How Big Wireless Made Us Think that Cell Phones Are Safe: A Special Investigation

Things ended badly between George Carlo and Tom Wheeler. The last time they met in person, Wheeler had Carlo removed by security. At the time, Wheeler was leading the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) and acted as the wireless industry's top representative in Washington. Carlo was the scientist Wheeler had chosen to calm a growing public-relations issue that threatened to derail the young wireless industry. This was back in 1993 when only six out of every 100 adults in the U.S. had a cell phone. Still, industry leaders were confident about the massive growth that lay ahead.

Surprisingly, cell phones had been sold to U.S. consumers for nearly ten years without any government safety testing. Then, some users and workers in the industry started being diagnosed with cancer. In January 1993, David Reynard filed a lawsuit against NEC America, claiming that his wife’s NEC phone caused her fatal brain tumor. After Reynard shared his story on national television, it quickly gained nationwide attention. A congressional subcommittee launched an investigation, investors began selling off cell phone stocks, and Wheeler, along with the CTIA, jumped into action.

Just one week later, Wheeler announced that the industry would fund a large-scale research effort. Cell phones were already safe, Wheeler told the media, and the purpose of the new studies would be to “re-validate the findings of the existing studies.”

George Carlo appeared to be the right person for the job. He was both an epidemiologist and a lawyer, and he had worked for other industries facing controversy. In one study backed by Dow Corning, Carlo concluded that breast implants carried only minor health risks. With support from the chemical industry, he also found that low levels of dioxin – the toxic substance involved in the Agent Orange issue – were not harmful. In 1995, Carlo took charge of the industry-funded Wireless Technology Research (WTR) program. With a total budget of $28.5 million, it became the most heavily funded investigation into cell phone safety at that time.

Outside observers quickly began to suspect that Carlo was chosen to help cover for the industry. They pointed to a conflict he had with Henry Lai, a biochemistry professor at the University of Washington. Lai had done a study on whether radiation from cell phones could damage DNA. In 1999, Carlo and the WTR’s general counsel sent a letter to the university president, asking that Lai be fired for allegedly breaking research rules. Lai, in turn, accused the WTR of interfering with his study’s findings. Both Carlo and Lai have denied each other’s claims.

Others also criticized what they saw as the WTR’s slow progress. Louis Slesin, editor of the industry publication Microwave News, said the WTR was just “a confidence game” meant to ease public concern while delaying meaningful research. “By dangling a huge amount of money in front of the cash-starved [scientific] community,” Slesin said, “Carlo guaranteed silent obedience. Anyone who dared complain risked being cut off from his millions.” Carlo denies this claim.

Whatever Carlo’s intentions were, the record shows that he and Wheeler ended up in a major dispute over the WTR’s conclusions, which Carlo presented to top wireless industry executives on February 9, 1999. By then, the WTR had funded over 50 new studies and reviewed many others. These studies, Carlo told a private meeting of the CTIA’s board – which included executives from 32 major companies like Apple, AT&T, and Motorola – raised “serious questions” about the safety of cell phones.

On October 7, 1999, Carlo sent letters to each industry leader, repeating what the WTR’s research had found: “The risk of rare neuro-epithelial tumors on the outside of the brain was more than doubled…in cell phone users”; there seemed to be a “correlation between brain tumors occurring on the right side of the head and the use of the phone on the right side of the head”; and “the ability of radiation from a phone’s antenna to cause functional genetic damage [was] definitely positive….”

Carlo urged the CEOs to act responsibly and share this information with the public, saying people deserved “the information they need to make an informed judgment about how much of this unknown risk they wish to assume.” He also called out some industry members for “repeatedly and falsely [claiming] that wireless phones are safe for all consumers, including children.”

The following day, an angry Tom Wheeler began attacking Carlo in the press. In a letter shared with company executives, Wheeler claimed the CTIA was “certain that you have never provided CTIA with the studies you mention” – likely an attempt to protect the industry from the lawsuits that had originally led to Carlo’s involvement. Wheeler also argued that the studies hadn't been published in peer-reviewed journals, calling their reliability into question.

