it's a single paper by a single author (itself a proxy measure of low quality) about a single population (military), based on indirectly (not-measured) exposures. I don't think you can really conclude anything at all about that paper.

Having read it, the paper itself is much more balanced than how the biased persons (in any direction) would like to talk about it. It ends with (emphasis mine):

"The main results obtained in the present study were a doubled incidence of all neoplasms with a threefold increase of cancers of the alimentary tract and a sixfold increase of malignancies of the haemopoietic system and lymphatic organs in 20- to 59-year-old career military servicemen exposed occupationally to pulse-modulated 150- to 3500- MHz RF/MW radiation. However, this does not prove a causal link between development of neoplastic diseases and direct interaction of EM fields, since retrospective analysis cannot provide convincing evidence for such links. Nevertheless, the high incidence of certain forms of neoplasms in personnel exposed to pulse-modulated RF/MW radiation clearly shows a need for urgent identification of causal factors present in the occupational environment."

Two other quotes from the paper showing author's awareness of what can and what can't be claimed as proven:

"The highest difference in morbidity rate between RF/MW-exposed and non-exposed personnel was found for malignancies of the haemopoietic system and lymphatic organs (Table 2) with the odds ratio exceeding 6 and the incidence of above 40 new cases per 100000 of exposed subjects annually.

Neoplasms of the haemopoietic system and lymphatic organs are among the malignancies that are to a considerable degree related to multiple environmental and occupational factors, including ionising radiation, organic solvents, some synthetic stains, resins, higher alcohols and numerous other substances [l]. Therefore, many industrial occupations, including e.g. aluminium production, petroleum refining, painting, mining, driving and car servicing, are considered to increase the risk of development of leukaemias and lymphomas. Electric and electronic industry workers have also considerable possibilities for exposure to potential leukaemiogenic factors and substances during their routine or additional duties. This may strongly influence and bias the morbidity rates of haemopoietic and lymphatic malignancies occurring in these populations and their relation to EM fields."

Also some technical details are provided:

"Although assessment of the individual exposure levels (‘dose’) was not possible, it is known from measurement of field power density at working posts that about 80% of the investigated personnel were exposed to RF/MW fields of 0.1-2 W/cm2 and 15% to mean power densities of 2-6 W/m2"

and earlier, showing that the cm2 above is a typo:

"Evaluation of the exposure intensities revealed that at 80-85% of posts, the fields (mostly pulse-modulated RF/MWs at 150-3500 MHz) do not exceed 2 W/m2 (0.2 mW/cm2), while the others have intensities 2-6 W/m2"

It seems that those were the people being exposed to the radar beams during their work hours (or maybe even outside of these). We should for the start compare that amount of exposure to that of humans in the cities due to the cell phones to know which orders of magnitude is the difference.

TL;DR: the correlation is high flux EM (ie radar) exposure being linked with significantly higher rates of [cancer]. The cause may be something environmental also correlated with EM exposure such as industrial solvents (such as those typically used in the manufacture and maintenance of electrical systems like radar) which we already know to be carcinogens.

The post you replied to is already a summary and a much better one than yours.

See this review (which includes your study) for a counterpoint: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.7306

This is not at all a counterpoint. This review basically says "We need more data" and says the reason not to draw conclusions yet is that we don't even know how much exposure we experience in daily life.

They cite some issues with the study. One of them is that the confidence intervals don't seem to add up and the incidence numbers don't look like the general populace for the control group.

I skimmed the article (it's quite long) found the criticisms weak.

> No data published; for Szmigielski (1996) it is implied that there were two to three brain tumors in the exposed group, in which case we imply that the 95% CI for brain tumor is incorrect.

> Several of these studies did not follow workers after they left the job of interest (Garland et al. 1990; Grayson 1996; Szmigielski 1996), with the potential for bias if individuals left employment because of health problems that later turned out to be due to cancer; this might especially be a problem for some types of brain tumor, which can be present for long periods before diagnosis.

The above two criticisms are only regarding the brain tumor incidence data, which is not the most significant finding in the paper.

> “Expected” rates in Szmigielski (1996) paper appear to be incorrect, according to the Royal Society of Canada (1999).

Link is broken, and why Canadian cancer incidence rates are assumed to be equal to Polish ones is not explained.

> Significant excesses were reported for several cancer sites not seen in other studies, and for cancer overall, suggesting possible bias.

Not sure why reporting what you found suggests that you're biased, but okay.

Plus correlation is not causation.

Correlation is not an excuse to completely ignore findings either. As the original study said: more data/analysis is needed.

Agreed. The "correlation != causation" mantra does not match the context here.

It's true that correlation studies are not as conclusive as laboratory experiments in general, but when we're talking about negative long-term health effects on humans, you can't establish causation without doing something unethical. But does that mean science becomes useless? I don't think so.

There are times when it's appropriate to infer causation from a correlation and act on that conclusion. For example, the famous lead toxicity studies are correlation studies. One such study, cited over 1000 times, [0] meets only 6 out of 9 criteria for inferring causation [1], and people are comfortable making that inference.

A good next step would be to go through the PowerWatch list of studies [2] and evaluate these studies based on these criteria (or a similar list).

---

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199001113220203 [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/003591576505800... [2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19CbWmdGTnnW1iZ9pxlxq1ssAdYl...

Never implied that. The study of radar operators in the military specifically states that the cancer could be caused by anything, calling out industrial solvents often used when servicing radar equipment. But the “5G is cancer” people use the study to support their claim that millimetre saves cause cancer.

The radar operators surely don’t wash them every day with “industrial solvents”. It’s nowhere said that there’s any basis that the operators are consistently exposed to them. The study also doesn’t claim what you claim, it is written much more carefully.

Where did I claim that servicing equipment means washing the equipment with industrial solvents?

Why do you feel the need to “scare quote” industrial solvents which is a common term used to refer to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals used in industrial processes?