s biggest source of radio wave exposure, are not linked to cancer.
“The findings also align with ecological research by [Karipidis] that, although the use of wireless technology has massively increased in the last 20 years, there has been no rise in the incidence of brain cancers in Australia,” the spokesperson adds. “Overall, the body of evidence accumulated over several decades provides reassurance that exposures from wireless technologies, when they comply with established exposure limits, do not pose a risk to human health.”
Still, many of the studies that have been investigating these exposures have been small, exploratory efforts that have been prone to bias, Foster says, and that can muddy the waters and keep fear alive. “You’re talking about 100 or so [studies] published a year, and maybe half of them find biological effects,” he says. “These studies are generally not very persuasive, but John Q. Public has access to the Internet, and they can find all these studies, and they get scared.”
The WHO reviews underscored the lack of high-quality evidence; the authors wrote that their conclusions could only be made with so much confidence. But while there is a need for more high-quality, confirmatory studies, actual research into these exposures has been declining, especially in the U.S., Foster says.
Ultimately, a lack of red flags in the studies thus far suggest that the effects of electromagnetic frequency or radio frequency radiation are nonexistent or tiny, he says, especially compared with other environmental health stressors that people face.
“I don’t sense there is any great sense of panic in the government to solve this problem,” he says, “because they have already invested a lot of money, and nothing has really shown up.”