Wheeler’s strategy worked. Even though Carlo had repeatedly briefed Wheeler and other top industry leaders on the research – and the studies had been peer-reviewed and were set for publication – tech journalists largely accepted Wheeler’s version and dismissed Carlo’s findings and the WTR’s work.

(Wheeler later became chair of the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that oversees the wireless industry. He agreed to be interviewed for this story but then made all of his comments off the record, except for one: he said he had always followed the scientific advice of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which, he noted, “has concluded, ‘the weight of scientific evidence had not linked cell phones with any health problems.’”)

It’s unclear why Carlo was invited to speak one last time before the CTIA board, considering how badly things had ended. Still, in February 2000, he flew to New Orleans for the wireless industry’s annual conference to deliver the WTR’s final report. According to Carlo, Wheeler made sure that none of the hundreds of journalists at the event could approach him.

When Carlo arrived, he was met by two large men in plain clothes – one of whom mentioned he had recently worked for the Secret Service. The men led Carlo to a private room and told him to stay there until it was time to speak. When he was finally called in, about 70 top industry leaders sat quietly waiting. Carlo had spoken for only 10 minutes when Wheeler stood up, shook his hand, and said, “Thank you, George.” The same two men then walked him to a waiting cab and stood by until it drove off.

In the years that followed, other scientists in the U.S. and abroad would confirm the concerns raised by the WTR. In 2011, the World Health Organization labeled cell phone radiation a “possible” cause of cancer in humans. Governments in countries like the UK, France, and Israel later issued warnings about kids using mobile phones. But as Carlo rode to Louis Armstrong International Airport that day, he couldn’t help but wonder if things might have gone differently – if safety testing had been done before cell phones hit the market, before profits were put ahead of public health. But by then, it was too late. As Carlo said, industry leaders had made their priorities clear: “They would do what they had to do to protect their industry, but they were not of a mind to protect consumers or public health.”

This article doesn’t claim that cell phones or other wireless tech are definitely harmful – that’s a question for scientists to answer. Instead, it focuses on the global cell phone industry and its long-running effort to convince the public that these devices are completely safe.

That effort has clearly worked: 95 out of every 100 American adults now own a cell phone, and around the world, about 75% of adults have access to one. Sales keep rising, and the wireless sector has become one of the fastest-growing and largest industries in the world, bringing in $440 billion in 2016 alone.

Still, Carlo’s experience is a reminder to be cautious, especially since it closely mirrors two of the most well-known examples of corporate cover-ups: the tobacco industry’s efforts to hide the dangers of smoking and the fossil fuel industry’s push to downplay climate change. Just as tobacco executives were warned by their scientists in the 1960s that smoking was deadly, and fossil fuel leaders were told in the 1980s that burning fossil fuels would dangerously heat the planet, wireless industry leaders, according to Carlo, were warned in the 1990s that cell phones could lead to cancer and genetic harm.

Carlo’s letters to industry CEOs, sent on October 7, 1999, are just as significant as the infamous November 12, 1982, memo from Exxon’s M.B. Glaser, which explained to company executives that oil, gas, and coal could raise global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. In the case of tobacco, Carlo’s letters are similar to a 1969 memo from a Brown & Williamson executive, who wrote that “Doubt is our product” and that sowing uncertainty was key to creating public confusion.

Like the tobacco and oil companies, the wireless industry chose not to share what its own scientists had told them about potential risks. Instead, in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, the industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the last 25 years insisting the science supports their position, discrediting critics, and telling consumers there’s nothing to worry about. Behind the scenes, the industry also took steps to hook users – just like tobacco companies used nicotine to keep people addicted, wireless companies designed phones to trigger a dopamine hit every time a user swipes or taps.

This Nation investigation shows that the wireless industry not only made similar ethical choices as the tobacco and fossil fuel giants – it also followed their strategy. The core idea of that strategy is this: a company doesn’t need to win the scientific debate; it just needs to keep the debate going. That’s enough to calm public fears, avoid government crackdowns, and dodge lawsuits – while keeping profits safe.

