5G · RADIATION
Does 5G cause cancer? What the studies actually say
No. At the levels people are actually exposed to, the evidence says 5G does not cause cancer: a 2024 WHO-commissioned review of 63 studies found that mobile phone use likely does not raise the risk of brain or other head tumours, and 5G radio waves carry far too little energy per photon to damage DNA. The scary rat study is real, but it used old 2G and 3G signals at whole-body doses no phone user gets, and the exposed male rats lived longer.
The short answer · how sure can we be?
- 01DISPUTEDGood studies disagree
- 02EARLYSignals, not answers yet
- 03STRONGConsistent, well-designed evidence (this verdict)
- 04SETTLEDDecades of converging evidence
Strong evidence: No. Large reviews of people, real-world exposure measurements and basic physics all point the same way: at the levels we’re exposed to, 5G does not cause cancer.
Contents · 16 sections
The rat study behind the 5G cancer posts
There’s a study about phone radiation that keeps turning up in my feed, usually as a screenshot with a frightening caption. The study is real. Scientists exposed rats to radio waves for two years, and some of them got cancer.
But one part of that study almost never makes it into the post. The exposed male rats lived longer than the ones that weren’t exposed.
That detail doesn’t settle anything on its own. But it shows how a real finding can be cropped until it seems to mean something else. So this article reads the rest of the study, and the bigger studies that came after it.
What I’m checking
I’m not a scientist. I’m someone who got tired of scrolling past posts like these (paraphrased):
- 5G towers are frying your cells.
- 5G causes cancer, headaches and insomnia.
- 5G kills birds.
- 5G spread COVID.
So I read the actual studies. Below is what they say, how sure we can be, and what I’m doing with it. Sources are linked inline and listed at the end. This is general education, not medical advice. Claims about phones and fertility have their own article: does keeping a phone in your pocket affect sperm count?
Is 5G radiation dangerous? What “possibly carcinogenic” actually means
The strongest case against 5G deserves a fair hearing, so that’s where to start.
First, 5G is radiation. That part of the posts is true. Second, in May 2011 the World Health Organization’s cancer agency, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), classified radio-frequency electromagnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.
That decision came from a working group of 31 scientists from 14 countries. They rated the evidence as “limited” for two tumour types, glioma and acoustic neuroma, in people who used wireless phones (IARC press release 208). The group’s chair, Jonathan Samet, said in effect that there could be some risk, so the link should be watched closely.
It sounds terrifying. But “possibly carcinogenic” is IARC’s Group 2B, and IARC’s groups (1, 2A, 2B and 3) describe how sure scientists are that something could cause cancer. They don’t describe how dangerous it is.
For radio waves, 2B meant limited evidence: scientists couldn’t rule a link out. Also in Group 2B:
- aloe vera whole-leaf extract (the non-decolourised kind)
- traditional Asian pickled vegetables (IARC Monograph Vol. 56)
A 2B label is a flag that says “keep studying this”. It isn’t a finding of harm.
What the NTP rat study actually found
The second piece of the case is the rat study. In 2018 the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) finished a major two-year study of phone signals in rats and mice, published as Technical Report 595 (rats) and Technical Report 596 (mice).
The animals were exposed over their whole bodies to a 900 MHz signal of the type used by 2G and 3G phones, at 1.5 to 6 watts per kilogram. That unit is the specific absorption rate: how much radio energy each kilogram of tissue takes in. The NTP describes its highest dose as four times the maximum a phone user is allowed.
The result was what the scientists called “clear evidence” of malignant schwannomas, rare tumours of the heart, in male rats: about 2% at the lower dose and 5–6% at the highest (NTP’s study page and FAQ).
The study
NTP cell phone radiation studies
- WHO
- US National Toxicology Program
- DESIGN
- 2-year whole-body exposure, rats and mice
- SIGNAL
- 2G/3G-type, 900 MHz
- YEAR
- 2018
That’s a real finding from a serious lab. If a post shows you this result, it isn’t lying.
One detail in that “four times” phrasing is worth knowing, though. It compares a whole-body dose with a limit meant for local exposure, the small patch of tissue closest to a phone. No phone user’s whole body takes in anything like the doses these rats received.
What the 5G cancer posts leave out
What the post said
Below the headline · what the study actually found
Male rats given whole-body doses of old 2G and 3G signals got more rare heart tumours, but female rats and mice didn’t, and the exposed males lived longer.
