RFK Jr. Tells USA Today: Wireless Radiation is "Major Health Concern"

The warning came as HHS launched a new study into the health effects of cellphone radiation.

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke with USA Today on Jan. 16, one day after HHS launched a new study into the health effects of wireless radiation — a step that advocates say could reflect a major shift in federal policy.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told USA Today that the wireless radiation from cellphones, cell towers and other wireless infrastructure is a “major health concern.”

Kennedy spoke with USA Today on Jan. 16, one day after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched a new study into the health effects of cellphone radiation — a step that advocates say could reflect a major shift in federal policy.

The same day HHS launched the study, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under Kennedy’s direction scrubbed old webpages stating that cellphones aren’t dangerous.

Kennedy said he was “very concerned” about the negative health impacts of electromagnetic radiation (EMR), a term that encompasses both radiofrequency (RF) radiation and electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

According to Kennedy, there are “literally over 10,000 studies” on EMR documenting “ill effects, including cancer tumor growth.”

Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) EMR & Wireless Program, said she was “excited” to hear Kennedy publicly address EMR’s health impacts.

“The time is right,” she said. “Although scientific evidence keeps piling up, the Federal Communications Commission is moving forward aggressively with its proposed rulemaking to strip local communities’ control over where cell towers are placed.”

Congress has proposed legislation that would do the same thing, Eckenfels said. “Many communities are faced with proposed cell towers where they least want them.”

Thousands of studies document harm from wireless radiation

Kennedy, who previously was accused of exaggerating, did not cite a source for his assertion that more than 10,000 studies show harmful effects from wireless radiation.

However, online compilations show there are at least thousands of peer-reviewed studies attesting to the harms from wireless radiation.

For instance, a recent compilation by Henry Lai, Ph.D., shows there have been over 2,500 peer-reviewed studies published since 1990 that found significant adverse effects from EMF exposure.

Lai, a professor emeritus of bioengineering at the University of Washington, has been studying and compiling research on EMR for over two decades. For years, Lai’s updated compilations appeared on the BioInitative website. Now they are housed on SaferEMR.com, run by Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., a public health professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The EMF-Portal, run by the RWTH Aachen University in Germany, lists roughly 48,850 publications related to EMFs and summarizes around 7,000 of those studies.

Some are about the possible therapeutic uses of certain kinds of wireless radiation. For example, one paper discusses how electroconvulsive therapy can be used to treat depression.

But many show negative health effects, according to W. Scott McCollough, lead litigator for CHD’s EMR & Wireless cases.

“More than half report significant effects, although there are — as usual — differences of opinion on the quality of the research conclusions.”

The U.S. military has a long history of studying wireless radiation. In 1971, the U.S. Naval Medical Research Institute issued a report that reviewed 2,311 scientific studies that, together, linked EMFs to 132 different biological effects, symptoms and diseases.

By analyzing the Navy’s report, researchers Richard Lear and Camilla Rees showed that 23 of the top 36 fastest growing chronic illnesses were conditions identified in the report as being linked to EMFs, yet federal regulators did nothing to protect the public. “I am delighted to see HHS will investigate the biological and health effects of wireless radiation,” Rees told The Defender.

Independent scientists: There’s ‘no assurance’ of wireless radiation’s safety

In USA Today’s report of its interview with Kennedy, the media outlet cited a 2024 systematic review commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO). The review, which analyzed 63 studies on cellphones and cancer, claimed to find no link between cellphone use and cancer.

The study was one of 12 WHO-backed systematic reviews on the possible health effects of RF radiation.

However, USA Today failed to mention that in October 2025, independent scientists with the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) pushed back against the WHO reviews.

The scientists published a peer-reviewed report in which they argued that the WHO’s reviews provided “no assurance of safety.”

ICBE-EMF is a “consortium of scientists, doctors and related professionals” who study wireless radiation and recommend wireless radiation exposure guidelines “based on the best peer-reviewed scientific research publications.”

