Swedish SSM's 14th report on EMF and Health

6 April, 2020.

The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority's (SSM) Scientific Council published the 14th report on electromagnetic fields and health covering from April 2018 up to and including December 2018.

The report concluded as follows:

"No new established causal relationships between EMF exposure and health risks have been identified."

"Overall, the age standardised incidence of brain tumours does not give support to any causal relationship with radio wave exposure from mobile phone use. If there is an impact, it appears to be so weak that it cannot be detected in incidence trend studies."

"Studies on impact on cognitive functions and behaviour of children and adolescents often report associations with the use of wireless information technology. Since the strongest associations have been found correlated to applications which give low exposure to the head, e.g. texting, it seems clear that other reasons than radio wave exposure primarily causes the association. A few attempts have been done in order to discriminate radio wave exposure from other possible sources of impact. In such a study some indications of weak impact of radio wave exposure was found but this observation needs to be confirmed in similar study approaches before any robust conclusions can be drawn."

"In line with previous reports the council report studies on increased oxidative stress due to weak radio wave exposure in animal studies, some even below the reference levels. Increased oxidative stress was observed in the eye, testes and sciatic nerve. However, several studies did not observe oxidative stress in the brain. Oxidative stress is a natural biological process that can sometimes be involved in pathogenesis, but under what circumstances oxidative stress due to weak radio wave exposure may affect human health remains to be investigated."

"Some animal studies observed that radio wave exposure of testes resulted in decreased sperm counts, sperm viability and serum testosterone. To what extent such exposure can also affect humans need to be investigated. A meta-analysis study concluded a slight increased risk for ALS among workers with increased exposure for low frequency magnetic fields. Despite the increasing use of applications in the intermediate frequency (IF) range of the electromagnetic spectrum (300 Hz-10 MHz) scientific evaluation of potential health risks in that range is scarce."

"The annual report also includes a section where studies that lack satisfactory quality have been listed. This year, as well as last year, many studies have been excluded due to poor quality. From a scientific perspective, studies of poor quality are irrelevant. They are also a waste of money, human resources and, in many cases, experimental animals."

URL: https://www.stralsakerhetsmyndigheten.se/publikationer/rapporter/stralskydd/2020/202004/