HHS to Study Cellphone Health Risks, as FDA Scrubs Online Safety Claims
This should have happened years ago.
This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.
Guest post by Jill Erzen
Federal health agencies quietly removed the FDA’s online claims that cellphone radiation poses no health risk as HHS confirmed it launched a new review of wireless radiation and potential health risks. “This move is signaling very strong steps in the right direction,” said Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s EMR & Wireless Program.
Federal health officials quietly removed longstanding U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) webpages asserting that cellphone radiation poses no health risk, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The action comes as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launches a new study into the health effects of wireless radiation — a step that advocates say reflects a major shift in federal policy.
“This move is signaling very strong steps in the right direction,” said Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program.
Decades of research already point to harm from radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by cellphones and cell towers, said Eckenfels, who criticized federal agencies for lagging behind the science. Kennedy “is the right person to correct that.”
The WSJ linked to an archived FDA webpage, since removed, that said the “weight of scientific evidence has not linked exposure to radio frequency energy from cellphone use with any health problems.”
The FDA, which operates under HHS, said the changes to the website coincide with a broader review of the science.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said the agency disabled webpages containing “old conclusions about cellphone radiation” while HHS undertakes a study on EMR and health to identify gaps in knowledge, including risks posed by new technologies.
Nixon said the effort was directed by President Donald Trump’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission, according to Reuters. He did not name the study’s leaders or provide a timeline.
The MAHA strategy report released in May 2025 mentioned EMR only briefly. EMR researchers and safe-technology advocates told The Defender that the report failed to accurately reflect the depth of scientific evidence linking wireless radiation to biological harm.
Emerging evidence points to ‘high certainty’ of cancer risk
Although the FDA webpages are gone, summaries of the agency’s former positions remain on the FDA website. However, links now reroute to a general landing page describing the agency’s regulatory role.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which sets legal limits on wireless emissions with scientific input from the FDA, continues to state on its website that there is no proof wireless devices cause cancer.
The WSJ reported that the FCC’s position aligns with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) public-facing guidance. That guidance states that evidence of health risks is inconclusive, but it also acknowledges that more research is warranted.
However, recent findings commissioned by the WHO undercut that reassurance.
A WHO-commissioned systematic review published in April 2025 in Environmental International concluded there is “high certainty” evidence that radiofrequency (RF) radiation causes cancer in animals. Researchers noted that the same tumor types identified in animals previously were observed in human studies.
Despite those findings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) cellphone radiation webpage — unchanged since Kennedy took office — still says “more research is needed before we know if using cell phones causes health effects.”
In-fighting ‘prevents us from making real progress’
Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., a public health professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a commissioner with the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF), a consortium of scientists and medical professionals who study the biological effects of RF radiation.
Moskowitz has long warned about cellphone risks.
However, he told the WSJ that he declined an invitation from a Kennedy aide to participate in a possible literature review or expert roundtable on wireless radiation. He cited disagreements with Kennedy on vaccines and other public health issues.
Moskowitz also criticized the administration’s approach as insufficient, saying it risks delaying meaningful regulatory change. “They’re just doing this to kick the can down the road,” he said.
W. Scott McCollough, lead litigator for CHD’s EMR & Wireless cases, said he was “mystified” by Moskowitz’s position. McCollough said that ICBE-EMF has long called for “expert scientific recommendations” to protect public health from EMFs. He said the HHS effort appears to align with those goals.
“I can only hope that Dr. Moskowitz is not speaking for that organization and that they will clarify their position,” McCollough said.
Eckenfels also urged unity. “Tribalism prevents us from making real progress against EMR risks.” Despite disagreements on other issues, she said advocates must recognize they are “fighting the same enemy — big industry.”
Eckenfels urged critics to see common cause in the HHS review effort. “What Kennedy is trying to do is the right thing.” She called for unity to push proposed changes “to become a reality.”
‘The safety of wireless technology is not assured’
Scientific criticism of official government assurances on wireless radiation safety has intensified, fueling growing calls for tighter EMR restrictions.
In October 2025, researchers affiliated with the ICBE-EMF published a paper in Environmental Health concluding that “the safety of wireless technology is not assured.” The paper cited major methodological flaws in numerous WHO-commissioned reviews.
In June 2024, the ICBE-EMF called for the retraction of a 2023 WHO study, arguing that its authors reached incorrect conclusions about wireless safety.
In 2023, five nonprofit science and public health groups filed a citizen petition accusing the FDA of “flagrantly violating” federal law on non-ionizing radiation.
Also in 2023, toxicologist and epidemiologist Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, called out the FDA’s long-cited 2008-2018 internal review that claimed “no consistent or credible scientific evidence” of harm from cellphone radiation.
Davis said the review was never signed, an unusual step for a major public health document.
She said the FDA review followed the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) $30-million “gold standard” study that found “clear evidence” of cancerous heart tumors in male rats exposed to RF radiation. The NTP study also found “some evidence” of tumors in the brain and adrenal glands.
Davis said the FDA ignored those findings and relied on a “skewed interpretation of the literature.”
The review went unsigned because “no one in the FDA was willing to put their name behind such a piece of junk,” Davis said.
This week, the FDA moved to loosen oversight of wireless technologies, allowing certain low-risk wearable devices to bypass medical device review.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said the changes will promote innovation, while Eckenfels said the guidance ignores privacy, consent and radiation exposure concerns.
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