Mobile phone radiation not as safe as we were told

July 13, 2025 

In March this year, a study was published claiming to show that mobile phone use did not increase the risk of brain tumours.1

In it, Professor Maria Feychting and her team reported what they found when they followed-up a group of people who’d taken part in an early study, known as COSMOS, to see if there was a link between their mobile phone use and increased rates of various brain tumours.

They claimed there wasn’t.

The authors wrote, ‘…[I]n, in the first follow-up of COSMOS, the world’s largest multinational prospective cohort study specifically designed to investigate potential health risks of mobile phone use, we found no evidence that long-term or heavy mobile phone use is associated with the risk of glioma, meningioma, or acoustic neuroma, although results for meningioma and acoustic neuroma are based on small numbers of cases. Our findings to date, together with other available scientific evidence, suggest that mobile phone use is not associated with increased risk of developing these tumours.’

However, now independent experts - from the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields (ICBE-EMF) - say that the study was flawed and are calling for it to be retracted.2, 3

‘Because of these flaws, the study does not provide reliable estimates of the risks of tumors associated with exposure to mobile phone radio frequency radiation (RFR),’ the authors wrote in a letter to the Editor of Environment International.

The ICBE-EMF team say there are a number of problems with Feychting’s paper.

  • It did not accurately assess exposure because changes to mobile phone technology over time would affect exposures.

  • The investigators didn’t consider participants’ exposure to other wireless equipment, such as cordless phones, routers and mobile phone towers.

  • The way the team compared the data ‘biased the results towards the null’.

  • The team obtained data from national cancer registries which, as in the case of the Swedish Cancer Register, may under-report the incidence of brain tumours.

  • Participants were not exposed for long enough to detect cancers with long latency periods.

  • They relied on evidence from three studies with weak methodology.

  • The study may have been influenced by the telecommunications industry because it received funding from telecommunications industries in Finland, Sweden and the UK and ‘the study design was negotiated with Ericsson’.


The ICBE-EMF team suggest that it’s not necessarily true that mobile phone use does not increase the risk of brain tumours. They point out a 2020 study by Choi et al (2020) which reviewed 46 relevant studies and ‘found significant evidence linking cellular phone use to increased tumor risk, especially among cell phone users with cumulative cell phone use of 1000 or more hours in their lifetime’.4

  1. Maria Feychting et al, Mobile phone use and brain tumour risk – COSMOS, a prospective cohort study, Environment International, Volume 185, 2024, 108552, ISSN 0160-4120, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108552. 

  2. Joel M. Moskowitz et al, COSMOS: A methodologically-flawed cohort study of the health effects from exposure to radiofrequency radiation from mobile phone use, Environment International, Volume 190, 2024, 108807, ISSN 0160-4120, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2024.108807, 

  3. Joel M. Moskowitz, PhD, and Ronald Melnick, ICBE-EMF publishes critical letter about COSMOS mobile phone brain tumor risk study, media release, ICBE-EMF letter on COSMOS brain tumor risk study 24-06-26-1-1.pdf - Google Drive

  4. Choi, Y.J. et al, 2020. Cellular phone use and risk of tumors: systematic review and meta-analysis. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 17 (21), 8079. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17218079.

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What else can you do?

  • Detox your body and home with our natural zeolite products here

  • Download your free copy of our July issue of EMR and Health here.

  • forward this email to others to inform them, too.

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