A major tactic in keeping the science debate alive is creating the impression that scientists disagree. Like the tobacco and fossil fuel industries before it, the wireless industry has used what Motorola once called “war-gaming” science in a 1994 memo. This means going on the offensive – not just funding favorable research but also attacking studies that raise concerns, placing industry-friendly experts on panels at organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO); and trying to discredit independent researchers.

Among these tactics, funding supportive research has likely been the most effective. It creates the appearance of division among scientists. So, when studies suggest a link between cell phone radiation and health problems – like Carlo’s WTR report in 1999, the WHO’s Interphone study in 2010, or the U.S. National Toxicology Program’s research in 2016 – industry reps can point to other studies that say otherwise. “The overall balance of the evidence” shows no concern, said Jack Rowley of the GSMA, Europe’s wireless trade group, when asked about the WHO findings.

But a closer look shows how misleading this is. When Henry Lai, the same professor Carlo once clashed with, reviewed 326 studies on cell phone radiation from 1990 to 2005, 56% found biological effects, and 44% did not – seemingly a split. However, when Lai sorted them by funding source, a pattern emerged: 67% of independently funded studies found effects, while just 28% of industry-funded studies did. A 2007 Environmental Health Perspectives review confirmed this, finding that industry-sponsored research was 2.5 times less likely to find harm.

One group that hasn’t bought into the safety claims is the insurance industry. No insurer is willing to cover product liability for cell phone radiation. One executive laughed at the idea and pointed to more than two dozen active lawsuits demanding nearly $2 billion in damages. Some courts have even ruled against using industry-funded studies as evidence – like a judge in Italy who threw them out.

Still, minimizing the safety issue has helped the industry pursue a much bigger goal: the Internet of Things. Promoted as a huge economic breakthrough, the Internet of Things will connect not just phones and computers but also cars, appliances, and even baby monitors – all at speeds faster than today’s 4G. The downside? This system will need 5G technology, which, according to a petition signed by 236 scientists with over 2,000 published studies, will “massively increase” public radiation exposure. Joel Moskowitz of UC Berkeley helped circulate the petition and noted that these experts make up “a significant portion” of the field. Yet, like earlier wireless tech, 5G is being rolled out without pre-market safety testing.

Just because something hasn’t been proven dangerous doesn’t mean it’s safe. Still, the wireless industry has leaned hard on that logical fallacy. Since the start, the science around cell phone safety has been unsettled. The result? For the past three decades, billions of people have unknowingly been part of a giant health experiment: Use cell phones now, learn later if they cause cancer or genetic problems. Meanwhile, the industry has delayed progress in understanding the risks, helped by regulatory agencies focused more on profits than on public safety and a media that’s often failed to report the full scientific picture. This experiment was carried out without people’s informed consent, while the industry kept influencing the conversation.

“The absence of absolute proof does not mean the absence of risk,” said Annie Sasco, former head of cancer prevention at France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research, during the 2012 Childhood Cancer conference. She added, “The younger one starts using cell phones, the higher the risk,” calling for public education to inform parents, lawmakers, and media about children’s greater vulnerability.

Though scientists are still studying exactly how wireless radiation might cause cancer, it may work in indirect ways. Radiation from wireless devices can weaken the blood-brain barrier, which normally keeps harmful chemicals – like those from secondhand smoke – out of the brain. It’s also been shown to interfere with DNA replication, which can lead to cancer. Kids are more at risk because their skulls are thinner and absorb more radiation, and they’ll have longer lifetime exposure.

Despite these concerns, the industry has played down the risks – and the FCC has followed suit. In 1996, the FCC set safety limits for phones based on their “specific absorption rate” (SAR), capping it at 1.6 watts per kilogram of body weight. But in 2013, the American Academy of Pediatrics said those rules “do not account for the unique vulnerability and use patterns specific to pregnant women and children.” Still, the FCC has refused to update the standards.

The FCC has consistently catered to the industry, and it’s been called a “captured agency,” according to journalist Norm Alster in a 2015 report from Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. The FCC lets manufacturers self-report SAR levels without independent testing and doesn’t require the information to be listed on the packaging. Alster described the industry’s “soup-to-nuts stranglehold,” including political donations, control of oversight committees, and nonstop lobbying. Even the CTIA has praised the FCC for having a “light regulatory touch.”

