A systematic review pointing to evidence that exposure to RF radiation causes cancer in animals has captured the world’s attention.
The review, prepared by an eight-member team from six countries, led by Meike Mevissen of Switzerland’s University of Bern, was commissioned by the World Health Organization in Geneva. It was published by Environment International last April. (Here’s some background.)
A few days ago, the editors of Environment International announced that Mevissen’s review was the journal’s most-downloaded paper of 2025. Readers accessed a total of some 28,000 pdfs and full article views, according to Frederic Coulon, one of the journal’s three co-editors-in-chief.
Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, calls 28,000 downloads “quite impressive,” adding that it puts the Mevissen paper in the top 1-5% of all downloaded academic papers.
The runner-up, with about 21,500 downloads, explores the impact of pharmaceutical and personal care products on metabolic diseases. In third place is a paper on the health effects of air pollution in China. It had far fewer views —just 11,000 downloads.
The Mevissen paper has already been cited in other published work at least 35 times, according to Google Scholar.
Denounced by BfS and ICNIRP
The Mevissen paper is one of 12 RF systematic reviews prepared for the WHO. The others were far more circumspect about a possible cancer risk. Not surprisingly, the Mevissen review has attracted the most attention —not all of it positive.
The German radiation protection office, known as the BfS, has been the most critical. Soon after the paper was posted online, the agency issued a statement rejecting the cancer finding. Later, four members of its staff published a 14-page commentary in Environment International, concluding that their analysis of the same studies “strongly disagrees” with Mevissen’s (her team responded).
Another group, led by Australia’s Ken Karipidis, the vice chair of ICNIRP, presented its own condemnation, calling Mevissen’s analysis “flawed” (here too, Mevissen responded.)
Both the BfS and ICNIRP have long maintained that RF does not —indeed, cannot— lead to cancer in animals or humans. The BfS is the primary sponsor of ICNIRP.
Others have endorsed Mevissen findings. Earlier this year, Igor Belyaev and Suleyman Dasdag, two members of the ICBE-EMF, supported Mevissen’s review in a letter to the editor of the journal. (ICBE-EMF was set up a few years ago to counter ICNIRP.)
The Mevissen paper generated a stir earlier this year —too late to have any bearing on the 2025 download numbers— when she told a Swiss journalist that the WHO had tried to manipulate the work of her team, in an apparent effort to tone down the stated cancer risk. See: “They Kept Telling Us What To Do.”
Last fall, the ICBE-EMF offered a scathing critique of the WHO’s RF systematic review program in the journal Environmental Health. See: “WHO Gets an ‘F’ on RF.”
https://microwavenews.com/short-takes-archive/rf-cancer-review-1