- Female rats and mice: no comparable effect
- Exposed male rats outlived the unexposed ones
- Old 2G and 3G signals, at whole-body doses
- NTP: the findings “do not apply to 4G or 5G”
SourceNTP · TR-595 (rats) · TR-596 (mice) · 2018
Here’s what usually gets cut:
- Female rats and mice didn’t show the same effect. The “clear evidence” was in male rats only.
- The exposed male rats lived longer than the unexposed ones. The study’s own authors called this its main limitation, and ICNIRP, the international body that sets radio-frequency exposure guidelines, flagged it too. When one group lives longer, tumour counts between the groups are hard to compare.
- It wasn’t 5G. The programme says its findings “do not apply to 4G or 5G” and should not be directly extrapolated to people using phones (NIEHS FAQ).
ICNIRP looked at the NTP study alongside a second rat study by the Ramazzini Institute (Falcioni and colleagues, 2018). It concluded the two do not provide a “consistent, reliable and generalizable” body of evidence for changing exposure guidelines, citing lack of blinding, the lifespan problem and chance (as reported by Microwave News). Not everyone accepts that reading: Ron Melnick, a former NTP scientist who designed the study, published a rebuttal disputing ICNIRP’s dismissal.
That disagreement is real. But either way, the scariest 5G study on the internet isn’t about 5G.
What “radiation” actually means: the ladder of light
To see why 5G isn’t like an X-ray, you need one idea from physics.
Radiation just means energy travelling as waves. Radio, Wi-Fi, the light from your lamp and X-rays are all the same thing: electromagnetic waves at different frequencies.
Picture a ladder. Radio is on the bottom rungs. Visible light is in the middle. Ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays are at the top.
That energy arrives in tiny packets called photons, and the higher the frequency, the more energy each photon carries. Physicists write it as E = hf: a photon’s energy is a fixed constant multiplied by its frequency. When it comes to damaging DNA, what matters is the energy of each single photon, not how many photons there are.
Around ultraviolet, things change. Each photon starts to carry enough punch to damage DNA, which is why sunburn matters. A bit higher, at about 10 electronvolts per photon, there’s a line. Above it, photons knock electrons clean off atoms. That’s ionising radiation, like X-rays. Everything below the line, including all radio, is non-ionising.
Is 5G ionising? Where 5G sits on the spectrum
5G sits right down at the bottom of the ladder, near Wi-Fi and FM radio.
The ladder of light
Energy carried by one photon, from radio to gamma rays
A 28 GHz 5G photon carries about 20,000× less energy than green light and sits about 86,000× below the ionisation line. A 3.5 GHz photon is about 690,000× below it.
Here’s how the numbers compare:
- A photon of high-band 5G at 28 GHz carries about 0.00012 electronvolts.
- A photon of green light from your screen carries about 2.3 electronvolts, roughly 20,000 times more.
- The ionising line is about 10 electronvolts, about 86,000 times above that 5G photon.
- Common mid-band 5G, around 3.5 GHz, is lower still: about 690,000 times below the line.
Here’s the key: piling up more of these photons doesn’t add up to a break. It’s like throwing ping-pong balls at a brick wall. Throw a million, and the wall gets a tiny bit warmer. It never cracks.
That warmth is the next part of the story.
Heat: the one proven effect of radio waves
Warming is the one effect radio waves are proven to have. ICNIRP puts it plainly: the only substantiated effect relevant to human health and safety is “heating of exposed tissue” (ICNIRP). That’s how a microwave oven cooks food, at far higher power, inside a sealed metal box.
So ICNIRP sets exposure limits below the point where heating could cause any harm, with a safety margin built in. It says its 2020 guidelines protect against all potential adverse health effects, including from 5G.
High-band 5G also barely gets in. It’s absorbed in roughly the top millimetre of your skin (Frontiers in Public Health, 2025). That’s the honest version of “frying your cells”: radio waves can warm tissue, and warming is exactly what the limits are built around.
How close do real 5G towers get to the safety limits?
Limits only matter if real exposure gets near them. So regulators went out and measured.
Australia’s radiation agency, ARPANSA, measured radio-wave exposure at 50 public places across Melbourne in March and April 2022. Even the highest reading was about 0.14% of the safety limit, more than 700 times below it (ARPANSA). At the places measured, 5G exposure was lower than 4G.
In the UK, Ofcom’s first survey near 5G-enabled masts found a highest total, from all signals combined, of about 1.5% of the limit. The 5G part of that was a sliver: 0.039% (Ofcom).
