EMF Evidence Library
Research library/Cancer & tumours/RF-002
RF-002Original text reviewed

Heart tumours in a separate lifetime rat programme

Falcioni et al. · 2018 · environmental research

The reported finding

Male cardiac schwannomas: 0/412, 3/401, 1/209, 3/207; highest group p≤.05, Fisher. Female cardiac schwannomas: 4/405, 9/410, 1/202, 2/202. Female malignant glial tumours: 2/405, 3/410, 2/202, 3/202; nonsignificant. Hyperplasia increases were nonsignificant. Authors reported no survival difference.

Reading it carefully

Sparse events; highest-dose male comparison drives significance. Tumour tests not survival-adjusted; one room/intensity; litter assignment. Rat SAR cannot certify human-limit compliance.

Inside the study

Exposure conditions
1835 MHz GSM/GMSK, full time-slot assignment; far-field 0/5/25/50 V/m, 19 h/day, gestational day 12 to natural death. Estimated whole-body SAR 0/0.001/0.03/0.1 W/kg; coupling-factor estimate, not individual/organ dosimetry.
Design & controls
2448 Sprague-Dawley rats; male n=412/401/209/207, female n=405/410/202/202 in ascending field groups. Sham; blinded pathology, blinded NTP second-opinion review. Tumour incidence Fisher/chi-square; Cochran-Armitage trend; survival separately Kaplan-Meier/log-rank/Cox.
Related research & shared cohorts
Separate exposure/animal programme from NTP RF-001, with NTP pathology collaboration; Brooks 2024 reuses these tissues. Soffritti 2019 mini-review repeats results, not another bioassay.
The protection question raised
What does convergence on a rare heart tumour across different lifetime exposure arrangements mean for chronic protection? Sparse events, shared pathology expertise and estimated rat doses limit the inference; numerical SAR alone cannot answer it.
Source verification
Original published 8-page PDF: methods, results, Tables 1-3, Fig 3 and funding reviewed; metadata independently checked with Scite/PubMed.
Where to find the result
pp 497-499 §§2.1, 2.3-2.6; p 500 Fig 3; p 501 Table 2; p 502 Table 3/funding.
Editorial notices
Scite metadata and PubMed relations checked 2026-10-20: no correction/retraction/concern located. PubMed links 2020 statistical-reappraisal comment (10.1016/j.envres.2020.110233) and 2021 response (10.1016/j.envres.2021.111067); these are comments, not notices.
Funding
RI; ARPA Emilia-Romagna; Children With Cancer UK; Cassa di Risparmio Bologna; INAIL; P.E.I.; Fondazione del Monte Bologna/Ravenna; Environmental Health Trust. Authors report no conflict; funders no direct study/publication role.
Conflicts of interest
Authors declare no conflicts or competing interests, as documented in the retrieved source disclosure.

Reviews to read alongside

Related syntheses and proposals in the separate review collection. These are topical reading links, not additional independent experiments.

Original publication

Falcioni L, Bua L, Tibaldi E, Lauriola M, De Angelis L, Gnudi F, Mandrioli D, Manservigi M, Manservisi F, Manzoli I, Menghetti I, Montella R, Panzacchi S, Sgargi D, Strollo V, Vornoli A, Belpoggi F. Report of final results regarding brain and heart tumors in Sprague-Dawley rats exposed from prenatal life until natural death to mobile phone radiofrequency field representative of a 1.8 GHz GSM base station environmental emission. Environmental Research. 2018; 165: 496-503. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2018.01.037.

Plain-text record