“The WHO-commissioned systematic reviews are simply inadequate to conclude that wireless radiation is safe,” ICBE-EMF Chairperson John Frank, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh and professor emeritus of public health at the University of Toronto, said in a press release.

It would “mislead the public” to present the WHO’s reviews as evidence that current wireless radiation exposure guidelines are safe, Frank said.

Most of the WHO reviews had “significant flaws” — including methodological problems and bias concerns — that undermined their conclusions about the safety of RF radiation, ICBE-EMF said.

The group said that, despite the flaws, one of the WHO reviews showed RF radiation exposure reduced men’s fertility, while another linked cellphone radiation exposure to two types of cancer in animals.

ICBE-EMF published a supplemental document alongside its report detailing examples of the WHO review authors’ ties to the wireless industry.

Will new HHS study lead to regulatory change?

It’s still unclear if Kennedy’s willingness to speak out about wireless radiation and the new HHS study on cellphone radiation risks will result in meaningful regulatory change.

“More research is not the answer,” wrote Theodora Scarato, director of the Wireless and EMF Program at Environmental Health Sciences, in a statement. “The existing scientific evidence and court rulings already require immediate policy action. Safety guidelines must be updated to reflect today’s continuous, real-world exposures, and enforceable safeguards must be put in place now to protect children.”

HHS could and should require cellphones to have labels that clearly disclose the amount of wireless radiation users are exposed to, she said.

Cellphones should have “prominent black box warnings” for especially vulnerable populations, including children, pregnant women, and people with medical implants or electronic medical devices such as a pacemaker.

McCollough agreed that regulatory change needs to happen. But he said the government’s new study could be a step in that direction. “We know wireless exposure leads to harm, but there are still knowledge gaps.”

The scientific and medical communities have, for a long time, outlined areas that need more research. For instance, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in a 2008 report, identified a slew of topics related to wireless radiation that need to be studied. The topics include how wireless radiation is affecting young children, fetuses and pregnant women.

“HHS is well aware of what must be done regarding the science,” McCollough said. “But the change has to start with the FCC and it needs to start now.”

According to McCollough:

“The FCC must acknowledge that its current RF exposure guidelines are not biologically based and commit to establishing sound, science-based maximum exposure levels.

“It also needs to finally recognize that there are many people that have already been sickened, and even died, from exposure-related conditions and give them some means to avoid the kind of involuntary exposure that arises from cell towers and other sources in public spaces.”

Mona Nilsson, co-founder and director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation — who has studied the telecom industry’s influence on EMR research — told The Defender she hopes the HHS study will prioritize “the well-being and protection of children and the general public” more than the wireless industry.

Lennart Hardell, M.D., Ph.D., agreed. “Industry-affiliated people, including researchers, have for a long time undermined and ignored scientific evidence on health hazards from RF radiation.”

Blair Levin, policy analyst at New Street Research and former FCC chief of staff, said it was unlikely that efforts by HHS would translate into federal policy changes, Broadband Breakfast reported.

Levin wrote in a statement, “Given the scientific evidence to date, if HHS attempts to force the wireless industry to adopt costly changes to their current operations, we do not see it as likely that the courts will uphold such HHS regulation.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics has not updated its advice on cellphone radiation in nearly a decade — and a link on the group’s parenting advice webpage lists AT&T as one of its corporate sponsors.

Watch Kennedy’s interview with USA Today here:

This article has been updated to clarify that it was Richard Lear and Camilla Rees’ analysis that showed 23 of the top fastest-growing chronic illnesses were identified in the 1971 Navy report as being linked to EMFs.

Related articles in The Defender

• HHS to Study Cellphone Health Risks, as FDA Scrubs Online Safety Claims

• Scientists Say WHO Reviews Downplay Risks Linked to Cellphone Radiation

• ‘High Certainty’ Cellphone Radiation Linked to Cancer in Animals, WHO Study Finds

• Cellphone Radiation Causes Abnormal Blood Clumping in Just 5 Minutes, Study Finds

• AAP Hasn’t Updated Advice on Cellphone Radiation in Nearly a Decade — AT&T Listed Among Funders

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