How close do real towers get?
Measured exposure as a share of the public safety limit
Full scale: 0–100% of the limit
Zoomed 50×: 0–2% of the limit
Melbourne’s survey covered public places generally; Ofcom’s was near 5G masts. Both landed far under the limit.
Does 5G cause cancer? What 63 studies show
Physics predicts no effect. But predictions can be wrong, so the real test is what happens to people.
The best tool for that is a systematic review: instead of leaning on one study, reviewers set their rules in advance, search the research, and assess every study that meets those criteria. That makes cherry-picking much harder.
In 2024, a review commissioned by the World Health Organization and led by Ken Karipidis of ARPANSA screened more than 5,000 studies on mobile phones and cancer, published between 1994 and 2022, and kept the 63 that met its criteria (Karipidis et al., 2024).
Cancer: what the review did
From more than 5,000 studies to one answer
- 5,000+studies on mobile phones and cancer screened (1994–2022)
- 63met the review's criteria and were included
- ResultPhone use likely does not increase the risk of brain cancer or other head tumours, in adults or children. Certainty: moderate.
The result, at moderate certainty: mobile phone use likely does not increase the risk of brain cancer or other head tumours, in adults or in children. The tumours covered included glioma, meningioma, acoustic neuroma, and pituitary and salivary gland tumours. Karipidis has said the review drew on far more data than IARC had in 2011, so we can be more confident that radio waves from wireless technology are not a human health hazard (ARPANSA summary).
The study
REVIEWMobile phones and cancer: WHO-commissioned review
- WHO
- Karipidis et al., for the WHO
- DESIGN
- Systematic review of human studies
- SCREENED
- 5,000+ studies
- n
- 63 included
- YEAR
- 2024
There’s a simpler check, too. Phones went from rare to everywhere in the 1990s and 2000s. If they caused brain cancer, it should show up in the statistics.
In Australia, researchers tracked 16,825 brain cancer cases in adults aged 20 to 59, from 1982 to 2013. The rates stayed flat. Between 2003 and 2013 there was no increase in any tumour type, including glioma in the temporal lobe, the part of the brain most exposed to a phone (Karipidis et al., 2018, BMJ Open). A follow-up in people over 60 showed a similar pattern.
5G health effects: headaches, sleep and the nocebo effect
What about headaches, bad sleep, or feeling unwell near a tower? Those symptoms are real. People really feel them.
Scientists test this with blinded experiments. People sit near a source that is switched on or off, without knowing which. If the signal causes symptoms, the symptoms should follow the signal, not the person’s guess about it.
A 2024 WHO-commissioned review led by Bosch-Capblanch pooled 41 of these experiments. It found no effect on headaches, sleep or overall symptoms, mostly at high-to-moderate certainty. And as a group, people couldn’t tell when the signal was on better than chance, including those who describe themselves as sensitive to electromagnetic fields (ARPANSA summary).
The study
REVIEWRadio waves and symptoms: WHO-commissioned review
- WHO
- Bosch-Capblanch et al., for the WHO
- DESIGN
- Review of blinded experiments
- n
- 41 experiments
- YEAR
- 2024
But when people knew a signal was on, they reported more symptoms. That’s the nocebo effect, the mirror image of a placebo: expecting harm can make you feel harmed. Which means scary posts may actually make people feel worse.
Did 5G kill birds or spread COVID?
Two quick ones from my feed.
The birds. In October 2018, around 300 starlings died in a park in The Hague, and the internet blamed a 5G test. The Dutch government said there were no 5G tests there that month, and autopsies at Wageningen pointed to collision trauma: the birds crashed, probably in a panic (Full Fact).
COVID. Viruses don’t travel on radio waves. Yet in 2020, people set fire to phone masts in the UK: 77 of them by early May, according to Mobile UK, and most weren’t even 5G (RCR Wireless).
Where 5G really does cause a problem
To be fair, 5G created one real safety risk, just not to your body.
Some 5G signals sit close to the frequencies used by aircraft radio altimeters, the instruments that tell pilots how high they are above the ground. That’s a genuine safety issue. On 24 July 2026 the US aviation regulator, the FAA, signed a rule requiring planes’ radio altimeters to tolerate 5G (FAA).
Is 5G safe? The confidence meter
Every claim gets placed on the same four-step scale: DISPUTED (good studies disagree), EARLY (signals, not answers yet), STRONG (consistent, well-designed evidence) and SETTLED (decades of converging evidence).