A revolving door between the industry and the FCC reinforces these ties. Tom Wheeler, for example, ran the CTIA from 1992 to 2004 and then led the FCC from 2013 to 2017. Meredith Atwell Baker was an FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2011 before becoming CTIA’s president in 2014. In 2016, the industry gave $26 million to political campaigns and spent $87 million lobbying in 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The need to downplay safety concerns remains urgent because new studies keep emerging—especially from outside the U.S. However, industry groups in Europe and Asia have used the same tactics to twist science and shape media coverage, keeping public opinion on their side.

The WHO started researching EMF health effects in 1996, with Australian biophysicist Michael Repacholi leading the effort. Though he claimed to be “independent,” Motorola funded his work. While he ran the WHO’s EMF program, Motorola gave $50,000 a year to his former employer, which passed the money to the WHO. When the funding was revealed, Repacholi said there was nothing wrong since he wasn’t paid directly. Later, the money was funneled through the Mobile and Wireless Forum, which donated $150,000 annually to the WHO program. In 1999, Repacholi helped issue a WHO statement that exposure to EMF below international limits “does not appear to have any known consequence on health.”

Two industry groups also gave $4.7 million to the Interphone study, organized by the WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) in 2000. That money covered 20% of the $24 million study, which involved 21 researchers across 13 countries examining links between phone use and brain tumors like glioma and meningioma. The funding was separated by a “firewall” meant to prevent influence, but whether that worked is still debated. As Dariusz Leszczynski of the University of Helsinki noted, both sides are aware of who funds whom.

And yet, Interphone did find troubling results: heavy users had an 80% higher risk of glioma (after adjusting from an initial 40% to fix bias), and users of over 10 years saw nearly a 120% increase in risk. No link was found for casual users or for meningioma.

When these results came out in 2010, industry spokespeople used vague wording to downplay the findings. “Interphone’s conclusion of no overall increased risk of brain cancer is consistent with conclusions reached in an already large body of scientific research,” said CTIA’s John Walls. The word “overall” allowed him to gloss over studies that found real risks. As a result, many news reports reassured the public. The Wall Street Journal wrote: “Cell Phone Study Sends Fuzzy Signal on Cancer Risk,” and the BBC said, “No Proof of Mobile Cancer Risk.”

In May 2011, the WHO met in Lyon, France, to determine how to classify cell phone radiation. The wireless industry sent representatives and had industry-funded experts both in the working group and among outside advisors.

One such expert, Niels Kuster, originally said only that his team had received funds from various sources. However, after co-authoring a Lancet Oncology article on the findings, the journal issued a correction disclosing payments from multiple wireless companies, including Motorola, Samsung, and Nokia. Kuster still participated throughout the full 10-day meeting.

The industry also tried to discredit Lennart Hardell, a Swedish oncology professor whose studies linked phone use to brain tumors. Hardell had previously spoken out about children using phones, which brought swift backlash. Two scientists tied to the industry criticized his work in a Swedish Radiation Authority report. They were John Boice and Joseph McLaughlin from the International Epidemiology Institute—a firm that, at the time, was also working as expert witnesses for Motorola in a brain tumor lawsuit.

Though the wireless industry didn’t get everything it wanted at the Lyon meeting, it still managed to limit the outcome. While some experts pushed to classify phones as “probably” cancer-causing (Group 2A), the final result was “possibly” carcinogenic (Group 2B).

That outcome let the industry keep saying there’s no solid proof that phones are dangerous. Jack Rowley from GSMA repeated that message, saying the “interpretation should be based on the overall balance of the evidence.” Again, that slippery term “overall” helped downplay any uncomfortable conclusions.

By then, industry-funded scientists had been pushing back on their peers for years. Leszczynski, a member of the Lyon group, said he first faced that kind of pressure in 1999 while at Harvard. He wanted to study higher radiation levels than government standards allowed, thinking that would reflect real-life usage better. But each time he brought it up at conferences, he was shot down by Motorola scientists Mays Swicord, Joe Elder, and C.K. Chou. “It was a normal occurrence,” he said, “that whenever [a] scientist reported biological effects at SAR over [the legal limit],” those industry scientists would rise to challenge and discredit the results.

