Long-term animal studies help researchers investigate potential hazards before every question about human exposure can be resolved. RF Safe’s precautionary position is to take those findings seriously while being explicit about what they do—and do not—measure.
What the review reported
The 2025 WHO-commissioned systematic review by Mevissen and colleagues evaluated 51 animal studies. It reported high-certainty evidence for increased gliomas and malignant heart schwannomas in male rats. Its indexed 2026 correction is linked below. These are findings about specific animal outcomes, not a calculation of an individual phone user’s cancer probability.
Why exposure conditions matter
The National Toxicology Program investigated 2G and 3G radiofrequency exposures in rats and mice. It classified the malignant heart schwannoma evidence in male rats as clear evidence of carcinogenic activity; findings differed across species, sex, and outcomes. Its prolonged whole-body exposures should not be treated as interchangeable with a phone’s localized compliance rating.
A separate laboratory, a different exposure setting
Ramazzini Institute researchers followed 2,448 rats exposed to a 1.8 GHz GSM far field from prenatal life until natural death. They reported a statistically significant increase in heart schwannomas in males at the highest field level, 50 V/m. The brain-tumor increase they reported in females was not statistically significant. This is supporting evidence from another exposure design, not an identical replication of every NTP result. Read Falcioni et al. (2018).
Read the pattern without forcing a straight line
Different outcomes need not show a simple, steadily increasing count at every exposure level. Survival, chance, exposure characteristics, and biological response complicate interpretation. Selecting only the lowest or highest tumor count cannot establish a mechanism. Likewise, a non-monotonic pattern alone does not prove oxidative stress or a particular non-thermal pathway.
Our practical response
More careful research and less avoidable exposure can proceed together. This site supports informed phone use, improved exposure standards, and wired or optical connectivity where practical. It does not convert an animal study into a promise that a consumer accessory prevents disease.