Editorial: The 4th international expert forum on the public health and environmental impacts of cellular and wireless radiation exposure 2024

being founded on the thermal-only paradigm (1,3,7). The papers in this Research Topic challenge the legitimacy and suitability of the thermal-only paradigm, which was, with few exceptions, reinforced by the recent series of systematic reviews (SR) sponsored by the WHO EMF Project, which is historically a creature of the ICNIRP and industry interests (11).In Nicholas Steneck's seminal early history, The Microwave Debate (12), he clearly identified several themes that are echoed in the articles by James Lin, Paul Héroux, John William Frank, and Theodora Sacarato: (1) The dominance of thermal-only paradigm and rejection of non-thermal perspectives based on ideological grounds more so than scientific evidence; (2) the role of industry in the shaping and influencing the institutionalisation of health and safety standards, guidelines and policies as opposed to valid public health concerns; (3) the persistent marginalisation and outright rejection of findings on non-thermal effects; and (4) an exclusive focus on thermal-only effects by industry-aligned scientists. While the industry standards body, the IEEE and its members, held sway the 1980s, they were joined by the ICNIRP in the 1990s, which also spawned and controlled the WHO EMF Project by the late 1990s. However, Lin (2025) points to an ongoing paradigm change, as the military researchers in the U.S. investigate non-thermal effects.In the preparation of the influential IEEE C95.l-1982 standard, Steneck (12) notes how "calcium efflux" was dismissed as a plausible mechanism by the U.S. engineering community-of-practice to help explain non-thermal biological effects. In this Research Topic Lin and Levitt et al. revisit the issue in the context of explaining the role of oxidative stress, but it is Panagopoulos et al. who provide the "biological plausibility" required by the Bradford Hill viewpoints articulated by Frank (3). While others such as Martin Pall articulated the relationship between RF-EMF, voltage-gated calcium channels, calcium efflux, ROS, and oxidative stress, Panagopoulos et al. ( 2) discuss the movement of calcium ions as a key element in their ion forced oscillation model. While they reference earlier work Panagopoulos et al. emphasise that the disruption of calcium concentrations is a key trigger for subsequent oxidative stress. The formal identification of disrupted calcium concentration following exposures to electromagnetic fields moves the evidence from mere statistical association to a plausible causal explanation, directly challenging the "thermal-only" paradigm that has dominated public policy for decades. While Héroux (4) exposes the specific technical flaws in the physicist Robert Adair's influential dismissal of such mechanisms in the 1990s, Frank (3) uses the Bradford Hill framework for inferring causation to argue that such dismissals are methodologically unsound. Further, policymakers should not ignore the biologically plausible pathways to harm reported by independent science, particularly as they have been of concern to scientists since the 1970s. Original research by Altun and Kaplan (8) in this Research Topic demonstrates the sensitivity of the foetal brain to changes in calcium signalling during development. They note that electromagnetic fields can alter the expression of genes and proteins that depend on calcium homeostasis, contributing to neurodegenerative changes in the hypothalamus of exposed offspring (8). Collectively, these papers frame calcium efflux and influx as vital evidence of the non-thermal, biologically active nature of RF-EMF that current safety standards and guidelines continue to ignore (1,2).While the original research papers in this issue provide additional evidence of adverse biological effects in insects (9), animals (8), and humans (10), the comprehensive and scientifically rigorous research review by Weller et al. (6) offers a timely correction to the less-than-rigorous findings of certain WHO EMF Project SRs noted by James Lin (1) in this issue. Perhaps the only unbiased and scientifically rigorous of the WHO EMF SRs was that of Mevissen et al. (13) which reported findings of carcinogenicity and other disease endpoints. In terms of the association between RF-EMF exposure and cancers in humans, the negative findings of relevant WHO EMF SR by Karipidis et al. (14) was effectively rebutted by a contemporaneous independent systematic review by Moon, Kwon, and Mun (15) which found a significant association between RF-EMF from mobile phone use and brain cancer, especially ipsilateral (same side) glioma, meningioma, and malignant brain tumours in longterm users with high-cumulative use. It is notable, and here-to-fore unmentioned in the literature, that Karipidis et al. (14) cite the UK Biobank's study's findings of no statistically significant association between RF-EMF and brain cancer, but those same authors fail to note the unequivocal findings of this large UK Biobank study: "Mobile phone use was significantly associated with higher risks of incident overall cancer [HR, 1.09; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.06-1.12], nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC; HR, 1.08; 95% CI: 1.03-1.14), urinary tract cancer (HR, 1.18; 95% CI:1.05-1.32), and prostate cancer (HR, 1.19; 95% CI: 1.13-1.25) in men, and incident overall cancer (HR, 1.03; 95% CI: 1.00-1.06), NMSC (HR, 1.07; 95% CI: 1.01-1.13), and vulva cancer (HR, 1.74; 95% CI: 1.00-3.02) in women, but not with other cancers. Among mobile phone users, there was a dose-response relationship of length of mobile phone use with incident NMSC in men and women, and prostate cancer in men" (16, p. 88).Had Karipidis et al. examined the UK Biobank findings in full they would have discovered that the authors combined all types of brain cancer together and did not examine glioblastoma multiforme-the type most frequently associated with phone use in case-control studies (17,18). It is significant that the most aggressive and fatal form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), more than doubled in incidence between 1994-2015, as indicated by Philips et al. (19), while other lower grade tumours had decreased-this was, in retrospect, problematic for the WHO study, further evidence of systematic bias (1) and questionable value judgements (12).Taken together, the contributions to this Research Topic suggest that historical disagreement reflects not only scientific uncertainty, human hubris and individual and collective valuejudgements (12), but also institutional, methodological, and social influences that shaped science and policy (1,3,4,7). While important knowledge gaps remain, particularly in longterm ecological research and exposure assessment, the current literature is sufficient to seriously question the continued reliance on the thermal-only paradigm to safeguard public health and the environment. The evidence presented in this Research Topic indicates plausible pathways for gradual, cumulative adverse effects on human health and wellbeing and on the ecosystems in which they exist and depend. For human populations, the principal risk lies in normalising universal, continuous exposures to a biologically active, environmental toxin, while the policymaking and regulatory frameworks responsible for risk management, lag scientific understanding of the human health and environmental risks of RF-EMF. For ecosystems, the risk is compounded by stressors such as habitat loss and climate change, which may amplify vulnerability to EMF exposure.In this context, precaution should be understood not as opposition to technological development but as a governance principle aimed at aligning innovation with protecting public and environmental health. This Research Topic does not close the debate on wireless RF-EMF and its biological effects. It does, however, clarify that the central question is no longer whether RF-EMF can interact with biological systems, but how the risks associated with such interactions and adverse consequences should be mitigated.