Does 5G cause cancer at the levels we’re exposed to?
STRONG· No: Consistent, well-designed evidenceLarge reviews find no link; the 2024 review itself rates this moderate certainty.
Does 5G cause headaches or sleep problems?
STRONG· No: Consistent, well-designed evidence41 blinded experiments found no effect, though the nocebo effect is real.
Is 5G the kind of radiation that damages DNA?
SETTLED· No: Decades of converging evidenceBasic physics: its photons sit tens of thousands of times below the ionising line.
Does high-band 5G have long-term effects?
EARLY· Nothing points to harm: Signals, not answers yetFewer studies above 24 GHz, but exposure is low and absorption shallow.
Did 5G spread COVID or kill the birds in The Hague?
SETTLED· No: Decades of converging evidenceViruses don’t travel on radio waves; starling autopsies pointed to collision trauma.
Scale: Disputed · Early · Strong · Settled. The word says how deep the evidence goes, not how dangerous something is. How the scale works
So, is 5G safe at the levels we’re actually exposed to? On cancer and symptoms the evidence is strong, on DNA damage it’s settled physics, and the one open question, high-band 5G over the long term, has fewer studies but nothing pointing to harm.
What I take from it
All the sources are listed below, so you can check my work, and the video covers the same evidence. Next, I’m looking at another claim I keep seeing: that AirPods are beaming radiation into your brain. I read those studies too: do AirPods cause cancer?
Questions people ask
Is 5G radiation the same as X-rays?
No. Both are electromagnetic waves, but X-rays are ionising: each photon carries enough energy to knock electrons off atoms and damage DNA. 5G is non-ionising radio. A high-band 5G photon at 28 GHz carries about 86,000 times less energy than the ionisation line of about 10 electronvolts, and common mid-band 5G is lower still.
Did the rat study prove phone radiation causes cancer?
The US National Toxicology Program’s 2018 study found “clear evidence” of rare heart tumours in male rats given whole-body doses of 2G and 3G-type signals. Female rats and mice didn’t show the same effect, and the exposed male rats lived longer than the unexposed ones. The programme says its findings do not apply to 4G or 5G and should not be directly extrapolated to people using phones.
How much 5G radiation are people actually exposed to?
Very little compared with the safety limits. ARPANSA measured 50 public sites across Melbourne and found a highest reading of about 0.14% of the limit, more than 700 times below it. Ofcom’s first UK survey near 5G masts found a highest total of about 1.5% of the limit from all signals combined, with 0.039% in the 5G band.
Does 5G cause headaches or insomnia?
A 2024 WHO-commissioned review of 41 blinded experiments found no effect on headaches or sleep. As a group, people couldn’t tell when the signal was on better than chance, including people who describe themselves as sensitive to electromagnetic fields. People reported more symptoms when they knew a signal was on, which points to the nocebo effect.
Did 5G kill birds in The Hague?
No. Around 300 starlings did die in a park in The Hague in 2018, but the Dutch government said there were no 5G tests there that month. Autopsies pointed to collision trauma, with the birds probably crashing in a panic.
Sources
Every number above comes from these. Primary sources are the studies, standards and regulator pages themselves; secondary sources are fact-checks or news coverage, used only where the primary text wasn't available to read.
International Agency for Research on Cancer (2011). IARC classifies radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans. Press Release No. 208, 31 May 2011. Working Group of 31 scientists from 14 countries; IARC Monograph Vol. 102 published 2013. iarc.who.int
primaryGroup 2B classification; “limited” evidence for glioma and acoustic neuroma; chair Jonathan Samet’s comments (paraphrased).
International Agency for Research on Cancer (1993). IARC Monographs Vol. 56: Traditional Asian pickled vegetables (Group 2B). Via IPCS INCHEM. inchem.org
primaryAnother Group 2B agent, for comparison.
California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. Proposition 65 notice of intent to list Aloe vera, non-decolorized whole leaf extract (IARC Monograph Vol. 108, Group 2B). oehha.ca.gov
primaryAloe vera whole-leaf extract as a Group 2B agent.
National Toxicology Program (2018). Technical Reports 595 (rats) and 596 (mice): cell phone radio frequency radiation. US Department of Health and Human Services. ntp.niehs.nih.gov
primaryHeart schwannomas in male rats (about 2% and 5–6%); 900 MHz 2G/3G-type signal at 1.5–6 W/kg whole body; “four times” the maximum human exposure; lifespan; scope.
