HMN 2026: How Joint Korea-Japan research finds no evidence linking mobile phone radio frequency exposure to cancer

A large-scale international collaborative animal study found no statistically significant association between long-term exposure to radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic fields (EMF) emitted by mobile phones and the incidence of brain, heart or adrenal tumors.

The results were published in Toxicological Sciences, with separate papers contributed by the Korean and Japanese research teams.

The study was designed to evaluate potential carcinogenic effects at exposure levels that form the basis of human safety guidelines for mobile phone RF electromagnetic fields and to scientifically verify the findings of the 2018 U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The NTP study reported increased incidences of brain, heart and adrenal tumors in male rats following lifetime exposure to 900 MHz CDMA-modulated RF signals at 6 W/kg. The study was motivated by recommendations from international organizations, including the World Health Organization (WHO), which emphasized the need for further research to assess the reproducibility and validity of those findings.

In response, The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) and Japanese research partners initiated the “Korea-Japan Joint Study on the Carcinogenicity and Genotoxicity of Mobile Phone RF Electromagnetic Fields” in 2019 and conducted a long-term international collaborative animal study using a cross-national data integration framework. The study represents the first attempt to integrate experimental data across countries in the field of toxicology regarding RF-EMF exposure.

A key feature of this study is that it applied the same research framework as the NTP study and established a joint protocol based on OECD toxicology testing guidelines. The experiments were conducted under identical conditions, including the same animal model, feed, equipment and RF exposure environments in both countries.

Notably, reverberation chamber-based RF exposure systems developed by ETRI were installed in Korea and Japan, enabling parallel exposure control, dosimetry and simulation under equivalent conditions.

The experiment consisted of three groups (RF-exposed, sham-exposed and cage-control) with 70 male rats per group. Animals were exposed to 900 MHz CDMA-modulated RF signals at a whole-body specific absorption rate (SAR) of 4 W/kg from early gestation through 104 weeks. This exposure level corresponds to the value used as the basis for establishing international human exposure guidelines.

The study found that patterns of changes in body temperature, body weight and food consumption associated with RF exposure were generally comparable between Korea and Japan. Food consumption tended to be slightly lower in the RF-exposed group than in the sham-exposed group. Survival analysis showed no statistically significant differences among groups in Korea, while in Japan the RF-exposed group exhibited slightly higher survival rates.

Histopathological evaluation demonstrated that tumor incidences in all experimental groups remained within the range of spontaneous or historical control values. No statistically significant differences were observed between RF-exposed and sham-exposed groups in major target organs, including the brain, heart and adrenal glands. Similarly, tumor incidence rates were comparable across groups in both countries, with low occurrence rates in key organs.

In conclusion, the study found no evidence of a causal relationship between long-term exposure to CDMA-modulated mobile phone RF electromagnetic fields and the development of tumors in experimental animals.

Professor Young Hwan Ahn of Ajou University School of Medicine, the principal investigator of the study, said the results are meaningful because the tumor increases reported by the NTP were not reproduced at exposure levels relevant to human safety guidelines. He added that the findings may help alleviate excessive public concern regarding mobile phone electromagnetic fields and are expected to serve as an important reference for future evaluations by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

Yong-Bum Kim, principal researcher at the Korea Institute of Toxicology (KIT), who oversaw the long-term exposure study and pathological analysis, said the pathological evaluation ensured objectivity through cross-validation by experts from both countries as well as independent international third-party peer review, and that no clear association between RF exposure and carcinogenicity was identified.

Jung-Ick Moon, director of the Radio Environment & Monitoring Research Section at ETRI, emphasized that the study is significant not only for its scientific findings but also for establishing a standardized protocol for international collaborative animal studies and a framework for integrating and analyzing experimental data across countries.

He added that future research will focus on large-scale studies to investigate potential health effects in complex radio environments where 4G and 5G coexist.

For this study, the Korean team consisted of Dr. Hyung-Do Choi’s team from ETRI, the project manager, Professor Young Hwan Ahn’s team from Ajou University School of Medicine, and the Korea Institute of Toxicology (KIT), which is equipped with a Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) environment.

In Japan, the study was carried out by a collaborative team comprising Professor Imaida’s group at Kagawa University, DIMS, a toxicology research organization, and the Nagoya Institute of Technology.

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