Years later, a study Leszczynski called a “game changer” found that even phones meeting official SAR limits could produce much higher radiation bursts to specific body tissues. Peak SAR levels reached as high as 40 watts per kilogram – 20 times above the limit. However, industry-backed scientists continued to block research into the health effects of such radiation spikes.

“Everyone knows that if your research finds radiation causes harm, your funding dries up,” Leszczynski said in a 2011 interview. And that’s exactly what happened. The Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of Finland, where he worked for years, stopped funding research on the biological effects of cell phones and let him go the following year.

According to researchers involved in the process, the World Health Organization may review its current classification of cell phone radiation later this year. The WHO said that it would first examine the final report from the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP). The NTP’s 2016 results may support reclassifying cell phone radiation as a “probable” or even “known” carcinogen. While the WHO’s earlier Interphone study compared cancer patients’ phone use with healthy individuals, the NTP exposed rats and mice directly to cell phone radiation and watched for health effects.

“There is a carcinogenic effect,” said Ron Melnick, who helped design the study. Male rats exposed to radiation showed a much higher cancer rate, although female rats did not show the same trend. The radiation-exposed rats also had more heart problems, fewer births, and higher infant death rates than the control group. While only a small percentage of the rats developed cancer, the scale of cell phone use worldwide means even small effects could impact millions of people. “Given the extremely large number of people who use wireless communications devices, even a very small increase in the incidence of disease…could have broad implications for public health,” the NTP’s draft report warned.

But that wasn’t the message most media outlets gave. Industry groups quickly responded with the usual “more research is needed” line. A Vox headline read, “Seriously, stop with the irresponsible reporting on cell phones and cancer.” The Washington Post told readers, “Don’t Believe the Hype.” Newsweek mentioned the NTP results briefly, then spent most of the article arguing against them.

The NTP study was scheduled for peer review on March 26–28, but signs suggested the program’s leadership was beginning to soften its tone. In 2016, early findings from the study led to a public health warning. Yet when nearly identical data was released in 2018, senior NTP scientist John Bucher told reporters, “I don’t think this is a high-risk situation at all,” noting that the animals had been exposed to more radiation than typical users.

Microwave News editor Louis Slesin speculated on what may have changed: the program’s leadership was now under Brian Berridge, a former executive from the pharmaceutical industry. Slesin also cited political pressure from pro-business lawmakers and the military, which relies on wireless technology, along with the broader anti-science stance of the Trump administration. The big question: Would the peer reviewers agree with the new cautious tone or push back?

The link between wireless technology and cancer or DNA damage is not fully proven, but the amount of supporting evidence has been growing. Despite the way the media has often downplayed concerns, Henry Lai found that about 90% of the 200 studies in the National Institutes of Health’s PubMed database on wireless radiation and oxidative stress showed harm. Seventy-two percent of studies on the brain and 64 percent on DNA also reported negative effects.

The industry’s push to roll out the Internet of Things makes these findings even more important. Because 5G signals don’t travel far, they require many small antennas – about the size of a pizza box – installed every 250 feet. “Industry is going to need hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of new antenna sites in the United States alone,” said Joel Moskowitz of UC Berkeley. “So people will be bathed in a smog of radiation 24/7.”

Some researchers argue there’s a better path – the “precautionary principle,” which suggests holding off on deploying new technologies until their safety is better understood. A petition from scientists around the world recommends applying this principle to 5G. The petition says that current safety standards “protect industry – not health” and calls for a pause on 5G “until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry.”

No expert can yet say how many people might develop cancer from wireless exposure, and that’s exactly the problem – we don’t know. But instead of acknowledging that uncertainty, society is acting as if there’s no risk at all. Meanwhile, millions of people, including children and teens, are becoming more attached to their devices every day. And the shift to 5G is already underway. This is exactly how the wireless industry wants it.