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Cell Phone Radio Frequency Radiation, including the NTP studies FAQ. niehs.nih.gov
primaryFindings “do not apply to 4G or 5G” and should not be directly extrapolated to human cell phone use; longer lifespan of exposed male rats.
Microwave News. ICNIRP finds NTP and Ramazzini studies unconvincing. Report on the ICNIRP note (2019) on the NTP and Ramazzini (Falcioni et al. 2018) studies, published in Health Physics, March 2020. microwavenews.com
secondaryICNIRP’s reasons (blinding, lifespan confound, chance) and Ron Melnick’s rebuttal. The ICNIRP note itself was not read.
International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). Radiofrequency: overview and 2020 guidelines (web page). icnirp.org
primary“Heating of exposed tissue” as the only substantiated health effect; 2020 guidelines cover 5G.
Wikipedia. Non-ionizing radiation (quoting ICNIRP’s 10 eV / 100 nm boundary). Photon energies derived with E = hf, Planck constant 4.1357 × 10⁻¹⁵ eV·s. en.wikipedia.org
secondaryIonisation line; photon energy comparisons for 3.5 GHz, 28 GHz and green light.
Frontiers in Public Health (2025). [Article on millimetre-wave absorption in skin and the ICNIRP 2020 limits.] doi:10.3389/fpubh.2025.1580155. frontiersin.org
secondaryMillimetre-wave 5G is absorbed in roughly the top millimetre of skin.
3GPP TS 38.101-2, section 5.1: NR frequency ranges FR1 (410–7125 MHz) and FR2 (24.25 GHz and up). Mirror site. itecspec.com
secondaryWhere mid-band and high-band (millimetre-wave) 5G sit.
Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (2023). ARPANSA finds radio waves exposure more than 700 times below safety limit. Survey of 50 Melbourne sites, March–April 2022; published in Radiation Protection Dosimetry, March 2023. arpansa.gov.au
primaryHighest site about 0.14% of the limit; 5G exposure lower than 4G at the places measured.
Ofcom. Electromagnetic field (EMF) measurements near 5G mobile phone base stations: test summary. ofcom.org.uk
secondaryHighest total about 1.5% of the ICNIRP public reference level; 0.039% in the 5G band. Figures via ISPreview and TelecomTV coverage.
Karipidis K, et al. (2024). [WHO-commissioned systematic review of human observational studies on radiofrequency exposure and cancer.] Environment International 191:108983. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
primary5,000+ studies screened (1994–2022), 63 included; moderate certainty that phone use likely does not increase the risk of brain or other head tumours.
Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (4 September 2024). WHO review finds no link between mobile phone use and brain cancer. arpansa.gov.au
primaryTumour types covered and Ken Karipidis’s comments (paraphrased).
Karipidis K, et al. (2018). [Population-based study of mobile phone use and brain tumour incidence in Australia, 1982–2013, ages 20–59.] BMJ Open 8:e024489. bmjopen.bmj.com
primary16,825 cases; stable incidence; no increase in any tumour type 2003–2013, including temporal-lobe glioma.
Bosch-Capblanch, et al. (2024). [WHO-commissioned systematic review of human experimental studies on radiofrequency exposure and self-reported symptoms.] Environment International 187:108612. Read via the ARPANSA summary. arpansa.gov.au
primary41 blinded experiments; no effect on headache or sleep; exposure not detected better than chance; more symptoms in open studies.
World Health Organization. Radiation: 5G mobile networks and health (questions and answers). who.int
primaryNo adverse health effect causally linked with wireless technologies; only a few studies at 5G frequencies.
Karipidis K, et al. (2021). 5G mobile networks and health: a state-of-the-science review of the research into low-level RF fields above 6 GHz. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology 31:585–605. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
primary107 experimental and 31 epidemiological studies; “no confirmed evidence” of hazard; study-quality problems.
Full Fact. [Fact check on the starlings that died in The Hague in 2018 and the 5G test claim.] fullfact.org
secondaryNo 5G tests there that month; autopsies pointed to collision trauma.
RCR Wireless News (7 May 2020). 5G-COVID conspiracy theory claims 77 UK phone masts (citing Mobile UK). rcrwireless.com
secondary77 UK masts attacked by early May 2020; most not 5G.
Federal Aviation Administration (2026). Requirements for interference-tolerant radio altimeter systems. Final rule signed 24 July 2026. faa.gov
primaryThe one real 5G safety risk: interference with aircraft radio altimeters.