Mobile phone radiation causes brain tumors and should be classified as a probable human carcinogen (2A) (Review)

Quickly changing technologies and intensive uses of radiofrequency electromagnetic field (RF-EMF)‑emitting phones pose a challenge to public health. Mobile phone users and uses and exposures to other wireless transmitting devices (WTDs) have increased in the past few years. We consider that CERENAT, a French national study, provides an important addition to the literature evaluating the use of mobile phones and risk of brain tumors. The CERENAT finding of increased risk of glioma is consistent with studies that evaluated use of mobile phones for a decade or longer and corroborate those that have shown a risk of meningioma from mobile phone use. In CERENAT, exposure to RF‑EMF from digitally enhanced cordless telephones (DECTs), used by over half the population of France during the period of this study, was not evaluated. If exposures to DECT phones could have been taken into account, the risks of glioma from mobile phone use in CERENAT are likely to be higher than published. We conclude that radiofrequency fields should be classified as a Group 2A ̔probable̓ human carcinogen under the criteria used by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Lyon, France). Additional data should be gathered on exposures to mobile and cordless phones, other WTDs, mobile phone base stations and Wi‑Fi routers to evaluate their impact on public health. We advise that the as low as reasonable achievable (ALARA) principle be adopted for uses of this technology, while a major cross‑disciplinary effort is generated to train researchers in bioelectromagnetics and provide monitoring of potential health impacts of RF‑EMF.